Eco-Fascism Lecture Series: "Fascist Climates: Tracking Weather in Colonial East Africa"

Environmental concerns—from nature conservation to air and water quality—are often associated with progressive politics. But under Fascisms past and present, ecological ideas have also animated authoritarian projects. This speaker series examines how dictatorships mobilize nature as both metaphor and material resource. As a metaphor, agrarianism evokes Fascism’s foundational mythos: the dictator will restore the country’s glorious national past. To live a rural, old-fashioned lifestyle was to be a more patriotic citizen. “Italy must be ruralized!” proclaimed Benito Mussolini in 1927. As a material resource, nature is often put to use in service of eugenics and racial hygiene.

Our speakers will examine the professional biographies of the scientists, industrialists, and entrepreneurs hired by Fascist regimes to determine the limits of biological possibility. Case studies from empire and the colonies will investigate the Fascist programs for experimental plant nurseries, animal breeding, and chemical trials. Rather than treating eco-fascism as a contradiction in terms, our speakers will situate it within longer histories of environmental planning, population management, and technocratic governance. They will explain how dictatorships use the tools of authoritarian governance to modify the environment in their pursuit of more Fascist futures.

Please join us for these illuminating discussions.

Talk details:

Fascist Climates: Tracking Weather in the Italian Colonial Empire (1929-1939)

Speaker: Prof. Angelo Caglioti, Barnard College

With the onset of the Great Depression, the 1930s were a time of deep socio-economic crisis, environmental concerns about the scarcity of natural resources, and international competition with the rise of the “air age.” When Mussolini’s invasion and colonization of Ethiopia triggered international sanctions by the League of Nations and drained state coffers, the fascist regime ordered that the Italian scientific community contribute to achieving Autarky, namely national self-sufficiency, by cutting costs, aligning their activities with national priorities, and avoiding the duplication of areas of influence.

This paper examines the radicalization of the fascist regime and the transformation of the climate and atmospheric sciences in interwar Italy in the name of Autarky. In this political climate of scarcity and austerity, scientists working across agricultural and colonial meteorology, aeronautical weather forecasting, hydrology, and medical climatology competed to defend their scientific interests and institutions by claiming that their activities were more autarkic than others. In the paper, Caglioti highlights how autarky, scarcity, and political conformism became crucial tools in scientific boundary-making as competition for resources required defining the jurisdiction and areas of expertise of different research institutes, ministries, and technical state departments. In conclusion, the paper argues that claims about scarcity were central to the making of a fascist, authoritarian, Anthropocene.

For more information, please contact Prof. Diana Garvin, [email protected].

Supported by: Department of Romance Languages, Italian Sector.