Today’s billionaires know our planet can’t sustain their business models or lifestyles, but they don’t care. Find out why, in this chilling conversation with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of a revelatory essay on “End Times Fascism” in the Guardian. “Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style,” write Klein and Taylor, “but simultaneously provoking, planning and seeking to profit off apocalypse.” These are deeply dangerous times, Taylor and Klein argue: “Trump 2.0’s economic project is a Frankenstein’s monster of the industries driving all of these threats—fossil fuels, weapons, and resource-ravenous cryptocurrency and AI.” As the Right prepares for the end of life as we know it, can we build a movement to counter their apocalyptic, fascist ideology? What about a vision of love and compassion for people and the planet? All that, plus a commentary from Laura on Elon Musk’s recently privately-incorporated Tesla town in Brownsville, TX.

“These people are preparing for the end of the world. They are abandoning this place. They are traitors. And so we respond to them in part by committing to where we are and by being committed to other people. And it sounds very simple, but I think there’s something really fundamental and profound about that when you realize the scale to which these folks have decided to embrace this politics of contempt and abandonment.” – Astra Taylor

“Under colonialism, the creation of nation states is pretty arbitrary. Guy with book decides to form country. That’s what they see in Israel . . . The idea that you can have a kind of an apartheid state, wealthy, high-tech fortress as a way to weather the storms that you yourself are unleashing. Israel’s become a kind of a beacon for both the tech bros and the Theo Bros” . – Naomi Klein

GUESTS:  

Naomi Klein: Columnist, The Guardian; UBC Professor of Climate Justice; Co-Author, The Rise of End Times Fascism; Journalist & Best-Selling Author, Doppelganger, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, This Changes Everything & On Fire.

Astra Taylor: Author & Organizer; Co-Author, The Rise of End Times Fascism; Co-Founder, Debt Collective & Author, The Age of Insecurity, Co-author, Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea.

Laura Flanders & Friends is non-commercial independent media that relies on the contributions of viewers and listeners.

Photo of Naomi Klein by Sebastian Nevols. Photo of Astra Taylor by Nye Taylor.

First aired on the Laura Flanders Show “Laura Flanders & Friends “.

 

 

Shared via Creative Commons.

Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, Far Right & “End Times Fascism”

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An alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley oligarchs has given rise to a form of “end times fascism,” says journalist Naomi Klein, who details in a recent essay co-authored with Astra Taylor how many wealthy elites are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. Klein says that while billionaires dream of escaping to bunkered enclaves or even to space, President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders are turning their countries into militarized fortress states to keep out immigrants from abroad and ramp up authoritarian control domestically.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

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First aired on Democracy Now!

 

 

Shared via Creative Commons.

Doppelganger is a guidebook for our unsettling age, inviting all of us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.

Braiding together elements of tragicomic memoir, chilling political reportage, and cobweb-clearing cultural analysis, Naomi Klein dives deep into what she calls the Mirror World—our destabilized present rife with doubles and confusion, where far right movements playact solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers further scramble our familiar political allegiances, and so many of us project our own carefully curated digital doubles out into the social media sphere.

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Credits:

Director: Colby Richardson (@ColbyRichardson-MediaArtist)
AI Technical Lead: Graeme Niedermayer
Sound: Andy Rudolph, Kelsey Braun
Editing: Colby Richardson
Script: Naomi Klein, Colby Richardson, Avi Lewis
Found Footage Consultant: Aaron Zeghers
Hair and Makeup: Ksenia Ogolikhina
Lighting: David Nguyen
Lighting Assistant: Amanda Yeo
Research: Kendra Jewell
Producer: Colby Richardson, Jackie Joiner, Avi Lewis

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Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Knopf Canada, and Allen Lane.

www.colbyrichardson.com

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Shared via Creative Commons.