ABSTRACT
Authoritarian populism is emerging around the world. Leaders of this reactionary movement tend to be climate denialists and misogynists, with a penchant for large-scale fossil fuel–based or nuclear-based energy infrastructures. Using South Africa as a case study, this chapter reveals the dynamics of resistance to the age of sustainability. Drawing on the new literature on ‘petro-masculinity’ and the well-established literature on neo-patrimonialism, the South African case seems to confirm a new global trend: neo-patrimonial subversion within a neo-masculinist narrative in order to defend elite accumulation strategies based on increasingly costly fossil fuel and nuclear energy systems.
