this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
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Imo, it's an aesthetic. Ideologically, the worst I can call it is idealist.
I think to that point, if we want to figure out how you get from solarpunk to fascism, you need to consider what it implies by its analysis (or lack thereof) of the actual material reality that's necessary to make the solarpunk vision come true and how that analysis/blind spots coincide with ecofascism.
What's going on that made dilapidated buildings get overrun by plantlife? Is it massive depopulation? Are we idealizing that?
What's the whole idea about self sufficient communities using technology to live in some kind of frontier? Is this class-conscious, or is it just repackaging settler mythology about frontiersmen and Lebensraum?
And maybe the problem with it "just" being an aesthetic is that it leaves the audience to fill in the blanks for those questions, and I think the default answers aren't great.
I always saw it as cope. "Here is far in the future, after we've mostly destroyed the planet. Here is a small pocket where things have calmed down enough that people can settle back into something resembling a primitive state."
Yeah I see it the same way too, but the reason I take so much issue with it (and I've even spoken about it here before IIRC) is that it's exceedingly common for all sorts of reactionary and ahistorical ideologies to fester when people start fantasizing about going back to primitive societies or some other form of pre-modern life.