Environmentalism is often seen as politically left-wing. Yet parts of Germany’s conservation movement consist of far-right groups mixing organic farming with anti-immigration rhetoric and climate-change denial. Suston meets the organizations pushing back.

The sticker was small: a rainbow flag, maybe five centimeters across, one of hundreds handed out that year by the Bavarian branch of the German Alpine Club (DAV). Someone had pressed it onto a noticeboard, a car window, a hut door. And someone else had scratched it off, carefully enough that it came away in one piece, and mailed it back to the Club’s regional office. Enclosed was a letter – and it was anything but friendly. The writer called the stickers “rubbish” and “appalling,” and criticized the club for producing such “garbage.” The stickers, the letter concluded, should be disposed of properly.

This might seem a petty act against one of the largest organizations in nature conservation in Germany, with 1.6 million members, over 360 semi-autonomous local sections, huts and climbing walls and land holdings scattered across the Alps. Still, scratched-off stickers are not the only protests against a civil-society institution mostly associated with hiking boots, hut breakfasts and children learning how to tie knots.

More recently, similar dynamics have appeared elsewhere. Sympathizers of far-right ideology have acquired farms and land, building credibility within organic farming and conservation circles. Some invasive-species debates have reportedly been used to carry anti-immigration messaging. At the same time, parts of the same milieu oppose renewable energy projects and question climate science. Other environmental NGOs describe observing comparable shifts in language and framing.

Is environmentalism always left-wing?

That environmental protection seems positive and beyond suspicion is exactly the danger: far-right extremists use it as a “bridge” to the mainstream, says one organization pushing back against this movement.

“If you ask about environmental protection and nature conservation, most people would say it is either something apolitical, or it’s automatically seen as rather left-wing, progressive or democratic,” says Florian Teller of FARN, a German center of expertise on right-wing concepts in nature conservation and climate action.

Through workshops, talks and training, FARN helps activists engage confidently with far-right ideologies in their communities, and advises local groups on countering far-right influence in politics and grassroots movements. The boundaries between political camps appear to be blurring, and some narratives of the so-called “green-browns” sound reasonable at first, resembling those of youth environmental associations.

“Nature conservation isn’t automatically something progressive in itself,” Teller explains.

“Certain ideologies and certain social conceptions are being transported along with it.”

Demands like nature conservation and organic farming appear to cut across all camps, but the underlying reasoning differs sharply: right-wing nature protection is mostly rooted in racist, biologistic and völkisch ideas, tied to notions of “ancestral territories of peoples,” the “purity” of states and societies, and ultimately remigration and border protection.

Narratives rooted in a troubled history

For the far right, love of nature is centered on the homeland, while climate action is framed as alien, imposed from outside, and as none of “our” nation’s concern. A double standard is also at work: Germany’s AfD, for instance, invokes nature and bird protection to argue against wind turbines.

“The AfD uses this strategically, because they are an outrage party and wind turbines are a very emotional topic. They simply instrumentalize that,” Teller explains.

It is difficult to say whether such use of environmental topics by the far right is more strategic or more genuinely ideological. As Teller puts it:

“From the history of ideas, one can say that right-wing ecology, or right-wing ideology so to speak, is inseparably bound up with nature.”

German nature conservation has a history spanning more than a hundred years, repeatedly overlapping with nationalist and völkisch movements. From the outset, women and Jews were excluded from membership, and similar tendencies persisted in Alpine clubs before the Nazis took power. The “Heimatschutz” (homeland protection) movement, which emerged in the early 1900s, combined nature conservation with ethno-nationalist ideology. In 1927, a nature-conservation clause was added to the German Alpine Club’s constitution under a nationalist programme at the time. The club, now one of Germany’s largest conservation organizations, has since worked to address this history, though members say pressure connected to it persists.

Nature romanticized, post-pandemic

Illustration: Susan Larsen

The broader outdoor boom, and the romanticizing of nature during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, may partly explain why love of the outdoors has become such an effective gateway.

“Hiking presents itself as an ostensibly apolitical field for agitation. Offering hiking courses where you don’t immediately say, we’re running a right-wing extremist training session here, but rather, we’re just doing a hiking trip, and then trying to reach people via this,” Teller says.

He also points to social media, whereby bushcraft and survival channels are used by some right-wing actors to spread narratives of collapse aimed at prepper communities, centered on “survival of the fittest” and stereotypical gender roles.

Whether digitally or in-real-life, prevention can go a long way when such right-wing narratives surface in a community.

“Thinking beforehand, as an initiative, about what do we want, what is my idea of inclusive environmental protection? If I already communicate that publicly and proactively, then it becomes much less attractive for right-wing extremist actors to get involved and get in there,” Teller says.

Eco-fascism and the overpopulation myth

The phenomenon is especially relevant to Germany given its Nazi history, but it is not confined to one country, similar narratives surface among right-wing and authoritarian groups worldwide. In France, identitarian groups have copied left community-based gardening and agricultural models under their own branding. In Italy, the far-right movement CasaPound explicitly appropriates progressive topics, using a natural rooted-community framing.

One narrative running through many circles is overpopulation: the claim that environmental problems would ease if there were fewer people.

“That’s a narrative that is very widespread. Not only in the extreme right-wing area, but also in the democratic sphere,” Teller says.

“Overpopulation is always assumed to be there, not here with us, but somewhere down there or over there.”

A common response promoted by right-wing groups is population control policy as well as rigorous border controls alongside pressure on the global South.

Raising awareness and support prevention

What unites these examples, from land purchases to nature activism and overpopulation myths, is a single strategy: using nature’s broad, apolitical appeal as cover to normalize exclusionary ideas.

This raises open questions about whether these developments reflect coordinated strategy or individual ideological conviction, how vulnerable conservation organizations are to external influence, and whether growing far-right representation in parliaments could increase this pressure in Germany and potentially beyond.

Many argue that historical reflection and prevention are the first lines of defense. As FARN’s work and other work by civil organizations such as BUND Akademie, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung suggests, the outdoor and conservation community’s best safeguard is not suspicion of nature lovers in general, but clarity about its own values stated early and openly. This leaves little room left for far-right narratives to take hold.

To this end, the German Alpine Club has updated its constitution and formed an ethics committee. But as Annika Quantz, Federal Youth Leader of Youth of the German Alpine Club explains, there is more work needed:

“Taking a clear stand is important to us, but so is an open line of communication and integrating different views in the discussion.”

“How can you counter such slogans whilst out hiking? What am I allowed to say representing the club? There is still quite a bit of insecurity around what can be said and done.”

Illustrations: Susan Larsen. Photo: Daniel Sessler/Unsplash. Portrait of Annika Quantz: Tobias Haase