Climate is the new front in the culture wars

For over a decade, the team I work with at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has analysed extremist movements and information warfare online and offline. We have watched hostile states, special interest groups and conspiracy networks weaponise social media to advance their causes – threatening electoral integrity, and much else besides. Migration and public health are well-established fronts in the culture wars of our time: the latter especially so during the pandemic. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which the arguments over climate change have been grafted onto these conflicts about identity, affinity and belonging. 

For eight months, we have reviewed data on both mainstream and fringe digital platforms, providing a snapshot of the ways in which climate issues are – in often subtle and under-reported ways – feeding into cultural confrontation. Just as Covid has generated its own tribes and digital alliances, climate change has become yet another crucible in which formerly distinct movements, ideologies and actors can find common cause. In particular, the virus and associated response measures have triggered conflict over the extension of government power and its impact upon individual liberty – witness the growth of anti-lockdown and anti-vaxxer movements worldwide. This conflict, and these grievances, are set to resonate beyond the narrow parameters of this crisis.

For some who have opposed Covid containment measures, the restrictions are part of a much wider “globalist” agenda; a stark illustration of how quickly civil liberties can be cast aside in the name of “public health”. From June to November 2020 alone, our analysis revealed a 92 per cent increase in Facebook posts referencing the “Great Reset”: a supposed elite conspiracy, taking the World Economic Forum’s project of the same name and attributing to it all manner of covert, sinister and authoritarian objectives. This theory was driven into the mainstream by right-wing commentators such as Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck, all pursuing the fairly well-trodden argument that global oligarchies are conspiring against decent people, seeking to rob them of their freedoms by stages. 

In recent months, this strand of fear mongering has begun to pivot intriguingly towards the issue of climate, positioning personal agency in direct conflict with the green agenda. Each week there is new supposed grounds for outrage: from France’s decision to ban a handful of short-haul, domestic flights, to the Texas power blackouts; the UK government wavering over a new Cumbrian coal mine, to the proposed Euro 7 emissions standard for cars. And nowhere is the bleeding of these two universes – pandemic and climate – more acute than in the recent controversy around “climate lockdowns”. 

On 22 September 2020, the commentary website Project Syndicate published an article by the renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato, entitled “Avoiding a Climate Lockdown”. The piece argues for a “green economic transformation” and a “radical overhaul” of energy provision, warning of the more restrictive measures that may be needed if this initial plan fails: limits on car use, meat consumption and extreme energy-saving measures, to name but a few. Mazzucato also connects the current climate, economic and public health crises, linking pandemics to environmental degradation and social injustice. Her argument does not celebrate lockdowns, but – quite the opposite – sets out the policies needed now precisely to avoid them further down the line, such as “patient long-term finance” and enforcing stricter conditions for corporate bailouts. 

The article was undoubtedly a call for action. However, when released into cyberspace it was distorted into something quite different; fast becoming symbolic of supposed “climate tyranny”. In the fortnight preceding its publication, the phrase “climate lockdown” appeared in only three tweets with no engagements. In the seven days following the article’s release, the phrase appeared in 2,200 tweets – the most popular of which reached more than 100,000 Twitter users.  In less than eight months, the fateful phrase has become central to the right-wing lexicon of fear, on social media and beyond.