Thank you for joining us, Hanna, and congratulations on your new book, Apocalyptic Authoritarianism! I want to start by asking you to define the term “apocalyptic authoritarianism”: what kind of political phenomenon is it? What are the main journalistic discourses that constitute it?
Thank you so much for the words of congratulations and also for the chance to chat about my new book. Apocalyptic authoritarianism refers to an emergent antidemocratic mode of discourse and politics invoked by partisans, politicians, and journalists. In my book, I specifically develop this term to describe what I identify as the reactionary posturing and political alignment of historically privileged figures in the U.S.—from the center to the far right—who are united against a common enemy of the “new” New Left and a shared appeal to apocalyptic visions of total crisis. Fearmongering about a supposedly America-hating contingent of “woke” leftist radicals who are threatening the nation and impeding the supposedly Earth-saving work of these figures—who I refer to as “visionary sages”—is precisely where apocalyptic authoritarianism in the U.S. hardens the line between “us” and “them.”
There is little room for imagining dynamic subjectivities, identities, and alternative futures beyond the one, supposedly fated, path that is discursively sedimented within a strict dualism of good and bad/right and wrong. According to their reactionary logic, it is the job of “traditional” authorities and “pro-American” saviors to bring back order by eliminating all the unruly Others who are leading the nation astray. My book focuses on the discourse and politics of climate change, specifically, and sheds light on how U.S. climate journalism is bolstering apocalyptic authoritarianism as opposed to reckoning with the roots and ramifications of both climate change and the reactionary politics of today. In my book, I reveal how there are four recurrent tropes that often shape visual and textual news media representations of climate change and that also lie at the crux of apocalyptic authoritarianism. These include: (1) appeals to nationalism and discursive processes of Othering, (2) the celebration of planetary-scale “solutions,” (3) the admiration of visionary sage figures, and (4) necropolitical claims of the “inevitable” climate deaths of racialized Others.
My book sheds light on how U.S. climate journalism is bolstering apocalyptic authoritarianism as opposed to reckoning with the roots and ramifications of both climate change and the reactionary politics of today.
Why do you believe that journalists have adopted these narratives? Your book shows a variety of publications, from all over the political spectrum, tapping into these discourses. Why are they so pervasive? Do journalists adopt them in unique ways or for different reasons based on their underlying ideology?
One of the central dilemmas that my book illuminates is how the chaos that Trump brings with him can be so overwhelming that it often propagates a nostalgic search for “the good old days.” U.S. journalists, especially since Trump’s first election in 2016, have fallen into this trap of looking backwards and romanticizing the past, instead of fundamentally reckoning with how we got here. This is, in many ways, understandable since Trump has repeatedly named journalists as the “enemy of the people,” cut federal funding for important outlets such as NPR and PBS, and targeted journalists with lawsuits and terrifying threats. It is no wonder that many journalists are longing for a time before Trump.
This desire for a return to the postwar period closes off more transformative visions and proposals for how to respond to the authoritarianism of Trump.
But my book shows how this nostalgic longing for an imagined American “golden age” tends to focus on the post-WWII period, in particular. This desire for a return to the postwar period closes off more transformative visions and proposals for how to respond to the authoritarianism of Trump—proposals that are better able to contend with, as opposed to ignore, the exclusions of the postwar past. In my book, I show how this backwards-looking nostalgia for a pre-Civil Rights era is a major obstacle for climate politics today because it casts progressive climate policy programs such as the Green New Deal as too “extreme” and at odds with “American values.”
Young climate justice activists who support the Green New Deal are repeatedly reported on as a threat to the stability of the nation, from the center-left New York Times to the center-right Wall Street Journal to the far-right Fox News. Notably, the progressive activists who are singled-out in these major media outlets are predominantly young women of color—a historically marginalized group in the U.S. Calls for the exclusion, repression, and removal of these young women of color from national politics—and even the nation-state, altogether—are often implicitly and also explicitly promoted by U.S. news media as opposed to questioned and challenged.
Your discussion of how geopolitical language has crept into discussions of climate change is fascinating, especially given that some of Europe’s far-right figures, like Giorgia Meloni, have really leaned into these framings. What kind of climate policies do they favor? How do they come to shape media reporting on climate change?
The perceived “total crisis” of Trump 1.0, following his election in 2016, was intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and again today with Trump 2.0. Not only are American journalists longing for a period when the U.S. is collectively remembered to have been an unmatched global savior in the stories we often tell ourselves as Americans, but so too are prominent far-right figures. Especially since the pandemic, a reactionary lens has taken hold of both the so-called moderate center—and its constellation of legacy presses in the U.S.—as well as right-wing leaders. Across the centrist/conservative spectrum, there is a palpable fear among traditional figures of power that the nation is at risk of collapse due to threatening so-called “Others.”
Across the centrist/conservative spectrum, there is a palpable fear among traditional figures of power that the nation is at risk of collapse due to threatening so-called “Others.”
Both centrists and conservatives align in their vision of who these Others are—namely, young radical women of color as well as Black and Brown migrants from the Global South. Again, what is so dangerous here is that both liberal and conservative parties in the Global North—from the UK to Italy to the US and Canada—are calling for the policing and removal of historically marginalized groups of people from both politics/public life and the nation itself via deportations and stricter immigration laws.
It is here where climate change is often viewed by figures ranging from Keir Starmer to Giorgia Meloni as a “threat multiplier” that will bring more Black and Brown people from “undesirable” places up into the Global North. This supposed “mass migration” is imagined as an invasion requiring military protection. My book argues that this way of imagining and reporting on climate change is extremely dangerous and promotes a “militarized life-boat ethics” where Global North nations view themselves as needing to keep Others out for the sake of their own survival.
Relatedly, do you see an evolution in these discourses? You argue that apocalyptic authoritarianism emerged, in part, as a reaction to the shock of the first Trump presidency. Now that we are a few months into his second term, has there been a different kind of “elite panic”? Do you see changes in how the tropes you discuss in your book are being used?
Over the past few months, there has been a notable continuation and expansion of what I have identified and discussed in my book. There is an even greater consolidation of centrist and conservative fears directed at progressives—seen especially with the alignment between Chuck Schumer and Trump, for example, in their calls to police, prosecute, and deport Palestinian activists, and the mainstream press’ amplification of these calls.
The “elite panic” I describe in my book was also blatantly evident in, for example, the New York Times’ extremely negative coverage of the Sunrise Movement—a major climate justice group that advocates for the Green New Deal—and their anti-Tesla protests in New York. The Times misleadingly called activists from Sunrise “violent” and pictured young women being arrested by police. Once again, just like during Trump 1.0, progressives who oppose authoritarianism in the U.S. are being represented as criminals and as threatening to national order from the center to the right.
Let us look closer at the construction of “visionary sage figures.” You show that these individuals are given these roles through climate-specific framings, like those emphasizing planetary impacts over local ones. Recently, we have seen some of the figures you mention intervening on other political topics: Elon Musk has become a major far-right figure, while Greta Thunberg has become a prominent activist for the Palestinian cause. In what ways does their assigned “visionary” status affect coverage of them as they expand their political action? How have these two individuals responded differently to being given that status?
The media’s treatment of Greta Thunberg is illustrative of the discursive patterns that shape climate journalism across major news publications, both within and outside of the U.S. In my book, I show that when Thunberg first gained extensive global media coverage in 2018, she was portrayed as a virginal, holy, saint-like figure akin to Joan of Arc. In this way, she was often reported on as a sort of foil to the radical and dangerously seductive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who advocated for democratic socialism and the Green New Deal. Thunberg was represented as a non-threat to the status quo, unlike the radical Ocasio-Cortez.
Major news publications reserve the status of “visionary sage” for those who do not threaten traditional centers of power.
In news stories that featured Thunberg, she was often portrayed as merely asking traditional figures of power to do better, as opposed to calling for their removal. Once Thunberg began to align with progressive movements for climate and social justice and call for a revolutionary restructuring of political processes, mainstream news media abruptly stopped featuring her and, when they did, often covered her with a negative valence, as a “duped girl” seduced by radicals, for instance. Clearly, major news publications reserve the status of “visionary sage” for those who do not threaten traditional centers of power.
Elon Musk, in stark contrast with Thunberg, is a self-fashioned visionary sage. He very vocally expresses his desire for a return to a time when “genius” men like him were both revered and unimpeded by social and climate justice “warriors” and “radical feminists” like Thunberg and Ocasio-Cortez. Elon Musk has repeatedly whined about the “deranged” progressive women who critique him in the same breath as he has salivated over the prospect of space colonies on Mars—of which he evidently imagines as an escape from, essentially, these young women’s calls for accountability, or in other words: democratic politics. Although Musk’s alignment with Trump was not necessarily reported on in a positive light by news media, his calls for the suppression of “radicals” and the “woke left” were often repeated and amplified by major publications.
Our last questions are always about the concept of illiberalism. Your book is not really about illiberalism as such; it’s more about mainstream reactions to illiberalism’s rise. Yet, as you describe, apocalyptic authoritarianism reflects many older and quite conservative ideas. Do you think these mainstream reactions feed into or strengthen the rhetoric of their illiberal challengers? In what ways?
Definitely strengthens. Mainstream media and so-called moderates are advancing as opposed to questioning what are, essentially, anti-democratic exclusions of historically marginalized groups from national politics. Liberal democracy’s rigidity and protection of elite interests need to be dealt with here. Instead of dreaming of a pre-Civil Rights/post-WWII past, journalists and liberals need to be open to, as opposed to fearmonger about, robustly democratic futures. This would entail, firstly, a reckoning with elite power and secondly, a reimagining of journalistic and national identities to open up more pathways that can break the reactionary cycle we currently find ourselves in within so-called “Western democracies.” My book’s Conclusion offers some possible pathways for doing this, which I hope those of you reading this interview will check out!
Lastly, do you think “illiberalism” is a useful concept? As we have established, mainstream liberal actors are perfectly capable of promoting exclusionary, fatalistic, and imperialist climate policies and discourses. Is it worth talking in terms of a different, uniquely “illiberal” political approach to climate change that differs even from apocalyptic authoritarianism?
I think the critical concept of “apocalyptic authoritarianism” is a useful lens for navigating contemporary climate politics—and politics more generally—because it reveals emergent patterns of exclusion that historically advantaged figures from the right to the so-called moderate center are leveraging to maintain their own personal privilege. My book traces and reveals the historical roots of these exclusions and the role that U.S. journalism plays in amplifying these patterns. This amplification is happening in legacy presses like The New York Times in addition to far-right podcasts and blogs.
My book shows that what is considered far-right discourse regularly appears in so-called centrist and moderate political and media spaces too.
A lot of existing scholarship and writing on illiberalism does not take into serious consideration the role of “moderates” or traditional journalism and primarily focuses on the far right and online spaces. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, for example, focus on the far right in their recent essay on “End Times Fascism,” and Richard Seymour similarly only considers the far right in his new book Disaster Nationalism. My book shows that what is considered far-right discourse regularly appears in so-called centrist and moderate political and media spaces, too. Ultimately, my book’s identification of the emergent politics of “apocalyptic authoritarianism” sheds light on the cross-partisan elite capture and elite panic that impede robustly democratic responses to the threats of both Trumpism and climate change.
Hanna E. Morris is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto and co-chair of the Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power Working Group, a part of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network. Her research concentrates on the climate-media-democracy nexus and explores critical questions of power and meaning-making around climate change. Her newest book is titled Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power (Oxford University Press, 2025). She also co-edited the book titled Climate Change and Journalism: Negotiating Rifts of Time (Routledge, 2021) and has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals including Climatic Change, Environmental Communication, Journal of Language and Politics, WIREs Climate Change, Journal of Environmental Media, Media Theory, and Politique Américaine.
