Some right-wing Americans view climate change as a way of “cleansing” the world of “lesser humans,” author Naomi Klein said at a Bernie Sanders rally Saturday.
The comments came during a climate change focused townhall held in Des Moines.
Klein said the issue of climate change cannot itself be solved without first solving “white supremacy.”
Speaking of wildfires, Klein expounded at one point: “It's even more frightening than that because we are now seeing fascist and neo-fascist political figures, in Europe but it’s seeping into North America as well -- drop the charade of climate change denial and instead cast the global ecological crisis as some kind of divine corrective, a way of cleansing the world of lesser humans.”
“We cannot win this fight with out battling white supremacy," she added.
Throughout Klein’s remarks, she attempted to draw a parallel between wildfires, which she attributed to climate change, and “fires of hate” used against climate “refugees.”
“When they deforest the Amazon and warm the planet and have fueled the droughts and the superstorms, and the floods, the fires that forced millions to flee their arid lands,” Klein began, “the fire that intensify armed conflicts, which also fuels migration displacement, which is then used as fuel for those fires of hate. We are in a cycle now. Do you see this? It fuels the arguments for further militarizing borders and incarcerating migrants and tearing children from their parents.”