Political Conspiracism Around Climate Change: The AfD Case

Conspiratorial narratives play a particularly significant role within far-right movements in denying, relativizing, and downplaying the process of climate change, while at the same time mobilizing the masses through the use of such arguments (see Caiani, Solinas, Trenz 2026). The downgrading of the significance of climate change is in fact supported by claims according to which climate theory and its implications are nothing more than the product of a conspiracy orchestrated by groups that are politically hostile to the hegemonic way of life and/or to the nations involved. Against this general background, the talk will focus on the ways in which such narratives increase and exacerbate political polarization and radicalization, on both the emotional and the cognitive level – by channeling anxiety and anger in a manner functional to the Manichean construction of the enemy typical of political conspiracism (see Taguieff 2021; Bergmann 2025; Solinas 2025). More specifically, we will focus on the case of Alternative für Deutschland, which in its current program openly states: “Fossil energy sources were and continue to be the foundation of our prosperity. The claim that there is a threat posed by human-made climate change is not based on scientific evidence; rather, it constitutes a political agenda aimed at taxing the very air we breathe and thereby enforcing far-reaching societal transformations (the ‘Great Transformation’). It is an eco-socialist project that inevitably leads to a dramatic reduction in prosperity and to totalitarian restrictions on freedom. The prosperity already in decline and our lack of future viability are a direct consequence of decarbonisation pursued for purely political reasons. Entrenched in the ideology of the great societal transformation, the European Union is increasingly embarking on a unique path internationally. The main global drivers of this fatal ideology are the democratically unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels with their Green Deal” (AfD, “Europawahl Programm 2024”, p. 38, available online: https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-11-16-_-AfD-Europawahlprogramm-2024-_-web.pdf). In this case, the scope of the conspiratorial narrative clearly emerges in its dual function and in its epistemic premises. For the narrative to function, the validity of the claims advanced by the international scientific community must first be called into question, following a pattern that is typical of many conspiracy theories. This epistemic feature—combined with the characteristic impermeability or (apparent) unfalsifiability of conspiratorial theories—is the first element that renders them constitutively alien to democratic deliberation (Uscinski and Enders 2023). Second, this epistemic trait is here explicitly articulated in political terms: the alleged project is framed as an eco-socialist one (“ökosozialistisches Projekt”), marked by clear “totalitarian” tendencies, and as perfectly aligned with the purportedly authoritarian nature of Brussels’ bureaucracy. The process of mass mobilization pursued through this conspiratorial narrative thus intertwines with a pre-existing political worldview on which it builds, while simultaneously reinforcing and relaunching it.