The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2730 - What it Takes To Fight Our Fascist Era w/ Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Welcome back to The Majority Report On today's program: 60 Minutes reports on two felons convicted of voter fraud are now in the business of brokering presidential pardons. It's unclear why Bari Weiss' CBS allowed this reporting to slip through the cracks. Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor join to discuss their new book, "End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World".   Naomi Klein is a Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia and an award-winning journalist and author.   Astra Taylor is a documentarian, writer and co-founder of The Debt Collective.   In the Fun Half:   Jake Tapper asks Speaker of the House Mike Johnson why he is campaigning for a congressional candidate that called a Nazi-era machine gun the "original ghetto blaster". Johnson says the DSA alternative is far more dangerous.   Brett Kavanaugh speaking at a 9/11 memorial event claims that the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center because they hate our constitution and freedom of speech.   Jillian Michaels agrees with the far-right Alternative for Germany party's statement that the holocaust was just a "speck" on the otherwise great history of Germany. All that and more. On Sunday, October 4, Emma will be in Los Angeles doing a Bitchuation Room Live with Francesca Fiorentini at the Lodge Room. Get tickets here. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY SMALLS: Get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to Smalls.com/MAJORITY WILDGRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code LABORDAY26 to save 25% on Sunset Lake Farms CBD Oil Tinctures. This sale ends September 14th at midnight Eastern time. Follow the crew on X @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

Hi, folks. As I was preparing to do this read, I was contemplating the idea that I tried to make my cat like me more than anybody else in my family. And then I thought, maybe I shouldn't talk about that because, like, isn't that the first sign of a rabid narcissist? But nevertheless, that's what I try and do. And how do I do it? Well, my secret is smalls. we feed our cat small's cat food but then what i do is i use the broth that they have to juice the food sometimes or what i'll also do is they've also got these packets of licks and i'll put the licks on my fingers and have them lick it off my fingers wow so that my uh scent blends in with the food that he loves so much from Smalls. What is Smalls?

Smalls is fresh human-grade cat food that does much more than just feed your cat. It helps them live a full, healthy life. Most cat food out there is made with meat byproducts, cheap fillers and artificial ingredients, basically stuff that isn't very

good for your cat. But big pet food does this. Why? We know why. It's cheaper. But what they save on cost, your cat pays for in their health. Smalls is different. Their fresh recipes are made with at least 80% animal protein and they're gently cooked to retain all their nutrients in flavor. They never add fillers. They never add artificial ingredients and their food is so healthy that 88% of cat parents say that

after feeding smalls, their cats have better digestion, softer and shinier coat and more energy to play because it's actually good for cats. I have noticed it with my cat, particularly in the quality of their poo or his poo. It doesn't smell as bad. I don't think I'm imagining it because in my apartment, there is no air circulation. And so if it smells bad, it smells bad. Your cat's health and longevity starts with what they eat.

Try smalls. Get 60% off your cat's first order plus free shipping and free treats for life. That'll make your cat like you more than every. everyone else in your family. When you go to smalls.com slash majority, stop serving your little carnivore, a bold process shortcuts for limited time because you're a majority part listener.

You get 60% off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life. When you head to smalls.com slash majority, 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life. When you head to smalls.com slash majority, you'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube description. time for the show.

With Sam Cedar. The destiny of rooms of any eliefer. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The majority report with Sam Cedar. Ah, ha, ha, have I got the feeling you've been cheated? It is Monday, September 14th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar.

This is the five-time award-winning majority. report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industry ravage Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Naomi Klein, Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia and an award-winning journalist and author. Astra Taylor, filmmaker, writer, co-founder of the Debt Collective on their new book, they co-wrote. end times fascism, and the fight for the living world. Also on the program today, Trump insists no need for AI regulation because he will take care of us. Good luck.

Houthis and Iran destroy Saudi pipeline that bypasses Hormuz a precursor to a worldwide oil shock. This as the Houthis take more ports. on the Red Sea. And in a perfect metaphor for the country's most prominent Kennedy, the Kennedy Center announces it's days away from bankruptcy. I guess moral bankruptcy would be the perfect metaphor. Diesel top $6 a gallon for the first time ever. That's a 60% increase year over year.

New report, Donald Trump Jr.'s mass. private Bahamian island wedding, bankrolled by a Russian oligarch. He's your daddy now. That's why Trump didn't show, remember? Oh, is that right? He was busy. He was busy with the Iran War, but went to the Nick game like three days later. Mike Johnson says Trump's promise of $5,000 checks to each American will be fulfilled by Congress if the Republicans maintain control of the house. house. Wink, wink.

EPA expected to erase limits on climate pollution from power plants, because, of course, the reflecting pool contractor concedes it was their repair work, not vandalism, which calls pool damage. Death penalty. Pennsylvania woman died from complications of probable measles case. This is a 40-year-old woman. Ten-year treasury bonds hits highest rates. in almost two decades.

All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is... Fun Day, Monday. Fun Day, Monday. Yes. I'm having so much fun. Yes.

Brian is having so much fun today because he's solo and he loves it when it's so... I love it. There's not enough work in the world for me. Brian's just very excited that he's when he gets frustrated. frustrated now. He doesn't break things. And so he's matured. It's one of the great signs about getting older. I'm not smashing mice, I guess. Is that the plural for mouses? Mouses. I think so. No. We got a lot to get to. Let's jump in. The, it's sort of like, I think a fascinating meta story behind this too that I don't know that we know yet,

but I imagine we will soon. 60 minutes did a great piece like, last night on how Donald Trump has completely and utterly monetized the pardon process. The presidential pardon process has always been a little bit, you know, dicey and dodgy. People's friends get in there, people's people maybe who they have had sinecures for. And there's always been some controversy around one or two potter. pardons every year, regardless of who the president is. The Trump White House has turned it into a full-on business. I mean, it's almost, it's like, and then there's like a series of people who seem to be running a business as a side business on that business. Here is a trailer for the 60

minutes that ran last night. We're only going to play the audio. because CBS is very sensitive about this type of thing. They don't want anybody promoting their work, but here it is. A 60-minute's hidden camera investigation. People pay $300,000, a million dollars, $3 million to these brokers. I don't think it'll be too difficult. It seems that you have to have money to get a pardon these days.

It's time, 60 Minutes, New Season, CBS Sunday. Here is a clip of the... This is boozy badass, a rapper. I'm not terribly familiar with his work. And this is how he was told he was approached. His lawyers were contacted. I mean, they're sort of doing this completely out in the open. But it involves our old friends Jack Berkman and Jacob Wall, who I thought were arrested for something else.

I think they went to jail for something. Voter suppression. Voter suppression. They sent out fake bot scam saying mail-in-voting was going to expose your personal data to keep people from sending in mail-in-votes. When these two started, like, hooking up, I feel like it was eight, ten years ago. It was very strange. Berkman was like an old-time Republican guy. Jacob Ball was another sort of like loony tune.

And they've got together. They've committed crimes, according to the U.S. government. And their, like, wool in particular is just like he's as shameless as it gets as a right-wing provocatory. Remember, he was also claiming that Elizabeth Warren had some BDSM relationship with a man in the military. That's what it was. Like, he goes way too far, and it's just about stirring shit. But it's not just about stirring shit. It's also about putting a lot of money in their pocket.

Here is rapper Boozy Badaz talking about it. Again, just the sound. This is what I was led to believe. If you come with this money, you will get a part. How much did you give them up front? 600K. Yeah. We have some texts that they sent to your lawyer.

This text listed the influential people they supposedly recruited. Laura Lumer. Erica Kirk. Mike Johnson, he's the Speaker of the House. Another text, the broker mentions Natalie And I just want to say, you can't see this on the screen. Now, for some reason, they whited out some of the other names. Yes.

Okay, because one, when CBS does anything that is in any way critical of the White House or ostensibly the Republican movement, I'm curious about it. How did this get to air? Because Barry Weiss and her boss, Ellison, they don't want to criticize Donald Trump. In fact, that's why they have this. And in fact, that's why they think they're going to get hold of, you know, all of these other properties from Paramount. And so you've got to wonder, who are the people that they whited out and why? Right.

Like, why would you white out those names? Well, it's interesting because this is the dawn of the Barry Wise CBS 60 Minutes era. Like, I think my understanding is that this is the beginning of the new season and all of the previous reporting that had been done under the more legitimate regime has been kind of exhausted. So the question is, why? Why are these people being targeted? This is about the Trump pardon process, but it's not directly about Trump, it feels like, right? Yes. And then that is always what the right is trying to serve up, basically high level people that maybe somebody else in the administration has grievances with that think they're a problem for their agenda and we'll put them forward as well.

There is a real quality to this of like this is we're watching more of like an industry fight rather than an ex-boset of what the White House is doing. But nevertheless, it gives you a sense of just how just the utter kleptocracy that is this presidency. But go ahead. Another text, the broker mentions Natalie Harp. She's the executive assistant that's very close to the president and suggests that she's going to personally hand your application to the president. Yeah. I'm sure she will.

I just thought, I mean, this is the way it's done. I'm paying these guys, you know, and they're going to make it happen. They didn't make it happen. Boozy didn't get his pardon. As for the four people they claimed to know, they denied any involvement in the case. Boosie's contract with the brokers stipulated that if he wasn't pardoned, he'd get half his money back. But they won't pay, claiming the contract is invalid and denying they sent the text.

The rapper is suing. I say, just returning, you didn't get my pardon. It's a bunch of BS. And they were so cocky. There's nothing corrupt about it. There's nothing improper about it. It seems that you have to have money to get a pardon these days. days. We don't work for free any more than you do, right? You're well paid for what you do.

We're well paid for what I do. I mean, they don't. Sleasiest guy in the world. Sleasiest guy in the world. All right, let's just play. And then they did an undercover with these two guys, Jacob Wall and Berkman. And again, you know, the idea that it's featuring these two guys are the low-hanging fruit. And I can assure you that if Jacob Wall and Berkman, you know, Jack Berkman disappeared. The idea that there is huge dollars being spent on getting pardons would be completely intact. Let's just play. Here's the hidden camera footage.

Oh, and this features a convicted felon of like they had like exotic. Exotic animals or something like that. Yeah, exotic animal trafficking. And they were looking for a pardon. And they actually agreed with CBS to go in with a wire because they had already gone through it. It didn't happen. And so here it is. Events that the president's at, we have to possibly buy a $10,000.

Go back just a little bit more to hear about the, yeah. And this would cost you $300,000. What did you say? What's it for? And they said, well, we have to buy tickets. We have to go to Miragalago. We have to attend events that the president's at. We have to possibly buy a $10,000 ticket to a fundraiser that the president is attending.

They said we have to hire contractors to do certain things. Influencers that know other people that can put us in the vicinity of the people that can make a difference. What we do is we mobilize members of Congress to call here. We use certain influencers who have regular meetings to call. here. And we put him in a pincer movement. I love that. We put him in a pincor movement. That's the part of the undercover. Little military tactics there. So it just gives you a little bit of insight into just how much the Trump White House is just monetizing every single, every single thing in the White House. And also, it gives you a sense of like who Barry Weiss,

doesn't want to be on the scene. Oh, yes. Well, you've got to wonder who is floating this to her. I think we can have a few different theories. But my guess is that there have been certain leaks about Laura Lumer and I think Natalie Harp that you can trace back to people that want the administration to run more competently and efficiently probably. Susie Wiles would be a guess. J.D. Vance, who's worried about certain things, setting up himself for 2028, might be somebody,

but it's clearly not an overall expose of corruption in the Trump administration. It's a very narrow slice that's meant to serve up some people off on the chopping block, I think. They're going to change 60 minutes to limited hangout is going to be the new title. This is one of those reporting that exposed him is, is he just a guy to be manipulated, like a doofus walking around to be influenced, or is he like a powerful, all-knowing leader? Like every scandal with him is that debate. He's the weakest person on the planet.

I'm God, but I don't know any better. Exactly. In a moment, we're going to be talking, Naomi Klein, professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia, Astra Taylor, filmmaker, co-founder, the debt collective on their new book, End Times Fascism, and the fight for a living world.

First, a word from our sponsors this episode of the Major Report brought to you by our friends at Wildgrain. What is Wildgrain? Wild grain delivers sourdough bread, seasonal pastries, and French butter. made by small independent bakeries right to your door. Everything baked straight from frozen in 25 minutes or less with ingredients you can pronounce

so you can enjoy freshly baked favorites whenever you want them without worrying if they'll go stale. You can customize your box. You can get the classic or the gluten-free or the vegan or the protein options. Flexible subscriptions, you can skip or cancel anytime. I will tell you, this is perhaps the best subscription box you can buy. to make fresh bread in your house with no skills, which is exactly what I have when it comes to baking. You take it out of the freezer, you take it out of the bag,

you put it on a, I use parchment paper, but you can do whatever you want on a baking sheet. And I have made the most incredible sourdough bread. I have made croissants for Saul. I have made him cookies. I have made him biscuits. Those are all so good, all of them. It is, these things are so crazy good.

It smells so good in your apartment. I would imagine your house, too, if you cook something like this. I've served it to a guest. It's also actually, frankly, a great gift. I mean, show up at a dinner party, I imagine. I don't go to a lot of dinner parties, but I would imagine showing up at a dinner party with fresh-baked bread. Hello.

Look very cultured. Very cultured. Yes. Brian also loves the sourdough, don't you, Brian? Yeah, you gave me like one of the, like a cranberry or loaf of peasant bread or something. That stuff is so good, too. I ate, I was like, oh, my girlfriend will be excited about this, and then I ate the whole thing before she got home. If you're looking for an easy way to enjoy bakery quality food at home, I definitely recommend giving wild grain to try.

Oh, that's right. Fan favorite apple cider donuts and other fall seasonal products are back for a limited time. I made salt, warm apple cider donuts. last year. So make sure you order before they sell out. Visit wildgrain.com slash majority. Get 30 bucks off your first box plus free croissants for life. Again, that's wildgrain.com slash majority. $30 off your first box. Free croissant for life. Use promo code majority at checkout. Put all that information in the podcast and YouTube description. Also, um, uh, sponsoring the program today's doc doc. I want to thank them for sponsoring today's episode.

So I'd also thank them. I guess it was two years ago now, maybe more. When I was on the road, had a dental emergency, used Zoc Doc, found a dentist, got an appointment within 24 hours, great dentist. They took my insurance. It is incredibly easy. Something like 200,000 medical providers across the country.

I can't remember what the number was, but like 120 specialties. You can use Zoc Doc by symptom or, you know, if you know what doctor you're looking for or filter for your insurance and distance from you. You go in one click. You can see what appointments they have available. You make it. No negotiating back and forth. Everybody in here, I think, has used dock, except for Brian. I found my dentist through Zaktok, love them.

I have a member of my family who found a therapist through Zoc Doc. really incredible, super easy, and free. It lets you search and compare local in-network doctors. Like I say, you can see the actual appointment openings, click instantly to book a visit, and Zoc Doc is free. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Ready to be seen, head to Zock.com slash majority to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list.

That's ZOC, DOC.com slash majority. we'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube description. Quick break, we come back with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor on their new book, End Times, Fascism, and the fight for a living world. We are back, hopefully this time for real. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report. Joining us now, Naomi Klein, Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia and an award-winning journalist and author, and of course, Astra Taylor,

filmmaker, writer, and co-founder of the Debt Collective on their new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. Apparently, we are, you can hear us now. I'm sorry, we've had all sorts of audio problems. And we were talking the first or second time that we tried this without audio. So we were saying I wanted to start at like sort of a 10, 15,000 foot level because you guys did a very interesting interview with the New York Times. And there was this insistence by the interviewer Marques. It was it? Yeah, it was David Marquesie. About pressing you on your use of the term fascism.

Basically, like, isn't it a little much, isn't a little much to describe all of these different people as fascists? And particularly it felt like he was hung up on the deployment of that term for the tech overlords as well. Can either of you shed light on how that interview went and what struck you about why there was such a resistance from this Times reporter to your definition of fascism, which you reiterated many, many times over? Yeah, and it wasn't, it was, it was a resistance to the word fascism and also a resistant to the resistance to the word end time. So it was the whole title. And we couldn't, it was a strange thing because we were, look, we were we were, we were gratified that we were going to have this pretty significant platform. I mean, this is their premier interview slot. You know, they call it the interview. It comes out once a week and it's long and it. It really, it really, it really. really, you know, has given people who I know and respect some space to really unpack ideas, also some people who I don't, including people who I might actually describe as fascist in that, in that slot. So I think we weren't prepared to spend the entire, it was a 90-minute interview defending the title of the book. I mean, Sam, you mentioned that I am a professor. I do teach

undergrads. So I mean, frankly, like if somebody hands in an essay and they spend the whole time talking about the title, my working assumption is they haven't read the book. So I know that's, you know, a bit of a snarky thing to say, but honestly, like what I found most troubling was not the disagreement. I mean, we want to have debate. Like, debate is good. And we sharpen our arguments when we're in debate. It was that we weren't, it wasn't really engaging with the evidence that we be Marshall in the book. And so we was just surprised by that, you know, for the New York Times. And I've had better experiences, you know, with other reporters there. So it was a, it was a particularly frustrating experience. And I've had some time to think about it. And I do think that, look,

we are making a pretty frightening argument in this book. We're talking about fascism, but we're also saying there's something different about the fascist coalition that is represented by today's far right, yes, in the Trump administration, but also on the European far right. And what we're saying is that fascism today, unlike the fascism of the 20th century, fascism is always a response to crises, but the crises that we encounter and that they are kind of trying to resolve through violence, as fascism always does, are planetary in scale. They're existential. And so we're saying they don't believe in the future, period.

And these are fascists who are fighting for who is going to survive the future. And so I think that four institutions like the Times, and, you know, they're heterogeneous. It's not everybody there. But I think that's a really hard idea to take in because it means that the most powerful institutions in the United States have made peace with an apocalyptic future. And so if you're invested in defending the status quo,

that is, it's hard to take in. And so I think we sort of felt like we were wrestling with that. And I think that's part of a broader crisis in the culture of even just believing what is right on the cover of the New York Times, like multiple tech executives going, we might destroy humanity. And that's a whole separate discussion about how much of that is hype and what exactly is going on there. But we also know that we live in a time of climate breakdown. We know the news today is that Trump is actively preventing the EPA. from measuring the climate impacts of carbon pollution. I mean, they're slamming their foot on the accelerator.

They're accelerationists towards collapse. And so, yeah, like if you, I think for leftists, it's easier for us to be like, yes, capitalism kills. This is now killing, this machine is now killing more people. It's taking, it's, it's that war with life on earth. This is easier for us to understand because we are already. critical of these systems. But if you're invested in defending those systems and institutions, confronting the nihilism of where we are now is going to maybe be a bit of an identity issue.

And that's the only way I can understand it. Yeah. Astro. Yeah, Astro. I was going to say, like, the irony is the book is sort of about making us aware of where we are right now. And the it felt like, and you know, this isn't about necessarily the New York Times per se, but it is about the way that there is a denial that is built into at least, you know, sort of the establishment and this institutional elements in our society and, frankly, our world on some level, to this stuff. And so the whole thing was sort of ironic in a way, but it also felt like there's, I'm not aware of what's going on. And then there's also sort of a pathological denial

that exists that, you know, may or may not have been manifested in that interview, but it exists there. And what, how much of this is sort of like psychological or, or how much of it is sort of more sociological in that, like, nah, if we admit there's a, you know, something this, this type of emergency, suddenly the existing order is necessarily implicated? Well, I mean, there's so much there. I mean, this isn't just a feature or a habit of thought at the New York Times. We've seen since Trump first appeared on the political scene as a candidate in 2015, a reluctance to kind of take these people at their word, right?

Because sometimes it seems so outrageous. and to kind of downplay them. So, you know, in this book we're like, no, let's take these people who are some of the most powerful people politically, and economically, let's take them seriously. In terms of, you know, it was also confronting something

that's in the introduction, right? So we say very clearly, if you are looking for a repeat of the fascism of the 20th century, you're going to miss the fascism of today, right? And so that also feels like a bit of the standard. It's like, well, but Elon Musk is at the New York Stock Exchange. You know, how can he be a fascist, even though he did what looked like two Nazi salutes right in the stadium? And so there's a kind of normalization that's happening.

And we're saying, you know, of course the fascism today doesn't look exactly like the fascism either. Of course, they're not dressed like the fascist before them. Of course they're not speaking exactly the same rhetoric because the world has changed. and fascism is always a response to real crises, and this fascism is a response to all of the crises that are on the cover of the New York Times every day, right? The extreme heat, the extreme wealth inequality, the extreme insecurity that people are feeling.

And so we have to look at those material underlying conditions, and that's where the cognitive dissonance comes in, because if you have a material analysis of what is creating this reactionary response from the right, right, they are also living in a world that is hurtling over ecological, boundaries, right, where wealth is concentrating to unprecedented highs. And they're saying, bring it on, right? Let's accelerate. But if, when we see that and we have a duty then to

address those crises at the root, which is a deep challenge, the sort of centrist thinking to the status quo, right? We can't just go back to 2015 before Donald Trump to address this threat. We have to transform the system that we live in. And it seems that their position would be the crises are real. No, go ahead. Well, just that they are not denying that, you know, at the New York Times, they're reporting on the crises. They aren't denying the crises, but they are also actively attacking the left flank of the Democratic Party for trying to have solutions on the scale of the crises themselves, right? And I mean, to be honest, you could write a whole book about this kind of relationship between liberalism and fascism. and, you know, it really, it's, it's all, it's always a, um, a dynamic between these three forces, right?

Fascism arises. It surges. It's a through line, right? But there are periods when it really becomes dominant, right? It never goes away completely. And the periods when it surges are periods of systemic crises, right? But there, it's not just that there's a big crisis. It's also that there are periods when there's a genuine threat.

of from the left, right? So if we think about the classic moment of after the First World War in Europe, the wreckage of that war, millions of people dead, economies destroyed, countries humiliated, then the Great Depression comes. And people are going, wait a minute, this whole project is a lie. It's a radical moment, especially for the veterans who've come home maimed, right? who've just seen what civilization can produce.

And the Russian Revolution has just happened. Socialists around the world are saying, we want to change this system that sent our friends to die, that made turned us into killers that destroyed the world. And then fascism says, we see your anger, your humiliation. Here's a scapegoat. Takes the anger and it funnels it elsewhere, right?

So that relationship between liberalism of like whether you're going to recognize the depths of the crisis and the need for systemic change is it always helps produce fascism. So yeah, we. Because I mean, but just to tease that out, it helps produce fascism because it both is in denial. Because it resists the real solutions. And because that would mean necessarily seeding some of the existing power structure as it's been. And that there's the threat to its measure of, is this really such a radical emergency and against the idea of me having to give up maybe where I am in society? Look, I mean, in these moments of rupture, in these moments of crisis, rage is surging. we all feel it. And the core question, whether it was the 1920s or whether it's today, is, is that

rage going up at the system itself, at the people who produce the crises, or is somebody going to effectively harness that rage and send it off towards, you know, the scapegoat of the day or the scapegoats of the day? And so, you know, somebody like Elon Musk and his, I think, very wise business decision to buy Twitter and turn that forum, that very, very powerful. forum. That wasn't, you know, that wasn't about making money on X. That was about using this forum to protect an entire class and make and unleash the hate. And look at how effectively they're doing that. That, that, I mean, there's a way of understanding X as just a machine to redirect the anger towards the vulnerable as opposed to the powerful. So the New York Times

doesn't want to be part of a project of actually naming the systems that are producing the crisis and actually wants to fight the left and the people who want to actually win systemic change, then they're part of the problem. Yes. So much of the framing of that interview was this kind of indignance at the frank terms in which you would describe our current far right figures. And what I think is so important about your book is that it updates. the vision of fascism for the 21st century.

And you've given definition of fascism right in the introduction that he could have read instead of asking a question about it as for 60 minutes over and over again. But I digress. You know, I think it might be helpful for people from a top level here for you, either Astro or Naomi, you can take this to define what this end times alliance is in this new fascist world. And I guess maybe I'll direct this to Naomi as well because it's a little bit, there's differences in your previous work, the shock doctrine, right? That was more about taking advantage of shocks versus accelerating them. And so if you could just maybe describe the

characters in this End Times alliance and what makes them distinct in the 21st century. Yeah, I'll think the first part of course. I mean, so in times fascism is our way of naming this iteration of fascism. Fascism is not ever wholly disappeared. It also didn't just emerge out of nowhere last century. It has historical roots. We trace what we call the long arc of fascism going back to colonialism to the American Jim Crow South. And it's a movement of the powerful injured. So people, again, who even if it's almost just projection, fear the threat of redistribution from the left, from below, and make a kind of vertical solidarity. to corporate elites, political elites, with some bit of a mass base.

So it's, you know, not just one dictator with total control. There's a mass politics to fascism. And it's focused on sort of, you know, injury, humiliation, you know, superiority. So it's very anti-galitarian. It always despises the left in labor unions and other vulnerable groups. And so today, fascism consists of what we identify sort of three main prongs in this, strange alliance and they're fractious and they have their their disagreements, but we're sort of focused on what unites them in the book and the shared conditions that generate them.

And one is the religious fundamentalist end timers, so the Christian Zionists and the Messianic Jews, for example, who are, I think we are literally in a kind of theological end times and are pushing for war in the Middle East based on that theology. And then the tech end timers, people like Elon Musk and Peter T, and Sam Altman, who are burning the world to build their virtual paradise, hellscape. And then the ethno-nationalism timers who see the threat of immigration in these existentialist terms, right? Civilizational erasure, great replacement. So fortress, the border, bunker down. And so they have many differences, but what they share is the sense that the world is in crisis.

We're not going to solve that crisis. We don't need a shared future for everybody, what we need is for our end group to come out of the catastrophe okay and possibly better than ever. Naomi, you know, this idea of a through line, I've been interviewing you for over 20 years now. And certainly in that era, I was thinking about that before I came on. I know, it's a little scary. But, you know, in the longer, Sam. I know it's, I know, I know. Well, 2004.

But, but, you know, back then we were talking about the religious fundamentalists. And it feels like, and we were talking about climate change, both of those things have progressed in many respects. What's interesting to me about this year is that these forces have, you know, there is a perfect storm quality to this. but also what has created the context for that perfect storm. Like the last major sort of like, I guess, international global fascist era was in the wake of the First World War that had really, really fundamentally shook things. We haven't had that level of catastrophe, it seems like, in one. short era, but is it, you know, between COVID and climate change and then the technological, I mean, these things are, we're getting a perfect storm, but without the sort of like low pressure

front meeting, whatever it takes to have a perfect storm. Yeah, I wouldn't discount how much is actually going on, you know. I think, you know, we've seen entire cities burn. We saw, you know, one week in in in France when when there were 16,000 deaths attributed to heat, you know, the Danube dried up, revealing, you know, like revealing all these Nazi ships that had been sunk during the Second World War, you know, we are in what the Pentagon used to call the age of consequences, right? So we've all kind of grown up, hearing projections, we're going to hit these walls. If we continue down this path, X and Y will happen. You know, there will be crop failure. There will be supply change shocks. There will be, you know, if we weave together our economies

this much, there could be global pandemics that shut down the world. I think COVID was a real turning point because what it signaled was it's kind of go time. It is now we're in it. And that was a huge shock. Like, okay, this wasn't the first world war. But a global pandemic that shuts down the entire world simultaneously, that was huge. And you really saw a shift. And I think that the- We should say, I mean, there was also one right before, in 1917 as well. I mean, we had it during the First World War as well.

So it's not, I mean, that's quite a harrowing coincidence, I guess. And I mean, this is this strange interplay between the religious prophets. prophecies, right? When you have the signs, right? They get interpreted as signs. And that was certainly the case. You know, whenever there are pandemics, you know, people start going, like, hey, this is it. It's go time, right? But I think the difference now is that there are all these secular versions of it, these non-religious versions of it. And I mean, to be honest, like, coming back to like the resistance piece of it, I think if we were just saying, hey, Republicans are fascists, that would be a lot easier to accept. But what we're actually saying is that it's the system

itself that has, that just capitalism as usual, going down the road, not doing anything radical, is now producing extremely radical things, right? Glaciers breaking off in Nepal. You know, you think, like, what we saw in Europe this summer. And so that, that, Like saying that it is not just a one group of people who you can vote out, but it's actually a kind of, you know, we argue it's a kind of sadistic form of climate change adaptation, that as more and more of the planet becomes uninhabitable, some very rich, very smart people who've been building their bunkers and are now sort of just betting on collapse.

And this is the biggest difference, I'd say, you know, I think, Sam, we really started talking around the invasion of Iraq, in the aftermath of September 11, what makes what we're describing in this book different from what I wrote about in the shock doctrine that came out almost 20 years ago is that those were punctuated shocks that were interrupting and otherwise sort of normal,

non-shocking status quo. And that world is gone. That's not what we're living through. And there's a lag time before we totally understand that these are no longer interruptions. It's a roiling chaos. But for Peter Thiel, he's known this for a while,

and that's his investment portfolio. Right. And so, you know, Astra and I decided to write this book because we were trying to understand what is different about this version of Trump from the last time he was in power because he's acting very differently. Like Trump, one, wasn't threatening to invade Canada

and turn it into the 51st day. or annexing Greenland or kidnapping the president of Venezuela or just taking their oil. And so what we say in the book is that this is best understood as a kind of supersized prepping, that they know everything is going down. And then there's maybe Astor can talk a bit about the AI of it all, because that's another form of acceleration and resource devouring that requires all these resources. I think it explains a lot why we're seeing this nihilism from the companies that are holding up the stock exchange. Go ahead, Astra. Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. I mean, the second, you know,

again, there's these three pillars. And they share this sense that it's going down and we're hoarding what we need for our group or our project, whatever, whatever that is. And, you know, we think this explains a lot about why we saw that amazing visual of the tech executives at the second Trump administration, right? And so many people were like, what happened? You know, they were Democrats. Was it that they didn't like woke or was it that their workers were pushing back or, you know, what, what, or are they just bending the knee because they're afraid of retaliation? And in our position is they knew that AI was their best bet for the next big bubble, right? And they see generative AI in messianic terms, right? They talk about it as the ultimate technology,

the final technology. The technology is going to take over the entire, you know, economy be the last company standing. And it's a technology that has a lot of promise for authoritarian leaders, right? It can help build the surveillance state and be embedded in the military. It can reduce the power of workers. And so they also knew that the public wasn't asking for this, right? There's no, there was no consumer demand for a job-eating technology or for chatbots to, you know, cause mass psychosis. or for the internet to be filled with slop.

So they knew they needed a strong, sorry, a strong man, an administration that would sort of shove this down people's throats to roll it out on the scale that they wanted. So they can win the race to what they see as the next stage of evolution. So again, that material basis, I think is really important. They're playing for everything. They're betting the entire world on this, on this, because they think they will win everything, even if it means incinerating all of the resources

that should be going to helping to build a better life for the majority of the planet's people. Well, you describe in the book these end times fascists as traitors to humanity, and I find that to be a very useful framework to speak about this, because we're talking about a global crisis, and perhaps that character makes it unique. You know, if we're talking about climate, climate crisis. One other through line in your book that really struck me was how these fascists, these end-times fascists, have this distaste and hatred for the natural world. Trump's selling off our public lands to oil and gas. His golf courses are just mere vessels for elite exclusivity. You have AI tech oligarchs doing what they're doing, destroying the planet. The religious end-timers

fantasizing about leaving this earthly plane. And they're all responding to the global nature of crisis as we try to democratically exercise our vision via nation states. So it's not, I think, it's inadequate to address the scale of the crisis. So there's a quality of we're on a treadmill here or we're just biking in place that perhaps, Naomi, maybe you can speak about this, that perhaps makes the level of desperation and lack of agency that one has over the scale of the crisis even easier for the fascist to manipulate. Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking as you were talking about the SpaceX IPO and the sort of significance of this extraordinary spectacle that creates this astronomical

valuation that is claiming that, you know, in their filings for the IPO, that they have a projected market that's roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. economy. They say that they, they have a potential market of $28 trillion. The U.S. economy is $32 trillion. Just a wild claim, right? And, you know, it produces the world's first trillionaire. So I think it's important to understand that this, what they're saying and what they're performing is already achieving things for them, right? Like it's all, it's already producing a, an upward hoovering of wealth, the likes of which we've never seen. You have anthropic telling investors that they think that they could have revenues of

$30 trillion, right? So, like, none of this really adds up. None of this makes sense, right? But the image of SpaceX, the promise of it, and it's very confusing because this isn't actually what they're saying they're going to earn money from it. What they're saying they're going to earn money from is AI. But the images around what the company stands for is all just rockets leaving Earth. Like we're leaving. We're leaving.

You know, it's like the future hope is all out there. It is not here. Right. And this is why we do use that word, that we say that they're traitors to humanity, to creation, to here to this world. Because all of their optimism is projected beyond our planet. It is taking our end for granted, which is why we call it end times fascism. There's something unique about this. You know, the Nazis offered their base something.

You know, we're not nostalgic about Nazism. It was a blood-soaked, hideous dream. But they were promising a little piece of farmland, you know, on stolen Ukrainian land, you know, or a home stolen from Jews. There was an offer to the base. They're not offering anything. Everything they offered has been replaced by robots. Well, that is what's fascinating.

Astrid, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, but also, like, they aren't offering anything. I mean, that's the weird thing about it is that this is chugging along, and it's almost like a train without any passengers, and we're just all watching it go. It's very strange in that regard. Yeah, well, the image of the trains always speaks to the old trope, right? The fascists made the trains run on time, and now they don't care about trains. they don't care about airports because they're flying private or they're flying off and their rocket chips.

I do want to say they are trying to rebrand a bit. So we have Sam Altman today tweeting that he's fully on team humanity. Okay. He's fully on team. And so let's wrap this up. The biggest liar in the world, the most compulsive liar in the world, is on team humans. So we should rest assured. And I think that that shows that they understand that the vision that they're peddling is not popular. I mean, you can see this in the amazing data center,

resistance. You can see this in the incredible polls that show that people do not want or trust AI. And so I just, I think it's important for us and for listeners of this podcast to be ready for this rhetorical shift because there are some people to go back to the beginning of the conversation in power who are very ready to hear that. You see, Sam is on Team Human. They're not, they're not fascists. They're nice guys and ready to rehabilitate them. And we need to not forget what they are with who they have aligned with. And also we also need to look at what they're actually doing, not what they're tweeting. And what they're doing is spending millions and millions of dollars to defeat people in elections who want to regulate their technologies. They are

lobbying against even the slightest restraint. And they are building out data centers that are bigger than the island of Manhattan and using the dirtiest energy to power them. That's reality. How much do you think? And the energy piece is key, right? It's not just, you know, these are not climate change deniers. These tech executives, you know, Jeff Bezos was handing out an Earth prize. He renamed a stadium in Seattle, the climate pledge arena. They were outdoing each other with their net zero pledges a mere four years ago, right?

So they understand the reality of where we are on the planetary clock. And they also understand. that AI, to quote Donald Trump, is an electricity-eating monster. And so that's how you go from Elon Musk, the guy who was most famous for being the green billionaire, right, with electric vehicles and solar farms, rigging together the dirtiest, most polluting gas-fired turbines in Memphis, citing it in a poor black neighborhood,

and doing it all under NDAs and, you know, pushing back against court cases because supposedly it is a matter of national security to be able to build these huge data centers. There's now four of them, right, Astra, there are three. The fourth is in the work. Yeah. So it's, it's, they know exactly what they're doing. They are slamming their foot on the pedal. And I think the climate piece of this really is.

pretty huge because you can't do something like that in full consciousness and not have a story that rationalizes it. It rationalizes why it's okay to poison people, why it's okay to do things that are going to flood huge parts of our world, make huge parts of our world uninhabitable. And that's what brings them to these supremacists. It's not to say that it wasn't always there somewhere in the background, but the supremacy, the white supremacy, the sort of text supremacy, the wealth supremacy has become much more overt and explicit because the business model that they've embraced is causing so much harm. Well, it does feel like we're sort of at the get in the getaway car stage of the robbery, right? I mean, like we've had over the past 40, 50 years

rocket ship, just incredible wealth disparity that was exacerbated by, you know, the 2008 financial crisis, national, COVID as well, where we're now at this incredible wealth disparity. And the one thing that is missing from this fascist movement to some extent. I don't want to overstate this is the mass of people, right? Like, I mean, you document the pushback in this country at least and we're seeing around the globe. You know, Trump right now is at almost, I think, probably historic lows for any president, at least in the modern era. People are fighting back about these data centers, which I think is just sort

of a surrogate for their anger towards all of it. And, you know, this is the one sort of tangible thing that is localized that they can fight against. But it does feel like they feel like, oh, we can do this fascist movement thing without the. movement part as much because we have all the toys, as it were, we have all the power. We don't necessarily need to provide for the dupes because we don't really need them that much. In fact, it might be good if some of them were just gone. Aser, I wonder your thoughts on that. I mean, I think that's a fair assessment.

I mean, how else can you explain that Trump ran on, you know, bringing prices down? He said after he won, I won on the border, I won on affordability. And the whole promise of cracking down on the border was this BS idea that, you know, we do mass deportations. Your life will get better, which is a total lie, right? But now affordability is a hoax and a scam, and it turns out the only jobs that the administration is offering are working for ICE and pointing guns at your neighbors or building data centers or maybe building detention centers. And people are frustrated. So there's two prongs there, right? One is it's kind of harrowing that this is how much contempt they have for the people that elected them.

It shows, I think, an even more anti-democratic sensibility, a sense that, okay, we don't need you people anymore. And then it's also an opportunity, I think, for some of those disaffected folks to be pulled back. And we saw as Oran Mamdani win back 10% of Trump voters, right? By saying, okay, affordability, but how about for real? and how about no foreign wars for real? And again, it's this, you know, offering people things that address the crisis and meaning it and following through. So the futurlessness of in times fascism is a strength in the sense that desperation and security to despair can feed people's, can make people more inclined to go with a strong man to scapegoat vulnerable folks. but it can also be an opportunity for the left to build solidarity and say, okay, we actually need something different.

Well, it's enabled by these liberal institutions that say that all that needs is just a more responsible stewardship of the existing institutions that you're railing against. So when you talk about narrative. Or some fact-checking. Yes, exactly. The Pinocchio's will solve it as long as we just make those graphics a little bit more vivid. You know, that impulse has enabled this very moment. that we're in. And I, you touch a little bit on the term the Epstein class in your book. And I'm wondering if you could expand on that a little bit more. Maybe Naomi, you can take this.

Because so much of this too, I think, like as what we're seeing in Gaza, the, the genocidal throes of, um, of, of kind of colonialism trying to reify itself in an age when a lot of that has been collapsing. You know, I think a little bit about the concept of imperial boomerang right now. And I know people sometimes think that that's insufficient analysis, but it's hard not to see how AI, this anti-human technology, as we use those very tools to commit genocide in Gaza, is a way to almost recreate exploitative labor models that used to be filled with people who had no rights in the global.

global south and still to this day that's still there but it's almost preempting that right now we'll have supercomputers as a as a way to maintain our wealth as opposed to maybe the messiness of human labor I'm wondering if you think that that also can be applied to just global systems in addition to obviously what we've seen with the hollowing out of manufacturing here in in the west Look, I certainly think that that's part of this dream of like the, you know, we have an anecdote in the book about how there is, there's a, there's a, there's a, a group chat with Sam Altman and a bunch of these, of his, of his, of his billionaire friends where they apparently are, have a bet on when there will be the first billion dollar company with zero employees or one employee. And that is the dream. That is the dream. You know, it's very, we also talk about how when Elon Musk chose Memphis to build his supercomputer,

he chose it because he wanted to build it out as quickly as he possibly could. And there was an abandoned factory that he was able to retrofit and turn into a data center so he wasn't starting from scratch. And it's such a powerful image, right? Because the image of the NAFTA years, you know, just what you were building on what you were saying before about, you know, this, this wealth stratification has, has been accumulating and getting worse and worse. So the image of the sort of wreckage of the, of the NAFTA years that, that ultimately produced Trump's first electoral victory, right? It's like the boarded up factory and the boarded

up factory, the ghost town that it leaves behind of deindustrialization. But now we have this other image, which is a factory that used to employ thousands of workers, an Electrolux factory in in Memphis used to employ 3,000 workers, shuts down and reopens as just a bunch of blinking computers, right? And all it's really offering is pollution. And the promise that it could destroy more jobs if AI delivers on the dream of how Sam Altman defines AGI, artificial general intelligence, is that point at which AI is able to perform the vast majority of human economic activity. That's the prize that they're raising. towards, right? And they're not socialist. So what happens to what happens to us? What happens to

the people who used to perform those economically valuable activities? So, you know, you ask where the mass is, right? And there really is a question there. There's an opportunity. And this is really, I think, what motivated Astro and I to write this book is that there's a huge amount of resistance to really believe that this is actually happening, that we are in the dystopian plot of all the movies that we've seen, right? It is humans versus the machines. And that presents opportunities for alliances like we're already seeing in some of these data center fights between, you know,

there was a New York Times story. The headline was the most bipartisan issue since beer. And you have all of these local town council and city council meetings being stormed by neighbors that used to be at each other's throats over drag brunches coming together to fight the tech oligarchs. And I think our elites are panicked by this. I think we're going to see an accelerated war on the left precisely because I think we're already seeing, and we've seen a few kind of false starts, like after Charlie Kirk's assassination,

then we had Rubio's summit a few months ago bringing all of these governments together to openly declare war on left political terrorism. They are very worried to make no mistake. And what they want to be able to do is cast the left as terrorists so that they can break apart this alliance and criminalize it because it presents such a threat. And so I think we're kind of in a race against time to see whether we can really build this very broad coalition

and peel away a portion of the base from the people who actually voted these, folks into power before the boot really comes down because that sort of broad-based coalition is the only protection against the repression that we've seen. You know, we saw it in Minneapolis. We've seen the kind of violence that they would unleash without the pushback that they encountered in Minneapolis, right, which was just so broad and so brave. you asked about Israel and I do want to want to want to say something but Sam you're about to say

something no go ahead go ahead I'll I mean look I mean we talked about Israel you talk about Israel a lot and I'm grateful for that and so I don't want to repeat things that your audience already knows I think it's important to understand that the support for Israel is not only the Zionist support that we all understand of supporting you know Israel as a you know so-called Jewish state and so on. It's also that Israel is a model of the high-tech bunkered state, of the state that they want to build everywhere. It's the narrative is, you know, the tiny little, little startup nation in a sea of enemies protected by its iron dome, right? They want, like, Trump wants the United States to be that. You know, he says, I want a golden dome. I think there are a lot of

lots of European leaders that want that too. And this is where it intersects with this, the collapse that we're seeing of the living systems that make life bearable, that make life possible. That idea of you're in a sea, like this is why the image of the invading migrant is so central to the far right all over the world. It's the same story that Israel tells. It's like the hordes are at the gate, right? The new president of Chile ran on a campaign promising to dig a moat around Chile.

So this is the story of the Fortress Nation is the primary story of the age of collapse. So we really have to look at this very closely, and we need to be able to not just name it, but tell another story about how we deal with these very real crises. It's not all in their imagination, right? really are breaking down. And so we have to have a story that says, here's how we're going to stop the crises from getting worse, right, to the extent that we still can, which is not complete, and how we're going to prepare for them in a way that doesn't triage humanity, that doesn't say some people's lives are worth something and the rest of you are subhuman and unhuman,

but how we're actually going to live together and share the resources that are left. And that's the urgent story that we need to tell. I just want to add in terms of the Israel as a model. I mean, they, Israeli forces have been training, particularly New York and L.A. police departments for almost 20 years now in the wake of 9-11 on how to spy and surveil, et cetera, et cetera. They've been testing weapons systems on Gaza for years. And so on. So that that idea of Israel as a model, particularly in this era of the tech surveillance and how AI can be used as a tool of control has been there, just almost the technology is now just catching up. I know you only have a couple minutes left. So let's get into that notion of, you touched on it briefly just there and you cite in

the book sort of, I guess, maybe some green shoots of hope on some level. It is, It is tough to find how much of it is localized. Like the awareness that would theoretically come from the book, let's say, or just people engaging in what's happening as an international phenomenon. But the fights that we talk about are localized in many experiences. And that's where it's much easier to make those coalitions. Nobody's getting together going like, I want to transcend our ideological differences and do something. it's more like, hey, we have a shared problem. I don't care where you're coming from.

We're just going to fight this data center. I'm curious, like, how much of this has got to be localized and whether there's even value in seeing the broader picture if you can make it localized, both the people's, you know, material concerns. And also, just as a side note, like the fundamentalism, the religious fundamentalism, which has been, here, it has been a feature of the United States, it's still, it's, it's, it's pretty durable. Like, like, is there even worth an attempt to undermine that fundamentalism, or is it just

stay with something that is material in front of you and it will attract enough people who have material, uh, issues with that thing? Even though the fundamentalism basically says, like, Don't worry about it. Yours is coming just in the next life. I mean, I don't think you can separate the two. We cite research, and there's a lot more out there that shows that these fundamentalist religions, things like the prosperity gospel, Pentecostalism, flourish when people's lives are unstable, right, when people's lives are hard. And so there's a correlation. You know, messianic thought goes with upheaval and going back centuries. So, you know, again, addressing those crises, be part of that pulling people away. I mean, look, in a sense, all politics is local

because we are human beings who live in a place and also our political system is structured by geography in terms of where you vote and where you have the most power. So I don't think we're localists in the sense of like small is superior, but it's where people live and where people can connect with others and start building coalitions and building power in communities. But the big stakes matter, right? Because it reminds us what's actually going on

and what we're fighting for, which is life on earth in this moment, you know, against people who believe that they're going to exit, whether to heaven or to their space colonies or, you know, because they'll be in their armored fortress while everything else goes down. And that is, there's not a magic button that can address those global crises,

but it can galvanize us. And we're seeing, people, you know, frame the stakes in very broad terms and understanding, you know, it's humans versus the robots, right, in this moment, that that's kind of, that, that, that, those are the existential stakes. But there's so much people can do and it matters. We rush to get this book out in front of, in, in advance of the midterms, because we think election defense really matters in the next few months, right? We think joining a union or forming a union really matters. We think that these data setter fights matters. What people can do is always going to

look different and it probably will be local, but that doesn't mean that should be the horizon of our political ambitions, you know. Am I anything else? Yeah, I think that this idea. Go ahead, Donnie. Yeah. Well, just to add that to that a little bit, like this idea that that that heaven is elsewhere, right?

That that, you know, that's what you're articulating about, about the dream of that, you know, those religious traditions, um, that it's all. about being released from the prison of the body, right, from and from the sin of the body. And so, and there's an excitement about it. And that is not, not all religious people believe that. And there are all of these really interesting theological discussions and battles going on. You know, I was invited to the Vatican under Pope Francis. when he released the encyclical on ecology.

It was like the, you know, sometimes referred to as the climate change encyclical. And that was an attempt to really counter this idea that this world doesn't matter because heaven is beyond. And he was saying that he was trying to strengthen and revive the Catholic tradition of care and sanctity of this realm, right? So these really interesting battles are going on. And we build on the Jewish bundist notion of dookite, of heerness, of committing to hear in response to Zionism, therness, the idea of paradise being, of solving the crisis of anti-Semitism in Europe by going to Palestine. The bundists, as our friend Molly Krabapple has written this wonderful book showing, we're saying, no, our safety is in multiracial solidarity here in Europe and making here better.

So it's not to say that here doesn't need to be improved. But, you know, we talk about the Mamdani campaign as an amazing example of that spirit here in New York, of committing to the city of saying we want to stay, we don't want to be forced out. And then you have the billionaires going, we're leaving if you tax us by, you know, increase our taxes by 1%. We're out of here. And, I mean, that really typifies the struggle of the people. people who don't have a loyalty to here, wherever here is.

Maybe it's, they're leaving California because there's a 5% tax or they're leaving Earth. You know, we quote Marisa Franco, one of the founders of Michente, saying they're quitters. They have no loyalty to here. So the loyalty may be a loyalty to art, to the ability to create art with your hands. It could be, it could be a loyalty to a town. It could be a loyalty to planet Earth. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean localism, but it does mean, the embodied and not

and not just writing it off and saying you know heaven is in the AI cloud we just can't wait to merge with the machine we can't wait to get out of here we think that that that and we are seeing that in a lot of these different struggles you know even like when we just as we were finishing the book the Albanians were rising up

against uh against Jared and Ivanka but then it becomes this amazing uprising that is really in defense of nature. It's, it's, and against oligarchs and the politicians who would sell their country off and they're doing it in the name of the flamingos. And it's just this really interesting. Yeah, like a combination of a true political and economic uprising that is very connected to what we're calling the living world. The book is entitled End Times, Fascism and the Fight for the Living world, Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor. Thanks so much for your time today. Thank you for your patience

with our technical glitches. The tech overlords really didn't want this to happen. But we made it happen. We really didn't. Thank you again. We, of course, will link to your book in the podcast and YouTube description. Really appreciate your time. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you both. Thanks. Bye, y'all. All right, folks. That does it for our free half of the program. It's obviously full of a little padding early on in the show. But we will edit that for the post. For the podcast.

For the podcast. The stream we can edit that chunk out to. Brian, are you okay? Poor Brian. Brian was talking today, like how he's really matured and he's not destroying things and then just like and then he broken pens under this

you had to like you had to maintain in the frustration you had to maintain that because you had literally just planted your flag about how mature you are now and don't react to frustration

by breaking things and of course it was in front of a guest who I read her books when I was in high school and uh yeah think very highly up exactly

hard to imagine like you know uh of uh two guests who we would be more mortified. Yeah. Yeah. Like most, I would be, I would rather we have that issue with like 95% of politicians that would come on our show, to be honest. But also, you deserve credit. Sorry, couldn't do it.

Yeah, whoops. Because the whole team here behind the scenes is texting me like, you know, Sam gets a little angry in these moments. Don't take it personal. I walked into the other room. Good job. True a breath. Credit to you as well. I maintained.

Well, if it had gone on for two more minutes, I would have started crying. So that would have been way worse than yelling. That would have added to the... That's the threat that I have. It's honestly the nuclear weapon here. Because we can yell and get mad, but if the girl starts to cry, that's when things are going to go really poorly. And we will have, let's have Maria, cut the interview separately

so that we can get that out as well, because this, the YouTube is all. Obviously, we're going to still have that sort of extended break time. No, we can cut that out. You can cut that out now, I think. Oh, we can? On YouTube, you can cut that out. We should still do that.

But I think I'm... Yeah, this doesn't need to be. This is already being handled. Okay, great. Chris Burdick on the IM says you're being too hard on Brian. We didn't lose all the audio. We could still hear him breathing. Oh, that sucks.

Yeah, there was some weird dynamic where, like, like, some microphone, like in the basement. of our building was streaming audio. I don't know. We heard Tito. Ever since we put the skate park in to the studio, the wires were crossed when we put in that light show, laser show for the skate park here. That's what we prioritize over the air conditioning getting fixed,

the pyrotechnics and the skate park. That's Sam surveillance trick. I'll build you a skate park. coming out. Yeah, everybody. It's all miced. Exactly. You better not be talking shit about me at this game.

Exactly. I go in for my daily meeting in HR and we play the tapes. Folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. Most of the time. Constantly always trying to upgrade our technology. And, yeah, just because we get your support, it makes the show possible, but not guarantee. It just, it's your support that puts us in the running.

In the position. Provide the show. Possible the choice word there. I mean, we could use the Hakeem Jeffrey cycle to describe it. Exactly. Right. You fund us. We'll have a conversation about starting a movement towards the potential discussion of a show.

It is your support that provides us the ideation that's involved with the potential technology that we can imagine. It might actually provide you with a show. There might be a past. to some more technology for a notion concept of a conversation. People should be aware that those are still

on the Majority Report website, the Jeffrey's Cycle t-shirt shopped at MajorityReportRadio.com. Oh, right. We still have those. They're still there. Oh, yeah. Check out the ideation t-shirt.

That's also, incidentally, how our tech system works. Exactly. I have some ideations at the moment. Join the Majority Report.com. Also, get back to the material, the less the less abstract, just coffee.coff. Co-op.

Fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code majority. You get 10% off. It is a co-op. Supports their farmers, both in Chiapas and in East Africa. They know their farmers. They get the coffee in Madison, Wisconsin. They roast it.

It's a co-op owned by the employees. use the coupon code majority. You get 10% off. Also, you can buy the majority of Port Blent. Matt is on vacation, sort of. He spent 45 minutes on the phone today. I got his most recent Jackman show description. It says, David is joined by Clarissa Redwine and J.S. Tan to talk about the many ways the tech industry has set itself up against workers and how we can beat the power of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos by organizing. That was from two days ago. And we like to call Matt in an emergency at home. I think he's visiting his folks, right?

Yes. And that way, Matt can show his parents how important he is. It makes them, look it. I leave. The whole thing falls apart, Ma. Matt's going out to the big city, and they need him there. They don't have an accident like that. I don't think it's probably more like Fargo than it is.

Yeah. Oh, look how big as britches are, a big Matt over there. Wow, you're a big man. I'm opting out of trying this. Matt, look at you. Out of respect. Wow. Oh, holy Pete.

You really? That's a special guy over there. Looks like you're the big cheese. All right. We'll see you in the final.