In Brighton, for a special recording of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar sat down with Naomi Klein, and organiser, writer and co-founder of the Debt Collective, Astra Taylor. They gathered to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.
An apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is gathering momentum. They aren’t just exploiting collapse, they’re provoking and accelerating it, whilst protecting themselves from the fallout. The world’s fate is increasingly in the hands of men who are ambivalent about its survival and betting money on the end.
Already, anger at the building of data centres is cutting across left and right, in a way that climate politics rarely has – but how do we make sure that anger is heard? How do we separate necessary alarm from fatalism? And what can we prepare for the impending AI crash?
00:00 Intro
01:16 What Is End Times Fascism?
06:12 How Neoliberalism Fuelled Fascism
09:31 Armageddon Politics: Why Some Fascists Want the World to End
13:31 Christian Zionism, Israel and the Far Right’s End-Times Prophecy
20:34 Suffering, Redemption, and the Human Need for Myth
27:43 Inside Peter Thiel’s Apocalypse Ball
31:11 The Truth About Why Silicon Valley Backed Trump
37:27 AI Won’t Free Us From Work
40:28 The Real Risks of AI
44:22 AI Warfare: How Algorithms Are Used to Target People in Gaza
50:28 Can AI Serve the Left, or Is It Inherently Dangerous?
58:09 Can the Left Beat Fascism? Mamdani and the New Left
1:09:56 How to Prepare for the AI Bubble?
1:17:49 Not Quitting Planet Earth: Solidarity, Socialism and Building a Liveable Future
End Times Fascism (2026) by Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor: https://ift.tt/vB8RahY
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