Content Warning: This section discusses fascist ideology, eugenics, and antisemitism.

The term “diagonalism” was originally developed by political scholars William Callison and Quinn Slobodian to describe the emerging political alliance between members of the far right and some individuals who were formerly on the political left. During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, far-right conspiracy theorists started to appeal to those whom Naomi Klein refers to as the “far-out”: hippies, members of New Age movements, and others who have long tended to be skeptical of Western medicine. The diagonalist alliance found common ground in their shared distrust of government health policies and their belief in their own purity or superiority. She argues that some members of both groups ended up promoting eugenics and the belief that COVID-19 would strengthen and “purify” the population by killing elderly people and people with disabilities.

Many climate activists, including Klein, advocate for major changes to government environmental policy with the goal of mitigating and ultimately reversing the detrimental effects of climate change. These proposed policy changes are often called the “Green New Deal”—a reference to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies of the 1930s. Ideally, the Green New Deal would usher in sweeping changes that would impact every industry and every sector to make urgent changes to the way the world currently works.