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Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein have joined forces to 'expose the rich and powerful' and their obsession with the end of days.
They speak to Andrew Marr about figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel influencing world governments - and what to do about it.
The book is called 'End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World'.
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0:00
Peter Thiel says that the Antichrist is coming and that it will be someone like Greta Thunberg who wants to address climate change
0:07
somebody who wants to rein in the dangers of AI, and someone who wants to uphold international law
0:11
So one of our mottos is we should do those things if he's so afraid. Fascism is always an alliance, an awkward coalition, a binding together of different interests
0:21
Um, we, they are already, uh, these groups aligned because they, in the United States
0:27
they came together to help elect Donald Trump. Um, they're not everyone who voted for Donald Trump
0:33
Donald Trump has a larger base than that, but we focus on these, these three groups
0:37
um, because they have a story of the future that seems to be banking on collapse of one
0:45
kind or another. The religious end timers are looking forward to the end for the reason end time
0:53
The rapture were all taken up to the sky. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's bad is good
0:58
You need things to get bad enough that the Messiah arrives. I may perhaps return if you're a Christian Zionist or if you are a Messianic Jew in Israel
1:08
They believe that the Messiah is going to come in and have been pushing for war
1:12
And so we don't believe their prophecies are true, but we think they're dangerous because they've been becoming more powerful within the Israeli government and the U.S. government
1:24
And Astra, how do these people influence the sort of tech oligarchs and that part of the world
1:29
Yeah, we're very struck by the ways that tech oligarchs are actually playing with a similar narrative template that out of destruction, some paradise, at least for a lucky few, will arrive
1:38
So we're hearing somebody like Elon Musk talk about how maybe generative AI is summoning a demon or maybe they're building a digital god
1:46
Maybe we'll all be able to access health care. Maybe the human lifespan will double
1:51
Or maybe, as we've been hearing in all these headlines, there's a 25 percent chance of human extinction because of AI
1:57
They're building a technology that they say that they hope will wipe out all the jobs that will be the last, you know, invention
2:04
So there this messianic quality to it that is driven by ultimately we think a desire to make as much money as possible even if that requires burning inordinate amounts of fossil fuels and you know rolling over any regulations So they made an alliance with the religious end timers and with the ethno because
2:23
they all have a common interest in not investing in a future where all people can live safe and
2:30
secure lives. They're not in favor, Naomi, of the little green planet that we live on, for sure
2:35
Some are talking about or making plans to disappear to remote islands during the end times
2:41
other people talk about colonizing Mars or the moon or whatever it might be
2:45
Or sometimes they're the same people. The bunkers are a bit of a hedge if the rest of it doesn't work out
2:50
To most people listening, this seems completely nuts. It seems nuts to us
2:56
And yet you take it seriously. I mean, one criticism that might be made of the book
2:59
is that these are silly boys boasting to each other. And by taking them too seriously, you know, you're making a mistake
3:07
They are silly boys boasting to each other, But they're also some of the most powerful people at the helms of governments and the helms of corporations
3:14
And so we think it's incumbent on us, actually, to take them very seriously, even if we don't take them literally
3:20
Well, let's let's pick one of them, Peter Thiel, who was very, very influential in the career of J.D. Vance, who may become the next American president
3:28
Now, he has spoken near me directly that he thinks freedom and democracy are incompatible
3:33
Yeah, he said that first in 2009, gave a speech that was then published where he defined freedom in a very specific way
3:42
It's freedom from taxation and regulation, but also freedom from death. Peter Thiel really believes that he can defeat immortality
3:52
He invests in all kinds of kind of cryogenics and so on. So he has experimented with various modes of escape
4:00
He was actually the first billionaire who we learned had bunker plans
4:05
There was a big New Yorker piece about his land in New Zealand and how he'd gotten a citizenship there
4:12
Now he seems to be more interested in Argentina. He thinks it'll do well in a nuclear apocalypse
4:18
But he's also invested in what are sometimes called startup countries. So there's a country in Honduras called Prospera, which has kind of carved out its own laws
4:28
It also important to note that he one of the founders of Palantir There is a big push right now in England to cancel the Palantir contract with the NHS
4:39
the National Health Service. So his tendrils are everywhere, but he has many of his protégés
4:45
not just David Vance, in the U.S. government. And a related company, of course, Anderil
4:49
is heavily involved in defence, both here and around the world. Yeah, a huge company now
4:53
It's valued at around $60 billion. So yeah, Peter Thiel is everywhere
4:58
including on television telling us that actually it might be good to be evil because at least if
5:04
you're evil you're good at something so in a sense we've got all these kind of you know
5:09
demonic figures in the book and and the dangers of end-time fascism and the obvious question for
5:14
most people is what do we do about it now you want some kind of um popular um left kind of
5:21
community and green centered um political movement it seems i don't know whether you think it's there
5:26
already or it needs to be created. What do people listening to this, reading this book
5:30
and who are concerned, what should they actually do? Well, if they do read the book, and we hope
5:35
that they do, they'll see that there are people who are already doing all kinds of things. We have
5:39
a chapter on Zoran Mamdani's extraordinary election campaign in New York City, really being
5:46
the antithesis of these exodus dreams, really, of ascending to paradise in heaven or in the AI
5:54
cloud or bunkering down in the nation state, but actually committing to hear the campaign
6:00
was a love letter to New York City. And it made an offer. Let's live well here
6:04
Let's have free and fast buses. Let's freeze the rent. Let's have universal child care
6:09
And it worked incredibly well. He went from 1% in the polls to winning an election against a former governor
6:16
And also, there's been a very, very fast growing, faster than anything I've seen in
6:21
my life. and as you know, I've been on the left a while, movement against the AI data centers
6:27
And that's spreading here as well. And I think there's a powerful opportunity to bring a bunch of people into a new political coalition
6:33
Peter Thiel says that the Antichrist is coming and that it will be someone like Greta Thunberg
6:38
who wants to address climate change, somebody who wants to rein in the dangers of AI, and
6:44
someone who wants to uphold international law. So one of our mottos is we should do those things if he so afraid We haven talked maybe enough about AI in the book because clearly that is one of the big challenges facing mankind at the moment
6:57
And yet to regulate AI effectively, two things need to happen, neither of which seem at the moment very likely
7:03
The White House has to be taken over by somebody completely different from Donald Trump
7:07
In other words, not J.D. Vance. So the White House has to go the other way
7:11
And then there has to be a deal with China. If those things don't happen, then talking about regulating AI is now for the birds, I'm afraid, isn't it
7:19
We need international regulation, there's no doubt. And one of the things that all of these different groups that we write about agree on, they don't agree on everything, but they all agree that they want to dismantle the United Nations, maybe replace it with something called the Board of Peace that is run by Donald Trump forever
7:35
But absolutely, it's possible to regulate AI. And in fact, the story we tell in the book is that the alignment of Silicon Valley with Donald Trump that kind of shocked the world when we saw it on inauguration was in very large part a revolt against the Biden era regulations on AI
7:55
The Biden administration was beginning to put the guardrails in place that would have prevented a lot of the riskier uses of this technology that we're now all suddenly worried about
8:05
Final question. You talk about end times fascism. Now, fascism is a word thrown around a lot these days, basically often means just somebody we don't like. You know, there aren't actual stormtroopers at the moment. There aren't death camps. You know, there hasn't been Kristallnacht. Is fascism becoming a redundant phrase or one that no longer has the bite and the power that it used to have
8:27
Well, certainly it is, I think, an apt phrase for this moment
8:33
And, you know, yes, we don't have exactly the same characteristics of 20th century fascism
8:37
but we have people who are obsessed with supremacy and eugenics, who seem to be fine with slashing programs that support millions of lives
8:46
who are supporting genocide and lobbying for more war. We have entire U.S. cities that have been occupied by ICE agents and masks
8:56
And certainly the people who lived through that and resisted it very valiantly, and we write about that in the book, felt that they were seeing fascism
9:04
But they did what we should all do in the face of this, which is not bury our head in the sand
9:08
They fought back and pushed them out
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