What happened in this Culture story?

A new book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argues that today's radical rightwing nationalists are united by a fatalistic embrace of climate breakdown, and that progressives can defeat them by foregrounding material concerns.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor** publish *End Times Fascism*, arguing the radical right is converging around an 'accelerate the crisis' response to climate breakdown, with the world's most powerful people 'preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.'

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

The authors identify three factions driving this convergence: **religious fanatics** (including Christian Zionists backing Trump's 'New Gaza' vision), **tech barons** pushing an AI 'arms race' while planning fortified enclaves, and **political entrepreneurs** turning fear of societal breakdown into votes for garrison states.

Klein and Taylor Map 'End Times Fascism' and the Progressive Fightback — SkimNews

By The Guardian Culture · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-14

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Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor publish End Times Fascism, arguing the radical right is converging around an 'accelerate the crisis' response to climate breakdown, with the world's most powerful people 'preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.'
The authors identify three factions driving this convergence: religious fanatics (including Christian Zionists backing Trump's 'New Gaza' vision), tech barons pushing an AI 'arms race' while planning fortified enclaves, and political entrepreneurs turning fear of societal breakdown into votes for garrison states.
The book defines fascism as 'capitalism with bared teeth' — a recurring elite tendency, drawing on theorists Walter Benjamin and WEB Du Bois — and frames today's reactionaries as offering 'bursts of sadistic satisfaction summoned by footage of immigrants in supermax prisons, or soldiers marching through the streets.'
Zohran Mamdani's successful New York mayoral campaign is held up as proof that progressive coalitions can win by centring material concerns and 'celebrating difference rather than trying to deny or apologise for it.'
The authors also cite resistance in Venice (the campaign against Jeff Bezos's wedding) and Minnesota (community response to ICE raids) as examples of a politics 'rooted in an expansive, open-armed sense of neighbourliness,' guided by the leftwing Jewish concept of doikayt, or 'hereness.'
The reviewer concedes the book is largely a US-focused analysis, leaving open whether the rest of the world — where authoritarian politics has often prevailed longer — might offer sharper long-term resistance strategies.

Why it matters: Klein and Taylor are recasting fascism as a structural elite reflex — not a fringe movement — triggered whenever capitalism stops delivering for those at the top, which directly tracks the current US administration's Gaza policy, AI deregulation agenda, and immigration crackdowns. Their pairing of that diagnosis with Mamdani's win gives the US left a concrete recent template for competing on kitchen-table economics rather than culture-war terrain.