NAOMI KLEIN: America's Rapid Descent Into Bunker-Hunkering 'End Times Fascism'

Finding truth in a time of bipartisan, corruption, lies and the genocide of reality.

May 18, 2025

"The purpose of this constant deception is not to make people believe a lie but to ensure that no one believes anything anymore. People who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between good and evil. And such a people deprived of the ability to think and judge are — without knowing it and are without wanting it — completely subordinate to the government lies.
“You can do whatever you want with people like that.”
— Hannah Arendt

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (5/18/25)

As brutally perverse and twisted as fascism is, the iteration rapidly taking form in the United States is a whole new darker phase. Fueled by mind-boggling oligarch fortune, Nazi end-times ideology and a survivalist bunker-hunkering philosophy orbiting Medieval-like corporate city states such as Elon Musk’s new Starbase city, the “end times fascism” Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor lay out in their recent Guardian piece below reveals sometime new.

As Klein explains in the Democracy Now! interview below:

“It sees the nation and the in-group as being inside the bunker and then it's exiling the out-group to all of these lawless territories.”

Truly, it’s something even darker and more dystopian than the earlier fascism of a Hitler or Mussolini. It is a view grounded in an apocalyptic end-time view of global collapse.

Combine the morally-dead ethno-state philosophical nirvana of fascists like Elon Musk and Peter Theil with reality-shredding AI and drone-enforced 24/7 mass surveillance and we are facing the reality of a wealthy-dominated world desiccated of humanity. And it is coming down on us faster than most people can grasp.

So fast, in fact, all may be lost in less than a decade.

How to respond

The first step to addressing a problem is to identify and — no matter how ugly — acknowledging its presence. And when the problem is a crisis in motion, the time to act is now. All of us — in whatever way possible — need to understand what is now in action and resist whenever possible in ways small and large.

Where to begin in countering such darkness"?

Klein observes, “I think that if we have the courage to really look at the bleakness of what they believe — an apocalyptic future — then we have our work cut out for us. Of being the people who actually believe in this realm, in this world, in the beauty of creation and in each other.”

We need to understand the nature of the attack we are under and respond with compassion for each other and toughening up to defeat the evil upon us.

Naomi Klein On Trump, Musk, Far Right & "End Times Fascism"

Democracy Now! (5/5/25)

An alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley oligarchs has given rise to a form of "end times fascism," says journalist Naomi Klein, who details in a recent essay co-authored with Astra Taylor how many wealthy elites are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. Klein says that while billionaires dream of escaping to bunkered enclaves or even to space, President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders are turning their countries into militarized fortress states to keep out immigrants from abroad and ramp up authoritarian control domestically.

21-minute video

Despite Biden Cover-up, Independent Journalists Find The Name Of Israeli Soldier Who Murdered American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh — As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel's killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh.
We get response when we speak with two members of Abu Akleh's family — her brother Anton and her niece Lina — as well as the documentary's executive producer Dion Nissenbaum and Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan. [NOTE: Be sure to pay attention to what has recently happened to Abu Akleh’s producer. — MT] Link to 14-minute video

The Rise Of End Times Fascism

We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.

By Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor
The Guardian (4/15/25)

The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island.

Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently being challenged in court.

Now, all of a sudden, this once-fringe network of corporate secessionists finds itself knocking on open doors at the dead center of global power.

The first sign that fortunes were shifting came in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands. The trial balloon barely registered at the time, lost in the daily deluge of outrageous claims. Since the new administration took office, however, would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality.

“The energy in DC is absolutely electric,” Trey Goff, the chief of staff of Próspera, recently enthused after a trip to Capitol Hill. Legislation paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states should be complete by the end of the year, he claims.

Inspired by a warped reading of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.

One might assume that it is contradictory for Trump, elected on a flag-waving “America first” platform, to lend credence to this vision of sovereign territories ruled over by billionaire god-kings. And much has been made of the colorful flame wars between the Maga mouth-piece Steve Bannon, a proud nationalist and populist, and the Trump-allied billionaires he has attacked as “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being” – let alone the nation state. And conflicts inside Trump’s awkward, jerry-rigged coalition certainly exist, most recently reaching a boiling point over tariffs. Still, the underlying visions might not be as incompatible as they first appear.

The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.

That is not so far away from the more mass-market vision of fortressed nations that has gripped the hard right globally, from Italy to Israel, Australia to the United States: in a time of ceaseless peril, openly supremacist movements in these countries are positioning their relatively wealthy states as armed bunkers. These bunkers are brutal in their determination to expel and imprison unwanted humans (even if that requires indefinite confinement in extra-national penal colonies from Manus Island to Guantánamo Bay) and equally ruthless in their willingness to violently claim the land and resources (water, energy, critical minerals) they deem necessary to weather the coming shocks.

Though it builds on enduring rightwing tendencies ... we simply have not faced such a powerful apocalyptic strain in government before

Interestingly, at a time when previously secular Silicon Valley elites are suddenly finding Jesus, it is noteworthy that both of these visions – the priority-pass corporate state and the mass-market bunker nation – share a great deal in common with the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical Rapture, when the faithful will supposedly be lifted up to a golden city in heaven, while the damned are left to endure an apocalyptic final battle down here on earth.

If we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism.

Reflecting on his childhood under Mussolini, the novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco observed in a celebrated essay that fascism typically has an “Armageddon complex” – a fixation on vanquishing enemies in a grand final battle. But European fascism of the 1930s and 1940s also had a horizon: a vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified. Not today.

Alive to our era of genuine existential danger – from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI – but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future. The average voter is offered only remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others.

End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy.

And so we have the Trump administration’s dedication to releasing its steady stream of real and AI-generated propaganda designed solely for these pornographic purposes. Footage of shackled immigrants being loaded on to deportation flights, set to the sounds of clanking chains and locking cuffs, which the official White House X account labeled “ASMR”, a reference to audio designed to calm the nervous system. Or the same account sharing news of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident who was active in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, with the gloating words: “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” Or any number of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s sadism-chic photo ops (atop a horse at the US-Mexican border, in front of a crowded prison cell in El Salvador, slinging a machine gun while arresting immigrants in Arizona …).

The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

Possibilities for resistance

It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line. …

Link to story

America’s Fascist Buddy…

Yes, Israel Really IS As Evil As It Looks

“It really is that simple. Israel really is that bad. And so is anyone who supports it.”

By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter (5/7/25)

Israeli snipers routinely, deliberately shoot children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel created an AI system for the IDF to target suspected Hamas fighters when they go home to their families and mockingly called it “Where’s Daddy?”, because they are killing the fighters’ children.

Israel has targeted healthcare facilities and ambulances in Gaza hundreds upon hundreds of times. They’ve been documented entering the hospitals they attack and systematically destroying individual pieces of medical equipment in order to make them unusable.

IDF soldiers constantly post photos and videos to their social media accounts showing themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children.

7-minute video

The IDF has admitted to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces.

After destroying buildings full of civilians, the IDF has been known to send in sniper drones to pick off the survivors, including children.

Targeting journalists and aid workers

Israel has murdered a historically unprecedented number of journalists in its Gaza onslaught, and has been knowingly attacking humanitarian aid workers.

Israeli soldiers rape and torture Palestinian prisoners to death, including doctors. On the rare occasions that anyone is ever arrested for these abuses, Israelis have riots — not to oppose the abuses, but to oppose the arrests of the perpetrators.

And now Israel is openly declaring its agenda to ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza Strip of Palestinians, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying the plan is for Gaza’s population to be “concentrated” at the southern end of the enclave and pressured to leave while the rest of Gaza is “totally destroyed”.

“The population of Gaza will be concentrated from the Morag Corridor southwards. The rest of the Strip will be empty,” Smotrich said, adding, “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

A poll released earlier this year found that only three percent of Jewish Israelis oppose the planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza on moral grounds. That’s right: three percent. Three out of every one hundred people.

I got into a back and forth with a liberal Israel supporter the other day whose entire argument basically boiled down to “Oh so you’re claiming Israel is just doing terrible things to civilians on purpose, just because they’re evil??”

And, I mean, yes. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but yes. Israel is evil. It’s a deeply evil country full of deeply evil people. Again: three percent.

My interlocutor was attempting to dismiss the idea of Israelis being horrible people as a legitimate explanation for their actions in Gaza, meaning Israel’s actions could only be explained as rational responses to unfortunate provocations by the Palestinians (who he of course had no trouble believing were bloodthirsty savages). But the evidence says Israel really is as evil as it looks.

As we have discussed previously, this isn’t because there’s anything inherently evil in Judaism or Jewishness which would cause a state led by Jews to behave in this way. Rather, it’s because modern Israel has from its very inception been premised on the idea of a tiered society where one ethnic group dominates the others, making injustice and inequality an inherent part of the system. Israelis are indoctrinated from birth into accepting this unjust apartheid framework as normal, which necessarily entails indoctrinating them into accepting the dehumanization and abuse of the disempowered group.

If you have a society whose populace are systematically indoctrinated into accepting apartheid and abuse as normal and good, you are inevitably going to wind up with a society full of sociopaths. That’s who’s going to be casting the votes, serving in the military, working in the media, and working in the government. It’s not caused by their ethnicity or their religion — it’s caused by the perverse nature of the apartheid state in which they live.

Many westerners tend to give Israel the benefit of the doubt because they assume from the beginning that this can’t be as simple as it looks and the abuse cannot be as one-sided as it appears to be. They assume this because western news media and politicians are constantly churning out narratives to make Israel look as innocent as possible and Palestinians look as guilty as possible, but in reality this really is exactly what it looks like: Israelis murdering and starving a civilian population in order to steal their land.

It really is that simple. Israel really is that bad. And so is anyone who supports it.

Story and 6-minute video

“The IDF has admitted to running a popular Telegram channel called ‘72 Virgins’ which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces.”

All One Needs To Know About Israel

3%

Only 3% of Israelis oppose the bombing, slaughter, mass rape and sniping toddlers in the head.

3%

That figure tells you all you need to know about Israel and it's willing funder, weapons supplier and diplomatic front man -- the USA.

3%

— Mark Taylor, DeMOCKracy.ink

PEVERSION: IDF Soldiers Drop Blue Bomb in Gaza as Part of Gender Reveal Celebration — As thousands of Palestinian children across Gaza face starvation two months into Israel's most recent complete blockade on humanitarian aid into the enclave, members of the Israel Defense Forces allegedly used one recent attack on a residential area as a prop in their celebration of one soldier's impending fatherhood.In a video posted to social media on May 5—with the soldiers reportedly sharing it on their own accounts—the IDF members can be heard cheering and laughing as a building in a civilian area is leveled by an Israeli bombing, leaving blue smoke rising from the rubble in the distance. The smoke signified that the soldier's expected child is a boy—and the troops, members of the military that's often called by Israel and its allies "the most moral army in the world," gave no indication that they were thinking of any civilians who could have been in the bombed area as they laughed loudly at the "gender reveal." … Link to story

“There’s not a single Democratic Party official, powerbroker, elite, pundit, or politician who has faced any negative political, financial, or social status consequence from their participation in the decisions that resulted in their party losing two elections to Donald Trump.”
— David Sirota