Three years ago we published an article explaining how the idea of a nature-based philosophy had been smeared by its opponents.

Apologists for the industrial capitalist system, masquerading as “left-wing” and even “environmentalist”, constantly sought to suggest that there was something “fascist” about such an outlook.

We quoted “social ecologists” Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier in their attack on deep green thinking, in which they claimed that so-called Nazi themes such as organicist holism “have a chilling currency within contemporary ecological discourse”.

And we noted that Alexander Reid Ross, a one-time editor of Earth First! Journal, had identified parts of the EF! network, as well as anarchists and left-wingers generally, as being affected by what he termed ideological “fascist creep”.

We went into great detail in order to explain why this was not a true picture. A love of nature was merely window-dressing for the Nazis, a way of harnessing…