The food, energy, and technology industries as primordial ecocidal neofascism

Abstract

Since the Upper Paleolithic, humans, with few exceptions, have viewed their natural environment and other animal species as resources from which to extract profit. The practice of starting fires to clear vegetation and thus facilitate hunting evolved into livestock farming when hunter-gatherer populations established the first settlements. The extraction of raw materials constitutes the other source of economic wealth, initially for states and later for private companies. This economic wealth has progressively become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, in multinational corporations, which exert pressure on governments to enact legislation that favors their activities and eliminates obstacles such as environmental restrictions or even human rights. Through a qualitative methodology based on a historical documentary review, this article aims to examine how the development of certain human populations has impacted other groups and ecosystems. In the name of progress, understood as the corporate profit of a few enormously powerful companies, crimes against humanity are still being committed today, and the devastation of entire ecosystems is permitted. This concept of “progress” has meant (and increasingly so) in reality, ecocide and zoocide, which entail the death of millions of human beings. From an anti-speciesist perspective, it represents a fundamental fascism toward other animal species, thus cementing the fascism in human societies as defined in the 20th century.