In my essay one week ago, I focused on Gil Durán’s new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, which lays bare the agenda behind the AI world as led by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and other multi billionaires “obsessed with escaping democracy” (p. 10) and dream of taking over the world when billions of people (and millions of other species) are wiped out by climate change.
In my video that day, I cited Dan Houser who said that the people leading the push for AI are “not the most humane or creative…or fully rounded humans.” Might that statement qualify as the understatement of the year?
They are busy preparing for their Armageddon by creating their own cities from scratch before they emerge from their deep cellars and show up to inherit the Earth. Not exactly an echo of Jesus’ teaching: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the earth.” Indeed, just its opposite. Like “Christ” and “Antichrist” are opposites.
Naomi Klein, an author I strongly admire for her prophetic shoutouts, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, has teamed up with film-maker activist Astra Taylor to write a fine companion book to Durán’s: End Times Fascism And the Fight for the Living World.
Guardian reviewer Daniel Trillingcalls it “a sharp analysis of the damage wrought by the reckless super-rich, and a progressive toolkit for repairing it.”* We are warned not to normalize what today’s politics, driven by the super-rich, is offering. Time to resist fiercely a president who “casually promises ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’” and his biggest megadonor patron, trillionaire Musk who “spreads racist conspiracy theories to a hitherto unimaginable extent.” And by ending USAID has killed hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest people.
Klein/Taylor tell us: “The most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.”
A triple alliance is at work: First, religious fanatics eager to see new disasters as the coming of the end of days who link up with “secular demagogues who promise a glorious, prosperous future on the ruins of our present.” Christian Zionists support a “New Gaza” mirage arising “from the wreckage of Israel’s US-backed genocide.”
Second are the new tech barons preaching an AI “arms race” to save humanity. Forget the water and electricity demands that “scorch the planet”—they “dream of sitting out societal breakdown in remote fortified enclaves.”
Third come the “political entrepreneurs” promising “to turn their nations into bunkered garrison states.” An aggressive global scramble for natural resources ensues (take over Greenland?). This “new fascism” Klein/Taylor define as “capitalism with bared teeth.” (Recall Hildegard’s painting of the antichrist as a flying pile of dung complete with red eyes and steel teeth that destroys communities and societies.)
Trilling commends the authors for awakening people to what is happening around us and for empowering us to respond. A response requires dismantling “the concentration of wealth and power that got us into this mess in the first place.” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrates a new politics “rooted in an expansive, open-armed sense of neighborliness” that can counter “the right’s dystopian visions of the future.”
The fight is between an economic system “built on limitless growth, and on limitless wealth for the winners” who demonstrate serious sadistic tendencies vs the reality of an endangered planet.
Fighting for justice and equality wherever you may live is a guiding principle and the authors celebrate the rise of Minnesotans against ICE as well as Venetians rising up against Jeff Bezos using their city “as a backdrop for his grotesque display of wealth disguised as a wedding.”
To be continued.
* Daniel Trilling, “End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Review – The Fightback Starts Here,” The Guardian, September 14, 2026.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Vision for a New Gaza? The Dubai marina at night, UAE. Photo by David Pin. Wikimedia Commons.
Now that all images produced by the White House are copyrighted, go to this article by the New York Post to see fever-dream visions of a New Gaza.
Queries for Contemplation
How does your “vision of the future” respond to the twin visions spoken of in this essay, that of “an expansive, open-armed sense of neighborliness” or that of a dystopian vision of the future? What is the work—inner and outer—called for?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Times.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts For the Peoples of the Earth.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors for Awakening the Sacred Masculine.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
7 thoughts on “Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Join Forces with Gil Durán on the New Fascism”
Circumstances inform me that it will take collective shock to wake up and change the world. Whether that is environmental or economic collapse, atomic war or some other cataclysm remains to be seen. Personally, I hold out hope that it will be unequivocal UFO (UAP) appearance and even intervention. To dismiss such a notion as being fantastical or deluded is merely a demonstration that one has not been paying attention to this far greater, illuminating cosmic reality that awaits the human race.
The dystopian vision of the future by the tech billionaires, and the ultra right in politics, capitalism, and religion have definitely been growing historically in power in our modern societies as examples/forms of the spiritually unbalanced patriarchy with its’ values of individualism, duality, materialism, control, power, greed, racism, ecocide, and social injustices.
These are definitely evil influences in our modern times and “civilization.”
The Spirit of the Divine Feminine with its Divine Faith~LOVE~Wisdom~Peace~Justice~Strength~Healing~Transformation~Creativity~Beauty~
Joy~Compassion~Loving Diverse ONENESS… needs to continue Being kept Alive in Our Hearts/Souls along with one another in Our small communities, Sacred Mother Nature/Cosmos in Our Human and Cosmic evolution, including our allies/Spirits from the nonphysical spiritual dimensions, in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….
My vision of the future includes both visions. I believe we have much more darkness to endure, much farther to sink, and then at some point out of all that darkness will be birthed a new kind of experience, a new (old) way to be a human in a society, living in cooperation with Mother Earth and father sky. Enough of our current culture needs to be destroyed so we don’t settle back into old destructive patterns.
I have wondered at times if we’re experiencing some kind of evolutionary split – with those of us who are about love and cooperation and light going one way, and those obsessed with power, domination and darkness headed another way.
Personally I choose to exist in this ascending darkness by calling light and love to me and beaming it out into the world as often as I can. This benefits me internally, but I believe it also has a direct benefit to others on the receiving end of that energy.
Maybe this darkness is why the Black Madonna is stronger these days. She’s holding us in the darkness of her womb, keeping us safe, until it is time to be born into the next iteration of this world. I see her everywhere I go lately.
I’m no longer sad about the current state of affairs, as grim as it is, because I know in my heart this is happening for reasons we can’t know, and my faith tells me we will one day see light and love where now we only see hate and darkness.
Thank you, Matthew, for your question: “What is the work—inner and outer—called for?” I look forward to lots of discussion and guidance coming out of the question. I’m getting to the age where I might not see what the world looks like when we’ve worked through these very dark times that are caused, I think, by factors including the un-Supreme Court decision Citizens United; the destruction of anti-Trust, anti-monopoly laws; the court’s ruling that the president can do anything he wants with impunity if he does it “within his official duties”; the complicity of the Republican party; and the weakness, fear, and greed of Democratic congresspeople. Meanwhile, I Googled how many people have died due to the Republican party’s ending of USAID and, as you say, the numbers are catastrophic: “The Lancet study: A 2025 retrospective and forecasting analysis found USAID programs helped avert over 91 million deaths globally, and projected that cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million under five deaths.” Other studies show similar numbers.
Astra also wrote and delivered the Massey Lectures in Canada in 2023. The title of the lecture series is The Age of Uncertainty.
https://www.cbc.ca/radiointeractives/ideas/2023-cbc-massey-lectures-astra-taylor
I’ve been reading Otto Rank and the Creation of Modern Psychtherapy by Robert Kramer, which I am aware of through Matthew’s articles.
I learned that Otto Rank discovered that the relationship between the therapist and client is the source of healing in psychotherapy. Authentic relationships are also the source of sustainable, healthy communities.
There is a 50 second presentation by a theologian from Argentina named Emilce Cuda that makes me wonder if she has read Matthew’s books or attended his Zoom meetings. In addition to studying theology, she used to work as a seamstress and fashion designer. She knows what its like to be physically exhausted from work.
Another theme in the book about Otto Rank is the creative will of women. I wonder if the relationship between women and creativity is related symbolically to Mary Magdalen being the first person to see Christ after death and resurrection.
Emilce talking about creation spirituality in 50 second video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LeSg3jFGXrI
Feature story about her on Roman website
https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2022-02/dcm-002/the-atypical-theologian-who-starts-from-the-people.html
Teilhard de Chardin’s model of human evolution is controversial, but so amazingly prophetic concerning the Internet and AI that it would be wise to pay greater attention to it. In terms of today’s Query for Contemplation, Teilhard predicted, in 1954, that a dystopian vision of the future would occur in parallel with an expansive, open-armed sense of neighborliness. In The Appearance of Man (p. 258), he writes: “And here let me make myself plain. When I speak of a unanimised humanity, what I am thinking of has nothing in common with a sort of comfortable and virtuous euphoria. As I shall explain better in a moment, a hominisation of convergence can only end with a paroxysm. Even if consolidated by the final awakening of consciousness of its common destiny, humanity will probably undergo tomorrow, either by its efforts to define and formulate the unity awaiting it, or in the choice and application of the best means to attain it, inner conflicts more violent than any we are now familiar with. But since they will develop in a human milieu much more strongly polarised towards the future than we can yet imagine, these phenomena of tension will very likely lose the sterile bitterness peculiar to our present struggles. Moreover in the midst of such an atmosphere of ’ conspiration’, certain operations of a universal character may be envisaged as realisable, which would be out of the question in the state of psychic disaggregation in which we still vegetate today…”
I have been watching the speeches of UNGA — United Nations General Assembly on the UN’s 81st founding day.
Both men and women leaders of countries are giving speeches addressing the challenges of the current world order. Today it was the Prime Minister of Japan, a woman named Takaichi. I learned much about Japan’s current global initiatives to face the burgeoning global chaos. She fiercely challenges the UN itself concerning its own flaws. I see her as a visionary who won’t “hide her light under a bushel”. She values the UN but claims that it is time for it to be remediated not dissolved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43g4KiVuMqk