Strike Debt Bay Area Book Group: End Times Fascism

End Times Fascism And the Fight for the Living World
by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Amazon, MacMillian.

As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their scathing assessment of the contemporary scene, the celebrated activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: they are united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they will be among the saved on the other side.

“End Times Fascism” is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout—whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics—rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.