Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Say the End of the World Is Now on the Table
The current political stakes, as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor see them, could not be higher. In the view of these two influential leftist thinkers, a driving motivation behind far-right politics at the moment is nothing less than the apocalypse. In their alarming new book, “End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World,” Klein, the author of the best sellers “The Shock Doctrine” and “Doppelganger,” and Taylor, an author and documentarian as well as a founder of the Debt Collective, a debtors’ union, argue that a powerful coalition of religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalists and tech oligarchs (Elon Musk chief among them) is actively — and successfully — hastening the destruction of the world as we know it. Why? Because they believe that they’re primed to thrive on the other side of catastrophe, everyone else be damned. This is a sobering, scary vision of contemporary political battles. But as the still hopeful Klein and Taylor explain, they wrote their book because they believe the conclusion is far from foregone.
TL;DR
- Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's new book is titled “End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World.”
- They argue that a coalition of religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech oligarchs are actively hastening global destruction.
- This group believes they will thrive after a catastrophe, with everyone else doomed.
- Klein and Taylor see this 'end-times fascism' as a response to planetary-scale existential crises, a change from historical fascism.
- Elon Musk's fixation on leaving Earth and space exploration is cited as an example of this trend.
- The book identifies three groups: religious end-timers (like evangelical Christian Zionists), tech end-timers (believing in digital superintelligence), and ethnonationalists (focusing on national defense against immigration and cultural change).
- These groups, despite contradictions, are responding to a dangerous world by attempting to defend their own group, forming a dangerous alliance.
- The authors believe the conclusion of this conflict is not yet decided.