Oil, life, and everyday fossil fascism: appropriative signification in U.S. petroleum supremacy.

This article analyzes the contemporary cultural and political dynamics surrounding fossil fuels in the western United States, focusing on how oil producers appropriate and invert language and symbolism from civil rights and environmental justice movements to reinforce White supremacist and patriarchal power structures. Through case studies—including a California petroleum lobbyist’s “slothwashing” campaign against drilling setbacks, the “Oil Lives Matter” slogan paralleling racial justice discourse, and legislation shielding fossil fuel interests from financial sector pressures—the article reveals how fossil fuel advocacy employs what is termed “microfascist” signification to deny harm to marginalized communities and assert entitlement to resource extraction. Situating these phenomena within broader settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and global imperialism, the article underscores the symbolic struggle over energy futures amid climate crisis and highlights the need to contest both material and discursive forms of fossil fuel dominance.