'We must name fascism before it becomes totally dominant in our world'

'We must name fascism before it becomes totally dominant in our world' Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor speak to Dr Aimee Walsh about the rise of the far-right and climate collapse, showing how community action is our hope to defeat modern fascism. The far right are on the rise, with emboldened thugs taking to UK streets to protest against some of the most vulnerable people in our society - those who have been displaced and migrate to Britain. For the avoidance of doubt, the key markers of fascism are: censorship of the press; scapegoating; and extreme nationalism. On 19 September, Trump banned major news organisations such as CNN from the White House, meanwhile the right in the UK denigrates the ‘mainstream media’ as untrustworthy. Migrants are wrongly blamed for mass inequality, as masked gangs gather on British shores to intimate and threaten those arriving from the perilous journeys across the sea. Warsan Shire, the poet who spoke at Barack Obama’s inauguration, said it best in her poem ‘Home’: "You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land". How did we get here, where empathy is in such short supply? And how do we claw our way back? Critically acclaimed authors and activists Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor speak to Dr. Aimee Walsh for the Mirror about their book End Times Fascism: The Fight for the Living World, which is a reckoning of our times. Speaking with Dr Walsh, Klein asked: “Do we really want to be spectators to the end of the world or do we want to actually be engaged?” When starting out on this project, Klein felt “helpless” about the rising doom-march of fascism. That heart-sinking feeling - concern, anger, fear - became the building blocks of a movement against fatalism. This feeling had to amount to something bigger than status, so she “mulch[ed] [it] into something that might be useful for other people”. Klein, who is American but lives in Canada, said that Trump’s second inauguration “was like getting punched in the face over and over again. It was very clear that the second Trump administration was not just part two of the first that there were things that were very different. In his first administration, Trump didn't threaten to annex Canada or Greenland.” There is also the isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw people the world over at a remove from their support networks, and turning to the online world for connection. Klein said: “[COVID] really did radicalise people. It made a lot of people on the right become the far right.” Taylor added: “COVID was certainly an accelerant. The climate crisis is [another] massive underlying factor. "But you know, in addition to crossing ecological limits, we are also crossing economic ones, right? And so at the very end of this book, we had the unfortunate experience of having the page proofs and having to go back and refer to Elon Musk not as a billionaire, but as a trillionaire.” Klein commented: “There was a long time where climate change was just this thing that scientists are saying: it's going to happen. It's going to happen. But that's not the era we're in. Like, we're in the era of the Danube drying up. It's hitting the fan now. Like we're in it.” The world no longer has the luxury of waiting to see how things unfold; the signs of a deeply troubling trajectory are already there. Taylor said: “It is important to name fascism before it's totally dominant.” For any public intellectual or critic writing about the rise of modern fascism, there are tidal waves of bots and commenters flooding the responses with hate-filled messages. There are also those who argue that to name what is happening now – the censorship, the normalisation of masked gangs on UK streets – is to exaggerate the situation. “When the Hitler comparison comes up,” Astra said, “if we're waiting for soldiers goose-stepping information, we will miss the messianic venture capitalist. We will miss how entrepreneurial this new breed of fascism is. We'll miss the AI and the automated weapons. “The world is more dangerous than the [WW2] world because we live in an age of climate change, of interconnected media, of potentially rogue AI, of nuclear weapons and that changes the kind of fascism that we have to contend with. This isn't a rerun, right? It's a sequel. There's new players, tactics, new plot lines.” Yet, End Times Fascism has a subtitle: The Fight for the Living World, as so the writers posit forms of resistance to protect our world. Taylor said: “What can people do? I always tell people to join something, to find some kind of political home. Whether that is being involved in electoral politics, whether that's being involved in attendance union or some sort of labour union or or other community group like that's the way to start to find your people. “Because this isn't something that we can really face or take on alone. Then you can respond to whatever contingency arises. Maybe it will be that fascists are organising in your neighbourhood. Maybe it will be that there's a data centre coming to your community. Maybe it will be that there is an amazing candidate who's worth getting out the vote for, right? We don't know what the opportunity is going to be where we are. But by being in community, we'll be more ready to meet those moments. “At the core of it, fascists want us to fear each other.” Now is the time to “meet your neighbours,” Naomi said. “Meet them now! Don't meet them in the crisis. Go have a potluck. Start a signal group with everybody in your building. Get to know each other because that infrastructure will be needed whatever the shock, whatever the crisis.” End Times Fascism: The Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor is out now.