9/17/26: End Times Fascism with Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor

23:23He's been going off lately with some recent comments, talking to reporters. E4, let's take a listen.

23:29Naomi Klein:Real quick, Donald Trump keeps saying that we are now in a golden age. What do you make of that? Do you agree? Oh, you need gold to buy diesel now, so maybe it is the golden age. I'm trying to take you gargoyles. That was pretty good. Let's go to the next one. Thomas Massey, keep going. If you just always came down here and read your speeches, some of them are written by AI now. The staff better watch out. It was a good gig while you had it, writing the speech for your robot boss to come down here and burp, burp, burp. Here is my speech. Well, now they got a robot to replace you to feed your robot a speech.

24:08This is not a robot speech, folks. I am not a robot congressman, never have been. I am a, contrary to what Speaker said, a fully participating member of Congress. You got to love him. And then finally, on Ted Cruz. Do you agree with Senator Cruz that the council on American relations should be designated a foreign terrorist organization? And if so, why or why not? On foreign policy, if you want to know my position, it's almost always the opposite of Senator Cruz's. I haven't thought on that very much. That was someone saying, do you agree with Ted Cruz? He immediately says, no. Do you agree with Ted Cruz on him?

24:43No. Yeah. If you get near that. You just have to love this man. And then finally, let's look at his learned colleague from the great state of Kentucky Commonwealth. I forget. Commonwealth. The Commonwealth of Kentucky who are represented, who decided to kick this man out. Many apparently seem fine with their current representative in the United States Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell, who finally cast one of his first votes in public, I will say, where you audibly are able to hear him say aye. And see if you can make that out while you cast his vote from his wheelchair. Take a listen. Senator Slotkin.

25:21Naomi Klein:No by proxy. Senator McConnell. No.

25:31Senator McConnell. Aye. Do you guys see that? That's literally the Feinstein situation. Yes. He's panicking. He doesn't know what to do. He says no. Yeah. Staff has to intervene. No, no, no, sir. The woman behind, that's the staffer, the person who's telling him how to vote. The two of his colleagues, literally right there, are both, they're like, no, no, no, you're voting yes, right? He took one vote. Took one vote. One vote and could not remember which way he's supposed to vote. Exactly. And if you want to see how with it he is, let's play this video, guys. Let's put it up here and show you.

26:03Desiree Townsend, shout out to her, fearless journalist. She just tracks Senator McConnell. Here he is in the back of the van in his wheelchair. She keeps shouting questions at him. I mean, I'm sorry. Look, you know, it's difficult because this person is very clearly in, like, health distress. And, you know, you don't want to be ridiculing someone who is in this state. But he's the one choosing to stay around. Or at this point, maybe he's not even. The people around him are the one choosing for him to stay around. It's nuts. Like the guy, he cannot speak. Or if he can, he's not showing us that he can.

26:37He hasn't spoken on camera. The eye is one of the closest that we've gotten. All he's capable of is his two-finger move. I've seen him do this multiple times, not just with her, but any time somebody asks him a question. It's beyond crazy. Scott Jennings claimed he had a 20-minute lucid conversation with this man. Many other Republicans did as well. Liars. Absolute liars. There is no one home. Just look at his eyes. Look at him unable even to vote. He couldn't remember whether it was I or no on the one vote he had to take. I mean, it's just like putting Mitch McConnell aside. I think the American people look at this situation.

27:15Look at the Dianne Feinstein situation. Look at the Joe Biden situation. Look at all of the gerontocracy of people that are literally falling. John Fetterman is not even that old, but obviously massive mental decline. look at these people falling apart and are like, this is not democracy. Like there has to be some way to remove someone who is this incapacitated, because I guarantee you that the people of Kentucky, like they're not going to vote the way I would want them to vote, but they deserve to have an actual representative in the Senate and not this vegetable. And that's that is the part which is just drives me crazy, because in the meantime, while he's in this state, these staffers, nobody elected them.

27:54They've probably been working for him for 30 years. They're just pulling the strings, running everything, and you didn't even vote for these people. And they're literally working on your behalf. It's bullshit. All right, Orion's going to come in. You guys are going to do this interview, and I will see you all later. Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, black literature. Our books are being banned, scanned by AI, and destroyed. I'm Jacquees Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit Podcast.

28:25Naomi Klein:We're outside asking some of the custodians of our stories, teachers, and our modern day writers why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella Bakers, Malcolm X's, and Martin Luther King running around. They want to build children who have no empathy. That's really the ultimate goal. We want books that don't make white kids feel bad. So is the war on literacy and information or our ability to connect? We want people to know how sexy reading is and how fun it could be and not always associated with education. It could be an escape.

28:58Astra Taylor:It could be entertainment. And that is the beauty of reading. It can be all of those things. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. And this season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Stephen Root.

29:27Naomi Klein:I think for me to be any good or for any character actor to be any good, you've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the street and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder Alia Mohammed. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Errico. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work.

30:05It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk.

30:15Naomi Klein:Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, everybody. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes here from the Amy and TJ podcast with midterm elections just around the corner. We're breaking down the biggest political stories leading up to November. And some of those big political stories aren't just what's happening on Capitol Hill. Yes, we just saw Lindsey Graham, the death of a longtime senator. Also, we've got a couple of missing members of Congress. Also, we've got a lot of members of Congress behaving badly. We've got accusations, allegations flying all day long on Capitol Hill.

30:52It's just like a reality show. We're going to cover everything you need to know during this heated political season. And it starts with our morning run. Yes, go for a run with us. Maybe you can take us along when you're on your actual run outside. Or if you don't feel like going out still, you get what we're saying. It's our morning run. It's our daily news rundown of the top stories that will get you going before you even finish that first cup of coffee. Listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We are very fortunate this morning to be joined by two extraordinary women.

31:27Naomi Klein is a journalist, activist, and author of a lot of consequential books, including No Logo, Shock Doctrine, Doppelganger. And Astrid Taylor is a writer, documentarian, political organizer, and co-founder of The Debt Collective. And for our purposes this morning, they are also co-authors of the new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. Excellent book. I am almost all the way through it, and it does not disappoint. Ladies, welcome. Great to have you both. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Yeah, of course. So to set this up, I wanted to play a decent chunk of the short film that you put out to sort of explain the framework of end times fascism and the three segments of the right that you're taking a look at that all independently have these apocalyptic views of where we are heading and where they'd like us to head, frankly.

32:18So let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that and then we can dig into the book.

32:23Naomi Klein:On a mountaintop in the dead of winter. A group of faithful men gathered an audience to share their vision.

32:36Naomi Klein:They had seen a gleaming city, bathed in golden light. The city would be filled with buildings so beautiful, they would seem to float above the earth as if descended from heaven. Their vision already had a name.

32:54So, let's see if these things work. They never usually work.

32:57Naomi Klein:The mountaintop in question was the resort town of Davos. The faithful men presenting their vision were U.S. real estate moguls Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Well, this is a very exciting day. See, I'm a real estate person at heart, and it's all about location.

33:19Astra Taylor:Look at this beautiful piece of property. Let's just plan for catastrophic success.

33:31Naomi Klein:Out of the horrors of a live stream genocide, an exclusive paradise was about to emerge fully formed. We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.

33:50Astra Taylor:We've heard the story of golden cities before. I've thought a bit of the shining city upon a hill. Some versions of it are told and retold in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In God's prophetic clock, the seven signs for the end of days. First, the horror. Then, we come to the place of Armageddon. The mass death. This is going to be your payday for the next 50 million years. A battle of Armageddon. Then, for the blessed survivors, a new Jerusalem. But only for the favored few. Hallelujah. The apocalyptic prophecies are just a prediction of what humans are likely to do.

34:37Naomi Klein:Today's far right is united. I mean, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. By their belief in variations of this age-old apocalyptic myth. What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, okay. This is the dark core of the rising threat and ideology that we call... So, Naomi, perhaps I could start with you and you could just lay out the top line of the three apocalyptic factions that you identify who have really found common cause under the second Trump regime? Yeah, absolutely. So these three groups and fascism is always a sort of a strange alliance between different forces.

35:22Naomi Klein:But the three groups that are united by this vision of kind of abandoning this world as we know it and escaping to some version of paradise or really bunkering down are the people who believe in the literal version of the end time story, the religious fundamentalists, both Christian Zionists and Messianic Jews who quite literally want to rebuild the third temple to hasten the arrival or return of the Messiah, depending on which version of the story you believe in. And the people we're calling the tech end timers who just can't wait to merge with the machines and to reach this kind of godlike superintelligence.

36:07Naomi Klein:And the third group, which is probably the largest groups, the mass base that voted for Trump, and not everybody who voted for Trump falls into this category, but are people who really see the nation itself as the bunker. And these are the ethno-nationalists. And there are U.S. versions of this, but there are versions of this in Europe, there are versions of this in Chile, but the story is the hordes are coming as the world breaks down and we need to fortress our nation, we need to eject the unwanted people, and we need to bring the resources into the nation that we will need as the world collapses.

36:49Naomi Klein:So it's very much a prepper mindset. We refer to it as supersized prepping. And Astra, how much of this is kind of baked into where we are and how much of it is contingent? Like, what can we as people in the United States or what can people around the world kind of do about the direction of this?

37:08Astra Taylor:Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, there's a material basis to this. This is a book that explores far right fringe ideology, as Naomi said, an ideology that's not dominant across the entire right, but certainly describes some of the most powerful people in the world, people at the top of government and corporations. um so it is but it is a response to unprecedented planetary crises i mean we live in a world that's very different from the world of last century when um fascism took over europe we live in a world with nuclear weapons we live in a world with um generative artificial intelligence and all the risks that that poses and we live critically in a world of climate change where we are crossing all sorts of thresholds.

37:54Astra Taylor:We also live in a world of intense, concentrated wealth where Elon Musk has more wealth than many countries. So he's the world's first billionaire, and there are many people who want to join him at that level. So the material crises are felt very deeply, and they're driving a lot of this because we have not addressed many of our crises. And this is a moment where these elites are saying, bring it on, right? Bring it on. We're going to survive in our various ways, in the bunkers, in the fortress nation. So it is driven by these crises, but that means that we can actually mitigate it by addressing those crises, which is why we need real policies on the table that get to the root of this and address extreme inequality, climate change, affordability, all the insecurity that is driving people to vote for demagogues, vote for strongmen, and make them more susceptible to building these scapegoats.

38:46Astra Taylor:So there are plenty of fractures in this alliance and opportunities, we think, for a visionary left politics, because that's where the real solution is. Naomi, let's talk a little bit about how Trump fits into all of this. Let's put F2 up on the screen. You guys point out, and I sort of forgot this moment from the campaign, that he was on a podcast and he sort of had this throwaway line of like, you know, I'm kind of concerned these AI deepfakes could trigger a nuclear war. Anyway, let's go ahead and talk about how we're proceeding full force with the AI data center build out in our glorious AI future.

39:22And it really underscored the fact that not very long ago he was anti-crypto. He had his skepticisms of AI. He'd been very critical of the tech world, which they saw as being woke and aligned with the Democratic Party. That gets sort of thrown out the window. And so how does Trump fit in with these various ideologies? because it doesn't seem to me that he's a perfect fit for any of the three. And yet they've all kind of consolidated and found common cause under his presidency.

39:49Naomi Klein:I think that's really well said, Crystal. All of these different groups see Trump as useful to them in the same way that the evangelicals, you know, have this story about him as this flawed King Cyrus, right? Like they know that he is this kind of fallen king, but they've convinced themselves that he is the one who's going to fulfill prophecy for them. And this goes back to the first Trump administration and the move in particular of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was seen as a really pivotal moment in this hastening end time story. I think for the tech oligarchs, it's precisely his, you know, that moment that you're referring to in the podcast where he sort of shrugs about the end of the world.

40:38Naomi Klein:Like he says, yeah, AI could bring about a nuclear war. And he talks about how easy it would be to deep fake him. And then he just sort of shrugs. And we're seeing this right now with his response to, you know, and this is a separate conversation of how seriously we should be taking the whistleblowers who are saying, you know, there's a 10 percent chance that what we're building could end humanity. And Trump's response is just to shrug. So I think that he is useful to the tech oligarchs precisely because he is an extraordinarily sociopathic, amoral person who seems OK with pretty much any outcome.

41:24Naomi Klein:He thinks he's going to be fine. He's got his golden bunkers and he has an extraordinary level of callousness, it would seem, about all of our future. So he is very, very useful. And, you know, what the tech oligarchs wanted from Trump was exactly what they got from him. They wanted a lawless AI frontier. They did not like that the Biden administration and the European Union were starting to introduce some regulations for artificial intelligence. There was a lot of talk about not repeating the mistakes that were made with social media, of giving them a Wild West and then realizing, oops, we have some problems here and trying to race to protect privacy and so on.

42:08Naomi Klein:And so they put some guardrails up. You know, there were things like incentivizing renewable energy, labeling deep fakes, guardrails about integration with weapon systems. And people like Marc Andreessen were flipping out about this. And they wanted that, you know, there's a reason they keep calling them frontier models, you know, and what do frontiers want? They want a Wild West. And that's exactly what they have gotten under Trump. He has protected them from all attempts to regulate at the local level, at the state level, but also at the international level. You know, J.D. Vance gets dispatched to Europe to scream at them about all of their all of their laws.

42:49Naomi Klein:One of the first things Mark Carney did was what was roll back a law that had been introduced by his predecessor to start taxing social media companies and start regulating along the lines of the European Union. So he just rolled over on that immediately. So we've seen this complete integration of the goals of big tech and U.S. foreign policy. They want the world to be using U.S. tech and they want it to be unregulated. And now, of course, they're wringing their hands. And we should be very skeptical about about these claims now that they want to be regulated because they have been deregulated because they want it to be.

43:32And, Astro, while you guys were writing this book, Trump introduced something of a rupture into the equation. You could obviously see directionally where things were heading, and that's what you guys are writing about. But his Iran war has really produced an acceleration of a lot of factors. For instance, I just saw recently that apparently we're on track to have the first reduction in carbon emissions this year. for a very long time, thanks to President Trump basically taking a wrecking ball to the fossil fuel industry. He's doing more to kind of disarm the United States than you could ever possibly imagine through some type of treaty.

44:17He's possibly opening up a kind of new global power arrangement in which the U.S. is somewhat in retreat. And so I'm curious, in that series of events, How does that retreat play into the forces that you're talking about? And does it kind of accelerate the millennial kind of apocalyptic sense of the of the people who are already, you know, feeling like they're under siege?

44:49Astra Taylor:Yeah, interesting. I mean, this is your question about contingency. I mean, we don't know how this will all play out. There's a lot of factors. We are in a multipolar reality. reality. I mean, the question, another consequence, in addition to the ones you laid out, is that he's alienated a decent portion of his base on this issue as well, some of his core supporters. I mean, many Republicans do support the war in Iran, but many prominent figures are very, very critical and are not in line. And so this is, you know, reveals the fissures that we're talking about and the fractiousness of this alliance.

45:26Astra Taylor:So I think this is an opening that shows the weakness of this alignment. It also, you know, it just makes us, one thing we say in the book is that, you know, there are these religious figures who are the, you know, part of the main force driving the war in Iran, right, who believe that they are enacting biblical prophecy in the Holy Land. And so they see the war in Iran through the lens of the Bible. It's the war of Gog and Magog. These are some of the people that we show in the video that people should watch in full online. And one point we make is that, you know, these prophecies don't have to be literally true to be self-fulfilling and very, very dangerous.

46:06Astra Taylor:So there could be these, you know, more positive consequences that are opening that you just openings that you just laid out, but He's also risking a bigger war, a regional war, you know, and so it could go in a very dangerous direction. It's certainly been very devastating for the people of Iran right now. So prophecies, again, they do not have to be literally true to be quite devastating. And that's why we should be paying attention to what these people are saying and what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And that actually is a good turn specifically to the tech guys, Astra. And you guys quote Alex Karp quite a bit in the book because he has a tendency of saying the quiet part out loud.

46:40And he really explains quite directly why some of the tech executives who five seconds ago were positioning themselves as pro-DI and socially responsible and all of these sorts of things. He tries to explain to them, well, if you're building technology that you think is going to get rid of mass amounts of human labor, you're going to need me and the other tough guys with the guns on your side and doing the mass surveillance. So we got to fit together hand and glove. So could you speak a little bit to that? And specifically, what is the vision that these tech oligarchs have for all of us?

47:16Astra Taylor:The quote that you highlighted from Alex Karp is absolutely critical. He basically says to his fellow AI executives, if you think you're building a technology that's going to take all the jobs, then there's no way for you to oppose the government. You also have to essentially what he says is, you know, you also have to help build the surveillance state. You have to get embedded with the military because you're going to need to control all of those unruly people who now have no way to survive, right? You're going to have to track, contain, imprison those people. So I think there is, you know, it's what was striking about that comment is that he's basically laying the authoritarian agenda out there, the fascist agenda.

47:56Astra Taylor:It's like if you are going to grab this much wealth and power, you're going to have to point guns at ordinary people. It's a very, very dark vision. is the vision Palantir is selling. We also quote Alex Karp saying that Palantir is built for bad times. Bad times are good for Palantir, meaning that they are planning for a world of rolling shocks, of increasing peril, of wars, of storms, and that they are ready to profit from that. So they are prophets of doom in a way, right? They're looking to profiteer from an age of catastrophe and collapse. And so, you know, I think he's someone, And again, he can speak in a kind of ridiculous way and seem a bit over the top, but we really should be taking seriously what he's saying.

48:38Astra Taylor:He's one of the most powerful people in the United States right now. And Naomi, as you look through the history of other kind of versions of millennial or end times fascism, what can you learn about what happens when, let's hope that the world doesn't end. Let's go with that and that there's a day after that. But what has happened to those movements after it crests and breaks and something new develops in the rubble or the aftermath of those movements? And how can you tell, kind of looking back, when those turns start to take place?

49:17Naomi Klein:You know, it's interesting, Ryan, because I'm not sure that there are direct historical parallels with the moment that we're in. And this is part of what we're identifying is that often when we try to understand authoritarianism, we exclusively look to the past. And there's a lot that the past can teach us about resistance strategies and specifically the importance of signaling to people who want to exert a totalizing level of control over a society that people are united, that they're willing to take real risks to resist them. You know, you see people, you know, in the streets saying do not obey in advance.

50:02Naomi Klein:And that, I think, is a real attempt to learn the lessons of history. And it does work. And I think we saw this extraordinary pushback to the ICE occupation of Minneapolis. And then we saw something of a withdrawal. And to be clear, as we all know, ICE continues to kidnap very large numbers of people out of their homes, but they are not doing these kind of city level in your face occupations because their own base started to turn against them. And they turned against them because they saw extraordinary courage from people on the streets of Minneapolis standing up for their neighbors and the level of, you know, the extreme levels of violence that they really, I think people like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and J.D.

50:53Naomi Klein:Vance, who shrugged off the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy, that didn't go well for them, right? I mean, Christine Noem lost her job. And there were memos that went out saying, like, we're going to be talking about criminals now, not mass deportations. And there has been a shift of discourse ahead of the midterms, right? So learn from history. It is important. Do not obey and advance, resist, know that these people will go as far as they're able to go, but also know that it is possible to push back. That's important. But part of what, or a big part of what we're trying to say here is that our world really has changed since fascism rose in Europe in the 20th century.

51:37Naomi Klein:And the fact that there are these real crises at a planetary scale that they are responding to is something we need to pay attention to. We don't believe the world's going to end, Ryan. This is not what we're saying. But what we are saying is that something has changed. Like even since I started writing about disaster capitalism and the way these guys start profit from disasters, there's now no discourse around solving any of these crises or even bothering to deny them. That is a real shift. The standing, the relationship to crisis is taking it for granted that collapse is going to happen and telling a story of how you will be okay.

52:20Naomi Klein:And even as we've been writing this, there has been a dramatic shift and rift between the tech faction of this coalition and the mass base. And, you know, you've all been covering the data center backlash, but also the backlash to living under a surveillance state at all, I think, is very strong on the right. I mean, arguably the right has stronger privacy, you know, interest in privacy than we've had on the left. So this has become more and more unpopular with Trump's base as we've been writing about it. And there's been more rifts within that coalition, which is something that, you know, if there was a strong Democratic Party, they'd be able to work with that.

53:06Naomi Klein:The problem is large portions of the Democratic Party are taking money from these big tech companies and are intervening to say, well, hey, like, let's not slow things down too much. I mean, this could be that, you know, AI is great and so on. So there isn't a clear alternative. And then what enters into that rift in this coalition could be even more extreme, right? Like it could be even more mask off Nazi. But this has been, you know, it's been a very interesting writing process because for the first few months, it felt like it was going really, really well for this coalition. But then the turning point in Minneapolis was so significant and the data center resistance has spread so quickly that we really are in this very malleable moment as the book comes out.

53:50Naomi Klein:But, you know, in terms of what comes, you know, we don't believe the world is going to end, but we believe that we have to take their belief and the story they're telling very seriously because it's a really destructive and frightening story. And it tells you not to try to fix anything. That's the most important part of this. And at the accelerationist end, it's even more extreme because it means that any bad things are actually good, right? Like you should welcome the signs. It's a sign that the end is coming. Yeah. For example, you talk about some of the extremist terrorist settlers who celebrate on October 7th because they know that this is going to allow them to move forward with their horrific genocidal plans.

54:31Astra, last question for you. I wanted you to dig a little bit into the ethno-nationalists here because, you know, my assessment, I think you guys share this, is in terms of actual popular support, the tech stuff is extremely fringe and unpopular. You know, the transhumanist stuff is, you have to take it seriously because a bunch of very powerful billionaires who have grab control of the government are serious about it, but most of the population finds it repellent. Next, I would say, in terms of being popular or unpopular, would be the evangelical end times ideology, which is held by some significant minority group in America.

55:07But the one that to me is the most politically potent, I think has just been proven by AFD's success in Germany, is the ethno-nationalist sentiment. And on the one hand, I see Minneapolis, I see the way that public polling has really shifted, how there's a huge backlash, how there's a lot of horror among the populace about what mass deportation actually means and actually looks like. But on the other hand, I also know that in difficult times, this is what fascists grab onto. They use the scapegoating that anti-immigrant sentiment tends to rise. So do you see that as the most powerful sort of potent political force from the rights perspective?

55:47And how are you thinking about the challenges of approaching that in a time when, you know, maybe the horrors of mass deportation aren't so front and center? How do we hold on to a more ethical view with regard to immigration? Great.

56:01Astra Taylor:And I agree with your assessment of the three, we call them the three bunkers, the three prongs of this alliance and, you know, how deeply they engage a mass base. I mean, you know, the example of AFD winning Saxony Anahalt in Germany is important. um naomi and i wrote an essay recently for the financial times actually and we open with uh the image that was all over the media this summer of nazi warships emerging from the denube as the river receded due to extreme heat right and it was this incredible almost like two on the nose visual metaphor for the fact that these parties with nazi roots or sometimes uh just members or powerful figures within them who play with Nazi tropes are spreading across the European continent.

56:48Astra Taylor:AFD won an election. It was the first time a far right party has won an election and they won over 40 percent of the vote. And so, you know, but we were looking at this image of these ships in the river and we said, well, we need to pay attention to is actually the river, the climate change, right? The material crises out of which these parties are emerging. Another crisis they're emerging from is just the crisis of economic precarity. In that region, people are struggling with affordability. They're struggling to find work that's well remunerated. They have a sense of futurelessness and, in fact, very low levels of immigration.

57:24Astra Taylor:So what the far right is doing is pivoting, right? Pivoting the focus and saying the emergency isn't climate change, right? The emergency isn't the oligarchs sucking up all the wealth. It's the kebab shop. It's the trans kids. And so part of how we fight that is to keep our eyes on the real issues, right? The real issues that are making people's lives hard. You know, last century in the United States, the fascist threat was partly beaten back because of the New Deal and because of policies that created jobs that improved people's livelihoods. They weren't perfect, but that's the model that we can partly follow moving forward.

58:05Astra Taylor:It's like, let's address the real crises. And that means that we need a left and a democratic party that's putting real solutions on the table because fascism doesn't just flourish because it's got a lot of money behind it and it's cruel and it's willing to break laws and rules. So all of that helps. It also flourishes when there's a vacuum, when there's no alternative, when there's a lack of courage and conviction and real solutions on the table. So what we have to do is keep organizing and speaking to people's real challenges and conditions and insist that we actually take on the power structures and take on the real crises and insist that we're blaming the people at the top, not the people at the bottom.

58:46Naomi Klein:The book is one thing I would just add there, if that's OK, is just we really believe that there is an extraordinary opportunity for a unlikely alliances between people on the traditional right and left, a bottom up alliance to fight oligarchy. And I think Bernie Sanders has been very visionary about this. And within the local data center resistance, we're seeing all kinds of evidence of people realizing that they have more in common than they do disagreements, that they want to unite against these tech companies that are coming into all of their communities, raising their electricity bills, polluting the air, taking their farmland.

59:40Naomi Klein:And, you know, we're seeing really, really interesting conversations. It's been called the most bipartisan issue since beer. And there's a lot that can be done building on what Astra was just saying. You know, if it can really be combined with an affordability agenda, there's an amazing opportunity here but i just want to flag that there are also real dangers if the alliance is imagined with the folks who are at the top of the ethno-nationalist push and here i'm thinking about people like steve bannon marjorie taylor green and i say this because i you know i'm sure you you you've probably covered the the event that bernie sanders did with steve Bannon very recently.

1:00:26Naomi Klein:And if you listen to what Steve Bannon said in his portion of that event, he pivoted almost immediately to a Cold War with China. And he used that phrase. He said, we are in a Cold War. And he said, the way to fight AI is to fight China. And this is the war that Bannon has always wanted. You know, Ryan knows that as a fellow War Room listener, that this entire show is framed around taking down the CCP. And, you know, if part of what we're saying is that where our common ground is, our bipartisan common ground is we all agree we don't want the endless wars and we don't want the oligarchy, then it would be a real shame to blow this bipartisan moment with an alliance with people who actually have shown themselves to be absolutely fine making alliance with people like the Mercers and other oligarchs and want very much to have a Cold War with a major power.

1:01:28Naomi Klein:You know, Bannon was talking about, you know, everything from building a moat around U.S. tech and making sure that China doesn't get their hands on our tech and banning Chinese students. And, you know, it was practically sounding like, you know, internment camps. So that is not the route. And that is where things are going. if we don't have a bottom-up alliance. So we are all for breaking apart this fascist coalition. We think there are incredible opportunities. We also have some amazing people coming to Congress who came up with this incoming class that is pretty extraordinary. And I think they're gonna be ready to provide that kind of leadership.

1:02:08Naomi Klein:But we've got a really narrow window here and we should not blow it. One quick question on that. But, you know, it's basically impossible to stop like Steve Bannon, you know, from talking, you know, he's got his own show, War Room. You know, he's going to get invited to events. So like so he's going to insert himself into this movement. And if the left is also concerned about fighting back against data centers and all these other other crises, they are then just objectively by definition kind of in coalition, whether or not they're talking to him or not. But to me, the best response then is there have to be kind of left leaders as well as the bottom up base so that the movement doesn't get defined then.

1:02:56Oh, this is Bannon's movement. But so but that's just my kind of immediate take. Like since. Yeah. Since calling him out is not a possibility. Like what how do you navigate that?

1:03:08Naomi Klein:Well, I think he's fighting for his own relevance in part because it's either that or lose his base because his base is organizing against data centers, right? And he's right when he says that his base was part of fighting back various attempts to ban local regulations on data centers. But it's also true that unless he has this rhetoric, they'll just go somewhere else. And one of the things that Astra and I write about in the book is one of the things that makes this form of, you know, we do call it fascism different from earlier generations, is the role of these kind of entrepreneurial influencers.

1:03:51Naomi Klein:They'll just go to another podcaster who is willing to say these things. And so I think he's in an awkward situation. The other thing that he's saying is that it should all be done by executive order by Donald Trump. We know Donald Trump isn't going to do this by executive orders. The only thing that Donald Trump might do and might listen to Steve Bannon about is this escalation of war with China. Right. And so what was being signaled here is the way to show your base that you're serious about taking on AI is escalate the war with China. Because Donald Trump is up to his eyeballs in this personally and economically.

1:04:32Naomi Klein:Right. So that's not going to happen. He has made it clear that he's all in on AI. So yeah, we need left leaders. I think people like, you know, I think Abdul El-Sayed has been, you know, doing that kind of organizing of going into red parts of the state and trying to build that common ground. Yeah, I'm sure Astra has some great organizing tips there. She's the true organizer in our duo.

1:04:57Astra Taylor:I mean, there's, you know, Greg Chazar talking about the need for a job guarantee as part of an AI policy. There are good ideas out there. We're a little skeptical of the idea of taking a stake in AI, but I think there's all sorts of things that can be done. So I agree with you, Ryan, that what we need is bold left figures and visions really filling that space so that Bannon cannot race in front and position himself as the leader of this movement. movement because as Naomi said, he's trying to follow his audience because he knows that the vast majority of Americans are extremely skeptical of AI and the tech oligarchs and aren't looking forward to a technology that promises to do not much besides take all the jobs and possibly in the world.

1:05:36Yeah. I mean, it sounds like on his face, his argument doesn't even make sense because if we need to beat China in the AI race, then it's going to be off to the races. I mean, this is the argument that the tech oligarchs themselves are making about all of this.

1:05:48Astra Taylor:There's nothing like racing towards destruction. Yes, love that. Or as Ted Cruz said, well, if they're going to be killer robots, I want it to be an American robot that kills me, not a Chinese one. Inspiring stuff there from them. Naomi and Astra, thank you so much, guys. The book is End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. Congratulations to you both. And thank you so much for this discussion today and also your contribution to the intellectual discourse around this regime as well. All right, that does it for us. But since we have the advantage of having Ryan here, the salesman, the chief capitalist on the team who everyone wants to apparently subscribe when Ryan is around, we figured we would take advantage of this moment for you to make a pitch.

1:06:32Well, you get a month free. How could that, you know, what do you have to lose? Nothing but your chains. But no, seriously. So this would be the most fun humiliation of Sagar. I agree. Since he did most of the show. And we're at the back end of an episode here. So this is the diehards that are still watching this. Yes. You went all the way through the Naomi and Astra interview. Here you are. So if we can get at least 100 people to sign up for this month free, go to breakingpoints.com, do the month free. Griffin promises he will make a code late for next week or week after, however long it takes to make it.

1:07:05That will be slash bong rips. Yes. You'll get a free month if you put in slash bong rips. But we have to get those signups today if you want the bong rips code. Because it's, unfortunately right now, it's a little bit of work, but Griffin will do it for the bong rips. So bong rips for Sagar. So there you go, guys. Sign up today for the bong rips for Sagar. And thank you for watching. We will see you guys tomorrow. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin.

1:07:29Naomi Klein:This season on my podcast, Here's the Thing, I talk to actor Stephen Root. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the drain and go, yeah, I can use that. And Open Igloo co-founder Alia Mohammed. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up? I'm Tony Gonzalez. And I'm October Gonzalez. But you can call me Toby. We want you to join us on our new podcast, No Safe Words, with October and Tony Gonzalez.

1:08:09Naomi Klein:We get real about marriage, parenthood, sex, divorce, and all the nitty gritty stuff we all think about, but just don't say out loud. You're probably just going to meet some rich guy and he's going to whisk you away. Listen to No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're not incurable. You're not broken. You're having a normal human experience, and we have a solution for that. And that solution is our podcast, Free Therapy. I'm Ben. And I'm Kevin. and every week we talk to leading therapists in the country about relationships, work, family dynamics, and all of life's headaches.

1:08:44If you're trying to get rid of anxiety, you're actually fueling more anxiety. So listen to free therapy because therapy is expensive, but our podcast is free. Listen to free therapy with Ben and Kevin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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