COURAGE: NAOMI KLEIN AND ASTRA TAYLOR LAY DOWN THE CHALLENGE
Authors, filmmakers, and social justice warriors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have written a long, complex, terrifying, very important, and by the end potentially world saving essay published in the Guardian on April 13. Naomi Klein, a University of British Columbia professor of climate justice, is a household name for pretty much anyone who has explored challenges to capitalism, or who has done a deep dive into environmental politics. For many of us, Naomi Klein was one of the first person we read about the labeling of everything with her book NO LOGO. Later, in SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM, she lays out how the wealthy and powerful use and abuse wars, economic and natural disasters to use the chaos created to enrich themselves. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: CAPITALISM VS. THE CLIMATE was a clear warning that the current path the wealthy of the planet are taking us on is not sustainable, and headed for disaster for most of us. Klein has been in the forefront of thinkers on the issues of how to live within the planet’s limits, in a humane and life affirming manner.
Astra Taylor is a Canadian film maker who was very involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. She is the author of THE AGE OF INSECURITY: COMING TOGETHER AS THINGS FALL APART. She is co-founder of the Debt Collective, a debtors union fighting to cancel debts.
THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM is mandatory reading for any one of us who wants to know what we are up against in the fight of our lives: the fight to salvage a livable planet from those who would cavalierly destroy all the nature on this earth, and steal all the wealth that they have not already plundered. And live in luxurious isolation while the rest of the population suffers in a sea of filth, hunger, heat, floods, and plastics. They begin with a reminder of the twisted fantasy of Peter Thiel and his ilk, articulated by the Dear Leader in his 2023 proposal to build ten “freedom cities,” on federal lands (!) They are looking to build isolated, tax free, regulation free, fiefdoms where only the super-rich and their servants will be allowed to exist- and of course, if racist eugenicists Musk and Thiel have their way, the exclusive whiteness of these cities is a given. Musk has added a new and terrible reason for plundering the earth: his obsession with colonizing Mars for resource theft. But, they quote the amazing writer and thinker Kim Stanley Robinson, strong environmentalist and author of a long and detailed science fiction series about terraforming Mars, it is “just a moral hazard that creates the illusion that we can wreck the earth and still be okay. It’s totally not true.” Taylor and Klein rightly examine the policies and writings of the far right, and find a terrifying apocalyptic push.
“Alive to our era of genuine existential danger- from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI- but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future.”
and
“the governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.”
Like all of the best writings by those looking to build a better world, this long and passionate piece does not leave us with the depressing and hopeless conclusion that these heartless men in isolated bunkers stealing our grandchildren’s futures are our certain future, and gives us some excellent tools to combat this future hellscape. They point out what we need to share in our organizing:
“To bet against the future on this scale- to bank on your bunker- is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love,and to every other life form with which we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of the world.”
Klein and Taylor then profile some of the far right Christofascist members of Trump’s inner circle and their strong ties to the bizarre and killer ideology “Christian Zionism,” which at this time rivals right wing Jewish Zionism in its cruelty and sadism. They embrace this anti-vision of the apocalypse where the good (read: the super rich) are saved and the rest of us wicked perish.
The far right is now capitalizing on the vision of the end times for the MAGA masses: trying to convince the non-billionaire trumpers that they too can live in their own underground bunker, with all the products these guys hawk on their radio shows, sponsored by such companies as “My Patriot Supply.”
They re-imagine the grand theft of resources from such places as Greenland as super-sized prepping… Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word- when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.”
One of the most powerful insights:
“End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism- a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy.”
Weirdly, before moving to how we can effectively fight these forces of the super-rich, she analyzes why the insatiably greedy Peter Thiel considers Greta Thunberg the anti-christ. Interestingly, the reason might be her total commitment to this planet, to making this planet work for all of us.
So “how do we break this apocalyptic fever?”
We must first accept and articulate that greedy nihilism is what powers the opposition- that they are treasonous to our world and all its human and non-human inhabitants.
And then we tell a better story- of challenges to survive in a future where we leave no one behind- we can all share stories of working collectively in our communities to make life better for all. “ A story not of end times but of better times.” We must all share the ways in which interdependence is vital for all of us in the struggle to keep our planet livable.
I love the way they talk about the movement we need to build in opposition to the rigidity and hierarchical nature of the far right:
“we will need to build an unruly, open-hearted movement of the Earth-loving faithful: faithful to this planet, its people, its creatures, and to the possibility of a livable future for us all.”
Klein and Taylor have written a brave, terrifying, and necessary read for anyone who wants to understand the motivation of the evil men we are challenging with our writing, our activism, our art, our teaching and our organizing. And how we can use their words and their actions in our daily struggle to share the truth about what is happening in an environment of ever increasing lies, censorship, and massive ignorance.