Summary
Overview
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor discuss their book 'End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World,' which argues that a coalition of tech billionaires, Christian Zionists, and ethno-nationalists have embraced apocalyptic narratives and are prioritizing the survival of select groups over preventing planetary collapse. They examine how figures like Elon Musk embody this ideology, the weaknesses in this coalition, and why the left must offer compelling visions of a shared future to combat fascism.
Defining End Times Fascism
Klein and Taylor introduce their concept of 'end times fascism'—a modern fascism that accepts planetary collapse as inevitable and fights to determine who survives. Unlike 20th-century fascists, today's fascists possess nuclear weapons and confront climate change, fundamentally altering their ideology. They distinguish this from historical fascism by emphasizing how contemporary fascists have 'made peace with the idea of collapse' rather than trying to prevent it.
- End times fascism takes planetary-scale existential crises for granted and fights over who will survive the cataclysm
- Modern fascists have weapons that last century's fascists couldn't dream of—Hitler and Mussolini died before the atomic bomb
- Our fascists understand that fossil fuels are warming the planet, unlike their 20th-century predecessors
" End times fascism is a fascism that is very much in conversation with planetary scale existential crises, a fascism that is taking the end of this world for granted. "
" Our fascists have weapons that last century's fascists couldn't dream of. Hitler and Mussolini died before the Trinity test. "
The End Times Fascist Coalition
The authors identify three main groups forming the end times fascist alliance: tech billionaires who believe in escaping Earth or building virtual worlds, religious end-timers (Christian Zionists and messianic Zionists) who seek to hasten the Messiah's return, and ethno-nationalists who want to fortress nations against immigration. While these groups have contradictions, they're united by apocalyptic thinking and embodied in Trump's administration through figures like Elon Musk, Mike Huckabee, and J.D. Vance.
- The coalition includes tech end-timers who believe it's worth incinerating this world to build their virtual one
- Religious end-timers include evangelical Christian Zionists and Messianic Zionists who are potent political forces
- Ethno-nationalists believe the nation is under existential threat from immigration and cultural change
- These contradictory groups are unified by responding to apocalyptic feelings by shutting down and defending their group
" We call them traitors, but not traitors to nation, not traitors to a flag or a border, but traitors to creation, like traitors to life. "
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