Wild, White West: Racism and Eco-Fascism in U.S. environmental Politics

On June 18, 2021, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich posted a WANTED notice on Facebook. Yellowed and riddled with bullet holes, it recalls gunslinger Westerns, a Hollywood version of wild west grit. The outlaw? Vice President Kamala Harris. Her crime? Failing to visit the U.S. Southern border and “keep America safe.”

Paid for by Brnovich’s senate campaign, perhaps this meme produces a chuckle among his supporters who think Harris has shirked her duty to strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border. However, this insider political joke also insinuates that Harris is a runaway, wanted for capture. Posted on the eve of Juneteenth, the new national day of observance of the end of slavery in the U.S., it accuses the first Black and woman Vice President of going “missing for 85+ days” from the U.S. border. Brnovich casts Harris as on the wrong side of law-and-order in the rough and ruthless, wild, white West. This is ironic, given that Harris’s border policies uphold strategies of U.S. military intervention to contain and reduce immigration.

For Brnovich, a regular commentator on Fox News, keeping America “safe” means keeping out immigrants. He even blames immigrants for increasing greenhouse gas emissions and driving climate change. He is suing the Biden administration for failing to uphold Trump-era…