The East Palestine chemical disaster has been the biggest news story on the right this week, prompting confusion from the left. Right-wing pundits capitalised upon the opportunity to mobilise underlying ecofascist tendencies, while left-wing environmental groups appear largely muted.
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who at one point were two of the largest and most militant environmental justice campaigners, have done relatively little active organisation around a man-made environmental disaster. Meanwhile, right-wing pundits such as Stew Peters have spent the week hammering the point that an avoidable disaster occurred because of Government and Corporate negligence.
Interestingly, in the early days of the disaster, online "news" shows took to using clips of nominally left-wing TikTok personalities talking about the disaster. These clips did a great job at contextualising the issue, especially in terms of outlining the problem that vinyl chloride converts to hydrochloric acid when burnt, suggesting an astronomical volume of hydrochloric acid now in the air, blaming the train company, Norfolk Southern, for the problem, and linking the issue to the capitalist drives of BlackRock and Vanguard. Further videos from residents in relatively close to the disaster complained about dead animals, soft tissue irritation, and strange smells.
For right-wing pundits, these claims provided fertile ground (absolutely no pun intended) to seed narratives that Biden's recent intervention caused the initial train derailment in using legislative power to crush a rail worker strike to benefit the profits of the investment firms that own the train companies. For left wing observers, right-wing agitation on these issues seems strange - leading some to complain that this is just an attempt at politicising the issue. However, this view overlooks the naturalist trend present within some right-wing communities, especially those that tend towards conspiracism.
Such naturalistic groups tend to adopt ecofascist tendencies, holding that the great outdoors is being sold off piecemeal to advantage Neoliberal profit motives. Typically, rural conservatism is of greater sociocultural value than urban quality of life - with the lamentable death of small-town America being a salient theme within discourse. Semi-rural environments are as much a part of this image of small-town America as apple pie and farming supply stores. So a disaster which strikes at the heart of such locations quickly becomes swept up by underlying concerns that middle America is just a playground for Neoliberal industries looking to take advantage of places no one really cares about.
Within far-right circles, there has been some talk that the reason no one cares about small towns is that they are ob sensibly white. The narrative holds that when disaster hits communities of colour, there is a substantial mobilisation of resources to amplify the problem as a systemic threat to life. Yet, when disaster strikes, White communities are left to fend for themselves. Mike Enoch (The Daily Shoah / National Justice Party) made the point that the East Palestine chemical disaster proves that Environmental Social Governance (ESG) policies are a farce (the National Justice Party had representatives in Ohio attend a town hall meeting discussing the disaster). X23 Report goes one step further to claim that the failure of ESG to provide relief to East Palestine is part of the World Economic Forum's 'great reset' agenda.
The perceived failure of ESG discourse will need to be watched to see if it filters out of this group (to my knowledge, Enoch is the only one to make this point). ESG has been a point of contention within broader right-wing circles for a while now, and the lack of resources being supplied to East Palestine by corporate entities who sign up to ESG would create a great campaigning moment to "prove" that ESG does not help Americans. While this view does presume that ESG is a kind of defacto disaster relief fund, it becomes difficult to see the value of ESG other than as a flimsy pretence of caring about environmental issues to forward corporate interests and access investment streams.
Overall, the disaster appears to have been entirely mismanaged at all levels. Railway safety notwithstanding, the lack of consideration in clearing up the derailment has only escalated the problem. Work by Risk scholar Peter Sandman illustrated that public consultation is the best approach when corporate interests butt up against public concerns. Indeed, tensions likely would have been somewhat attenuated if Norfolk Southern (and their owners) had worked with local and state government to temporarily relocate residents before the "controlled burn".
Due to the lack of coordination, commentators have claimed that local residents were left to fend for themselves. The lack of organisation and control of the situation is, unfortunately, juxtaposed by COVID responses - which provides social proof that disaster situations can be managed when there is the political will to do so. Speaking of which, there has also been some grumbling that the funds to manage the situation properly would have been available from the Federal government if $270bn had not been given to Ukraine.
President Biden has been the key target of Blame for failing to prioritise the East Palestine chemical disaster. Ironically, clips of Biden discussing the Chinese Spy Balloon this week have been used as evidence that his administration is too slow, that he is too old and doddery, to respond to emerging crises swiftly. Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg is also being blamed for a speech this week where he lamented the racism of white construction workers building roads in black communities. The apparent disconnect between the emerging crisis and Buttigieg's apparent policy agenda has reinforced suggestions that Buttigieg is just an inauthentic career politician who is only looking out for himself. Additionally, the issue of rail safety has been raised, with some questioning why Buttigieg has not come out against the legislative crackdown on the rail workers' strike. Questions have also been raised on why the EPA and FEMA have done little to mobilise resources to assist East Palestine. There is the belief that these agencies have the power to take command of disastrous situations but are just choosing to pass the buck.
Overall, the East Palestine chemical disaster has only worked to legitimise right actors like Stew Peters, J.D. Vance and the array of pundits who are campaigning around the idea that "this is an issue everyone in power thought they could ignore, but we won't let them". This position speaks to the core of anti-neoliberal sentiment in that organised irresponsibility occurs when socially resonant messaging around corporate/ government care simply does not materialise at any stage of planning disaster responses.