Far-right ecology and geopolitical resentment at Europe’s periphery: the case of Romania’s "conservative revolution"

Mihai, Mihaela; Ungureanu, Camil

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104122

Far-right ecology and geopolitical resentment at Europe’s periphery: the case of Romania’s "conservative revolution"

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Mihai M, Ungureanu C. Far-right ecology and geopolitical resentment at Europe’s periphery: the case of Romania’s "conservative revolution". Geoforum. 2024 Nov;156:104122. DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104122

Abstract

Building on insights from political geography and the social sciences, this paper illuminates the diversity of European far-right politics in general and far-right ecologism in particular by contextually examining a party at Europe’s margins—the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). Based on a discursive thematic analysis, our objective is to show how AUR challenges existing theoretical accounts, predominantly tethered to the Western and Central European experiences. While most influential scholars emphasize far right’s culturalized view of religion and the fixation on immigration, AUR outlines a theological vision of politics and perceives emigration as a critical problem. Moreover, it co-opts the language of anticolonialism to articulate a socio-ecological critique of global extractive capitalism in a semi-peripheral context. These specificities are essential for understanding the party’s outlier position within far-right ecologism: AUR places the environment at the very centre of its programme—and not merely as a strategic add-on to attract voters or respond to domestic or external pressures. To substantiate our claims, we reconstruct three dimensions of its hyper-nationalist, Orthodox geographical imaginary: AUR’s complex, human, and natural resource nationalism; its focus on food sovereignty and the Romanian peasant as an exemplar of sustainable agriculture; and the protection of “the last virgin forests in Europe” as central to Romania’s national identity and prosperity. We conclude that AUR effectively mobilizes historical geopolitical resentment at Europe’s margins and addresses it with a promise of recovered plenitude that endangers democratic politics.