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Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor launch their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World on Democracy Now! It examines how wealthy elites are preparing for “the end of the world,” even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. The rise of modern-day fascism is “not simply a rerun,” explains Klein. “We don’t believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we’re in something more like a sequel, where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanization, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis.” In response, says Taylor, the growing movement seeking to resist this fatalistic vision “fundamentally needs to be grounded in a desire to stay here on Earth, to commit to this place.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York joined by Democracy Now! cohost Juan González in Chicago. Hi, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us by the end of the decade.” That was the warning last week from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that set off an escalating debate over how to regulate increasingly powerful AI systems. Coxon spoke to the BBC.

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COXON: So it’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who were involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction. And many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than 10% chance or even greater—some smaller, but they all have different numbers—for a probability that humans might die. And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.

COXON: So it’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who were involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction. And many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than 10% chance or even greater—some smaller, but they all have different numbers—for a probability that humans might die. And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei also called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down. In an essay, he wrote that within six to 12 months a swarm of AI agents could be capable of taking over the entire internet and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. He wrote, “The scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.” But President Trump has rejected growing calls for placing regulatory guardrails on the AI industry and has called concerns over AI a “hoax.” On Monday, Trump called Jensen Huang, the CEO of the computer chip maker Nvidia, while Huang was speaking at an AI summit in Los Angeles. Huang put the president on speakerphone.

PRES. TRUMP: The data centers are great and they make people wealthy and they make states wealthy and it’s the oil of the next 20, 25 years. It’s bigger than the Internet. And the AI, you know, much more so. And they are just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen. And that could be political people; it could also be China. And we’re not going to let that happen. It’s a hoax. And [crosstalk]— JENSEN HUANG [laughs] You’re right. We’re not going to let that happen, sir. AUDIENCE: [applause] PRES. TRUMP: No, we’re not going to let it happen. The robots are not going to be taking over the world.

PRES. TRUMP: The data centers are great and they make people wealthy and they make states wealthy and it’s the oil of the next 20, 25 years. It’s bigger than the Internet. And the AI, you know, much more so. And they are just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen. And that could be political people; it could also be China. And we’re not going to let that happen. It’s a hoax. And [crosstalk]—

JENSEN HUANG [laughs] You’re right. We’re not going to let that happen, sir.

PRES. TRUMP: No, we’re not going to let it happen. The robots are not going to be taking over the world.

AMY GOODMAN: As the debate over AI intensifies, the award-winning journalists and writers Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have a new book out today that is connected to all of this. It is titled End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. It examines how wealthy elites, including tech CEOs, are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability, wars and the climate crisis. They will join us in a minute but first, here is a short excerpt from a video that was released with the book.

ASTRA TAYLOR: End-times fascism is not a monolith. It’s a dangerous and fractious alliance of three main groups. NARRATOR: Religious end-timers. ROBERT JEFFRESS: From the very beginning it has been clear that god has a special plan and purpose for the nation of Israel. NARRATOR: Tech end-timers. SAM ALTMAN: You know, I think AI will probably like most likely sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime there will be great companies created. NARRATOR: Ethnonationalist end-timers. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: America is fighting with Israel for a common goal—to protect our future, to protect civilization against these barbarians. PERSON: That was a good take right there. PERSON: Seig fucking Heil, let’s fucking go! PERSON: You would prefer the human race to endure, right? PERSON: Uh— PERSON: You’re hesitant. PERSON: Yeah, well, I— PERSON: End-times fascists haven’t just given up on liberal democracy. They’ve given up on the possibility of a shared future for all of us. PERSON: The most powerful people in the world— PERSON: —are preparing for the end of the world— PERSON: —an end they themselves are both accelerating— PERSON: —and profiting from. ELON MUSK: [laughs] PERSON: We have imagined Armageddon so many times it can almost feel inevitable. Except it’s not. So, which side are you on? PERSON: The side of bunkering down, abandoning Earth and profiting from apocalypse? Or staying loyal to this planet and its people— PERSON: Who are you aligned with? Who are you protecting? PERSON: —and making life here better?

ASTRA TAYLOR: End-times fascism is not a monolith. It’s a dangerous and fractious alliance of three main groups.

NARRATOR: Religious end-timers.

ROBERT JEFFRESS: From the very beginning it has been clear that god has a special plan and purpose for the nation of Israel.

NARRATOR: Tech end-timers.

SAM ALTMAN: You know, I think AI will probably like most likely sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime there will be great companies created.

NARRATOR: Ethnonationalist end-timers.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: America is fighting with Israel for a common goal—to protect our future, to protect civilization against these barbarians.

PERSON: That was a good take right there.

PERSON: Seig fucking Heil, let’s fucking go!

PERSON: You would prefer the human race to endure, right?

PERSON: You’re hesitant.

PERSON: Yeah, well, I—

PERSON: End-times fascists haven’t just given up on liberal democracy. They’ve given up on the possibility of a shared future for all of us.

PERSON: The most powerful people in the world—

PERSON: —are preparing for the end of the world—

PERSON: —an end they themselves are both accelerating—

PERSON: —and profiting from.

PERSON: We have imagined Armageddon so many times it can almost feel inevitable. Except it’s not. So, which side are you on?

PERSON: The side of bunkering down, abandoning Earth and profiting from apocalypse? Or staying loyal to this planet and its people—

PERSON: Who are you aligned with? Who are you protecting?

PERSON: —and making life here better?

AMY GOODMAN: A short video released in conjunction with the new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World written by our guests in studio for the hour. Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, best-selling author of a number of books including Doppelganger and No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein is also an associate professor and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist and documentary filmmaker, the co-founder of the Debt Collective and author of several books including The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart and The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Thanks so much for spending the hour with us. Naomi, start off with a title, start off with End Times Fascism, why you chose this.

NAOMI KLEIN: First of all, thank you for having us here, Amy. It’s great to be launching the book on Democracy Now! It just came out this morning, as you said. And I think we have a long tradition of launching books together. We decided to call it End Times Fascism because we are trying to understand what is the same and what is different about our moment of far-right extremism. We know that far-right parties with lineages to the fascists of the 20th century are rising to power around the world. We just saw a fateful election in a German state, the first time the far right has won an election since the Second World War. We’re seeing very disturbing polls in France, for instance. And we’re seeing more and more open fascist expressions in the United States from very powerful people in government and in tech.

But we don’t believe that this is simply a rerun. We don’t believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we’re in something more like a sequel where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanization, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis. This is not news to Democracy Now! listeners and viewers that we live in a time of a climate breakdown and collapse. We have tools like nuclear weapons, that were not known to Hitler and Mussolini, that have the ability to inflict........

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