There Sure Is A Lot of Ecofascism In the MCU Recently
Image; Captured on Disney+ for The Marvels
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) used to have a villain problem. Phases one and two were frequently characterized by bland villains such as Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) in Thor: The Dark World or Alexander Goodwin Pierce (Robert Redford) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, who wanted to conquer or destroy the world (or the universe) for often poorly defined reasons that failed to resonate or even really make much sense.
Starting in phase three, we got more multi-dimensional villains such as Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) in Black Panther, who wanted to enact harm for emotionally poignant reasons that resonated with viewers. Stevens’ final line, “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage,” still gets me when I think about it because there is a deep emotional core to his cruelty.
We are still in that age of emotionally resonant villains for the MCU, where the antagonist is often a fascist or disgruntled activist enacting violence for an understandable (if not still evil) reason. Recently, no other philosophical justification has taken center stage in the MCU as much as eco-fascism or the belief that you must preserve an environment for a narrow group’s benefit.
Fascists who love the environment (sort of)
The representation of fascism in media is something I have talked about quite extensively (see Andor Is One of the Few Disney Shows to Get Fascism Right). In a nutshell, it can be best described as a concentration of power, often by right-wing actors, using mythmaking and scapegoating to cement control over a population.
Eco-fascism is a subset of this dogma, where a supremacist group forms its identity around exclusive access to environmental resources. As Elaina Hancock writes for the University of Connecticut: “It is basically environmentalism that suggests that certain people are naturally and exclusively entitled to control and enjoy environmental resources. Some types of people, in other words, are ‘native species’ and others are ‘invasive.’”
This definition may have some viewers naturally go to Thanos (Josh Brolin), the space tyrant who used the Infinity Stones at the end of Phase Three to wipe out half of all sentient life in the galaxy. He held a neo-Maltheusian philosophy where all problems with our society (e.g., pollution, overconsumption, wealth inequality, etc.) were the direct result of overpopulation. And so by culling this “contagion,” he can save the rest of society — literally killing half the universe so it can be enjoyed by the other.
This viewpoint has been criticized frequently, not just Thanos's perspective, but the idea that overpopulation is responsible for our most pressing problems because, generally, it ignores the power dynamics at play. Some individuals are way more responsible for the decisions that lead to systemic problems such as wealth inequality and climate change, and randomization is unlikely to solve that problem because it ignores who is responsible for them. As Hancock further adds:
“These arguments about population are often implicitly about how the speaker doesn’t want to acknowledge the economic arrangements that benefit them while contributing to rapid ecological changes, leading them to demonize the people who do and will continue to suffer the most from those changes (and have also, generally speaking, contributed the least to the problem).”
However, even if this viewpoint held by Thanos is bogus, it's a logic that has resonated with many people (including Avatar Director James Cameron). The phrase “Thanos was Right” became a common rallying call on the Internet, with many writing annoying reviews trying to defend the claim.
Thanos is not the only example of eco-fascism within the MCU either. The movie The Eternals was also about an authoritarian and arguably ecofascist empire — though you do not learn this fact till the middle of the film. Our protagonists, the eponymous Eternals, are unknowingly preparing Earth to be a birthing ground for one of their overlord’s young, a celestial named Tiamut. The Eternals have been “conserving” and “protecting” Earth’s environment, but only so it can be used for their overlord's benefit. The people of Earth, who in this context are a necessary component of the celestial birth, are nothing more than crops that must be harvested so the more “superior” being, Tiamut, can survive.
We can also look at The Marvels, where the main villain, the Kree warlord Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), is literally tearing holes in space and time so she can steal resources from other planets. Following the film Captain Marvel, hero Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) destroyed the Kree’s authoritarian Supreme Intelligence, spurring a brutal Civil War that ruined the environment of their Homeworld, Hala. Dar-Benn is now stealing the atmosphere, oceans, and in one instance, the sun of former Kree colonies so that her people can benefit, literally protecting her people's environment at the expense of numerous others.
There is even a wonderful ecological metaphor where the explosion of jump points (the MCU’s name for FTL) is compared to the ecologically damaging practice of hydraulic fracking — where a compound of liquids is pumped underground to push out fossil fuels. More specifically, how fracking can result in earthquakes, or in this case, destabilization to space-time. The Marvels beautifully makes the case that while ecofascism may claim to be preserving one people's environment, it often does so at the expense of the entire system’s ecology.
If we want to expand our definition of ecology to include the stability of space-time, we can likewise look at the character Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who has so far appeared in both the TV series Loki and the movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Kang is perhaps the most narcissistic ecofascist we have seen so far. Each Kang we have met is a highly advanced, militaristic genius who perceives the other Kangs as a threat, an invasive species that must be removed.
The Kang in Loki has built an entire organization (i.e., the TVA) devoted to eliminating other timelines in an effort to stop other versions of himself. Specifically, he has constructed a temporal Loom that deletes all other timelines as needed (see Loki Season 2 & The Dismantling of Fascism). The rest of sentient life doesn’t even factor into the equation. We are weeds that can and do get pruned in the process.
An eco conclusion
Starting with Thanos at the end of the Infinity Saga, we have seen the emergence of eco-fascists in the MCU, who are destroying people, environments, and, in some cases, entire timelines to preserve their preferred ecosystem. This type of theme makes sense when you consider just how impactful climate change has been on all of our collective psyches. It’s the problem we all know is coming (and truthfully has already arrived), and that anxiety has and will continue to inevitably make its way into pop culture.
If you recognize that the environment must be preserved, it makes sense to imagine how that impulse can be twisted to benefit authoritarians in power. It’s a fascinating idea for fiction and one that is quite relatable. The plans of these villains, while utterly fantastical, are motivated by a desire to protect a chosen people from harm at the expense of others, and that is something you don’t have to examine too hard to understand how it can emerge in the real world.
All in all, there sure have been a lot of eco-fascists in the MCU recently, and with ecological instability on the rise, it seems unlikely that this theme will be going away anytime soon.