End Times Fascism is a deeply disturbing and forensic expose of the ideas and networks which sustain the far right
What do you see when you look at the ruins of Gaza? A catastrophe? A mass grave? Donald Trump and his cronies see Gaza as a real estate agent’s fantasy, resurrected as a gated paradise for the rich.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s new book, End Times Fascism, explores the networks of far right politicians and bosses who want to profit from disaster and climate catastrophe.
“The most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating,” they write. It is not just that they are not building arks—they are doing their best to cause a flood.
End times fascism is made up of distinct but overlapping currents.
There are messianic leaders who celebrate every disaster as a sign of the second coming of Christ. And there are tech giants whose data centres intensify climate catastrophe as they plan their escape to bunkers or to space.
Those preparing for the end of days, the “preppers,” want to turn nation states into purified bunkers by locking up then kicking out those deemed unlikely to survive the coming apocalypse.
The major theme of the book is the evolving nature of fascism. We are not, the authors argue, witnessing a return of the fascism of the 1930s, but a sequel.
Klein and Taylor argue that the fascism of the 1930s is usually portrayed as a rupture with society so uniquely appalling that any historical comparison insults the dead.
And they acknowledge the way that interpretation has been challenged by those who see continuity between the Holocaust and colonial
genocides and mass lynchings across the US South.
They describe fascism as a recurring tendency which comes to the fore when elites feel threatened. “Fascism”, they write, “is capitalism with bared teeth.”
Donald Trump, Netanyahu and Putin are not “worse” than Mussolini, Hitler and Franco—but the world is more
dangerous now and their weapons are deadlier.
There are several dangers with this analysis of fascism. We must never forget the multiple horrors associated with capitalism and imperialism.
But the fascism of the 1930s did represent a break with “normal” capitalism. The Holocaust—the racialised and industrialised murder of millions of people—was a unique event.
Far right regimes are today perpetrating appalling abuses on society, and the tech bosses are unleashing climate catastrophe. But fascism is more than hideous, right wing governments.
Fascism involves a mobilisation of a mass movement capable of physically intimidating all opposition, driving them from the streets.
And it entails the destruction of all democratic institutions and non-fascist organisations. In the US, Ice agents are murderers and racists—and many are actual fascists. But Ice is a government agency, not a fascist militia outside of state control.
Despite this confused understanding of fascism, End Times Fascism is a deeply disturbing and forensic expose of the ideas and networks which sustain the far right.
Religious fanatics see each new disaster as a welcome sign we are entering “the end of days.” They find common ground with secular demagogues who promise a glorious, prosperous future on the ruins of our present.
Horror, mass death, the battle of Armageddon and the raising of a new Jerusalem for the chosen few are marginal elements in all major religions.
But when the story of Armageddon is implanted into the brain of a Donald Trump, who has a trembling finger on the nuclear button, it takes on different proportions.
After all, Trump casually threatened Iran, saying, “a whole civilisation will die tonight.”
Big corporations and politicians of the far right are cashing in on this new world of perpetual upheaval. Alex Karp, boss of Palantir, says that his company was “built for the bad times, and bad times mean strong finances.”
Politicians such as Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, whatever their beliefs or lack of them, want to channel the power of messianic religion for their own ends.
The messianic grifters are not simply trying to put pressure on governments—they have become the government.
Exemplifying this fusion of apocalyptic religion and state power is the rise of Ben G’vir and his journey from fanatical fringe to Israel’s National Security Ministry.
G’vir says that religious preachers should not be the firefighters of the world, but the arsonists.
US forces raining down bombs on Iran were told by their commanders that it was part of god’s plan and the return of Jesus Christ was imminent.
Disasters are no longer a signal to change course, but a welcome sign that end times are coming. Among those yearning for Armageddon are several of the most important tech barons.
The proteges of the evangelical boss of Palantir, Peter Thiel, are now in the Trump administration. Most prominent amongst them is vice-president JD Vance.
The “tech bros” abandoned the Democrats for Trump’s Maga project only in 2024. They did not embrace Trump for purely individual reasons,
Klein and Taylor argue, but because of the nature of AI technology that pushed them.
AI needs massive supplies of electricity, wealth and personal data—and to get that, they need government support. Trump has bet his presidency on the US winning an AI race with China, despite the unpopularity of the technological infrastructure.
Boxtown, a black community in Memphis, is the site of historic battles led by Martin Luther King. It is now the site of Colossus 1, Elon Musk’s supercomputer. But local communities are organising against Musk’s plans.
And it is not just the residents of towns like Boxtown that are resisting data centres. Trump has failed to convince his base that they have a stake in the end of the world.
Then there are the politicians preparing for the end of the world. Among the “billionaire preppers” are Musk with his SpaceX, and Mark Zuckerberg, who is building a $300 million compound with an underground shelter.
This “prepping” feeds the aggressive global scramble for natural resources, the “supersized prepping at the level of the nation-state”.
And, of course, a climate of hostility to migration. The Great Replacement Theory is now the centrepiece of White House
foreign policy.
And the push to strengthen borders overlaps with policing of women’s bodies. Musk posts about the birth rate apocalypse and the destruction of Western society.
End times fascists are powerful, but they are a minority even on the far right, the authors reassure us. They can be defeated, but not if we wait to confront them directly.
But the weakest element of the book is when Klein and Taylor discuss what that confrontation might look like. They draw inspiration from the successes of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.
His election was inspirational. And if his victory sparked an avalanche of Democratic Socialist victories, it would
certainly express popular hostility to the far right.
But, as the book has already shown, far right politicians and the billionaires have the levers of economic, political and military power firmly in their grasp.
Socialist politicians will need mass mobilisations in the colleges, in the streets and in workplaces to stand a chance against them.
Klein and Taylor also look to the anti-Ice mobilisations in Minneapolis earlier this year as an example of a new politics “rooted in an expansive, open‑armed sense of neighbourliness”. Certainly, the uprising in Minneapolis was about community spirit, but it was also about harnessing that spirit to militant confrontation with murderous, state‑sponsored thugs.
Their analysis also avoids any sense of the class dynamics which create a social force capable of challenging the end times fascists.
The potential power of the organised working class does not feature in the book.
Klein and Taylor do reference a more radical tradition of anti-fascist, anti-capitalist activism which Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin described as “The tradition of the oppressed”.
That tradition is an uprising of masses of people against subjugation and to change the world.
That is what we need today to defeat the end times fascists.
