Writer and activist Naomi Klein has spent decades examining the machinery of power—from neoliberalism's grip on the global economy to the digital world's corrosion of shared reality. Now, in her first co-authored book, she and filmmaker Astra Taylor are training their scrutiny on tech billionaires and the apocalyptic vision they are actively constructing. The book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World, arrives on 15 September 2026 with an urgent warning: a coalition of religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech oligarchs is hastening world collapse while preparing to survive it alone.
The book opens not with metaphor but with documented reality. At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff stood on a mountainside describing a gated paradise city—a vision of wealth concentration so brazen that Klein saw it as emblematic of a new shamelessness. That same gathering witnessed Kushner unveiling his vision for Gaza reconstruction, a scheme that has yielded nothing substantial in the months since, yet signalled something far more consequential: what Klein calls the announcement of a privatised United Nations.
Speaking from her study in British Columbia, Klein articulated the psychological toll of extreme wealth concentration.
"I think we understand that wealth compounds, right? Certainly rich people understand that wealth compounds. But I don't feel like we spend a lot of time really thinking about the implications of what it means for that much wealth to be compounded, and what that does psychologically. Part of the new shamelessness we're seeing is just what happens when this amount of financial, mediagenic, technological and military weaponry is concentrated in the hands of this very small, unaccountable group of people. They stop trying to seduce us in any way."
Klein has maintained a calm, curious demeanor throughout her career—from her 1999 breakthrough No Logo, which identified harms of neoliberalism not yet fully visible, through her 2023 work Doppelgänger, which examined how the digital world fractures our connection to reality and one another. Yet the message she delivers has only darkened. The world she and Taylor describe in their new book is one where authoritarianism's components are visible everywhere: anarcho-libertarian economics in Argentina, the destruction of press freedom in Russia, the erosion of democratic institutions in Hungary, anti-immigrant neofascism in Italy, the weaponisation of trans identity by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Islamophobia in Narendra Modi's India.
But this fascism differs fundamentally from its historical predecessors. Its architects are not merely seizing power; they are actively willing an apocalypse—a cascade of interconnected catastrophes driven by climate change and financial chaos—to hasten a post-democratic world in which only the wealthy few survive to flourish.
How did Klein and Taylor develop this analysis?
The project began as an essay that circulated widely online.
"Astra and I knew there was a lot more reporting to do, but on a personal level, did we want to spend the next year in the minds of these people, in these cultures? Then Astra said, 'I'm down the rabbit hole, I'm gonna be listening to these guys anyway. So I may as well feel like I'm doing something about it.' This is the reason it's the first book I've co-written. When you go to dark, scary places, it's nice to bring a friend."Taylor, herself a writer, activist, and documentary filmmaker, founded the Debt Collective, an experiment in building structured, quasi-unionised solidarity around personal debt, with long-term goals of abolishing student tuition fees, nationalising healthcare, and building tenant power.
The book introduces readers to religious fundamentalists, Christian Zionists, and Christian Nationalists in the United States preparing for the second coming, alongside a portrait of what Klein and Taylor term a "bunkered state"—one shaped by climate-related disasters, a militarised anti-immigrant apparatus in the form of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a politics constructed from false promises and misinformation. But the section that proves most chilling examines tech billionaires, whose apocalypse fantasies are rooted not in faith or ideology but in what they frame as rational calculation: how to maintain their position when civilisation collapses. They would genuinely rather reign in hell than share in heaven, and they possess the capital to make it happen.
Where does this trajectory come from?
Klein has tracked these patterns for decades.
"These are trends I've been following for a long time. The privatised enclave born of shock, of disaster, I saw when I was reporting from Iraq. There's the image of the Green Zone, this Emerald City run by the US in the middle of Baghdad, built by Halliburton and all of these private contractors, with the power to appoint a viceroy. In the final parts of The Shock Doctrine [2007], I talk about how these contractors migrated [from Iraq] to Hurricane Katrina, and the idea that these climate disasters are their next growth frontier."New Orleans became known as "Baghdad on the Bayou" as the same constellation of firms—Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater—materialised to profit from catastrophe.
Yet Klein cautions against the comfort of historical precedent.
"I have found the image of a spiral really useful, in terms of how to make sense of the fact that our era is both familiar and different. The thing about a spiral is that you're going round, but you're not going to the same place. If the spiral is pointing down, it's deeper, it's tighter, it's carrying more velocity, it's carrying more force, it's carrying more heat, it's carrying more violence."The current moment differs from past crises because disasters now arrive with such frequency that society exists in a permanent state of shock and disorientation. The status quo is not static; it deteriorates continuously.
How have billionaires' public personas shifted?
During the neoliberal era—roughly from the end of the Cold War through the Covid-19 pandemic—the super-rich staged elaborate seduction rituals. At Davos, Aspen, and similar gatherings, billionaires promised to cure disease and fund schools through innovative mechanisms, asking the public not to fear their wealth but to see it as a new form of redistribution for collective benefit. Jeff Bezos renamed a Seattle stadium the Climate Pledge Arena and distributed Earth prizes. Elon Musk positioned himself as a saviour figure, rushing to rescue Puerto Rico, trapped miners, and other causes in need of superhero intervention.
That performance has evaporated.
"We're not dealing with stupid people who don't understand climate change. We're dealing with people who know very clearly what it means to wire together artificial intelligence."Musk's data centres require gargantuan energy and water consumption, destroying air and sound quality in surrounding areas—all to power Grok, his artificial intelligence system. The climate pledges have vanished, replaced by performed nihilism about averting climate crisis coupled with determination to expand data infrastructure.
In January 2026, Kushner presented a Gaza reconstruction vision at Davos that required Hamas disarmament and envisioned phased rebuilding beginning in Rafah and moving northward. The proposal, tied to Trump's newly launched "Board of Peace," was framed as a long-term redevelopment scheme requiring at least $25 billion and many years to implement. Yet seven months later, it has delivered nothing substantial—a pattern Klein sees as symptomatic of billionaire indifference to actual outcomes, provided their power and wealth remain secure.
The speed with which previously Democratic-leaning billionaires aligned with Trump in 2024 was striking.
"I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg's phase of seeming to care deeply about democracy and climate change was real. He reincarnates as whatever is good for his business. Figures like Thiel and Musk, where there is real ideology there, are easier to understand than figures like Bezos and Zuckerberg, where it really does feel like there's no there there, they're just uninteresting guys that ended up massively rich."Many of these men were forged in the dotcom boom, when they were worshipped as gods and pictured on Time magazine covers seated in gold thrones. There is an element of ego rage—a sense that society is ungrateful for their existence.
Ultimately, Klein and Taylor conclude that wealth itself has deranging effects.
"Wealth has its own deranging effects. It almost inevitably turns you into a supremacist because humans are creatures of story and you need a story to rationalise, why you? Why do you have so much in a time of so much want and need? And the only possible story that's available is that there's something about you that justifies it."
What evidence of this supremacist ideology appears in billionaire spaces?
In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Peter Thiel hosted panel discussions at the Faena Hotel in Miami titled "the enemy," naming sustainable development goals, "precautionary principles," and "social responsibility" as those foes. The event concluded with an "apocalypse ball" fancy dress party where attendees wore costumes depicting a "doctor of eugenics," a "Haitian chef with a bloodied cat toy hanging out of his apron" (referencing the Springfield immigrant pet-eating hoax that spread in 2024 and was repeated by both Trump and JD Vance), and couples wearing pagers as a reference to Israel's murderous attack in Lebanon.
Thiel has been explicitly anti-democracy for years, writing in 2009,
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."A new goading quality now characterises billionaire talking points—explicit eugenicism, Islamophobia, and raw delight in the prospect of artificial intelligence eliminating jobs. It is as though they are daring the public to rebel, simply to prove that rebellion is futile.
Research has begun documenting the material consequences of billionaire wealth concentration. According to Greenpeace, the super-rich cause nearly $1 trillion in annual climate damage through ownership-based emissions, with the top 1 per cent responsible for 40 per cent of such emissions globally. This concentration of destructive power mirrors the concentration of political and technological power Klein and Taylor examine.
What resistance is emerging?
Klein does not counsel despair. It remains within collective reach to build a wealth disarmament movement or a tech disarmament movement. She points to the Pearson brothers, KeShaun and Justin, who are fighting Musk's Colossus 2 data centre in Memphis.
"The way they so consciously root their struggle in the history of the civil rights movement, and the environmental justice movement in Memphis, going back to the formerly enslaved people who built Boxtown. This is where MLK was murdered, assassinated after marching with the sanitation workers in Memphis."KeShaun Pearson leads Memphis Community Against Pollution, which has achieved major victories against oil pipelines and the industrial release of carcinogenic chemicals, and is now mobilising against data centres. Justin is running for Congress.
In End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World, Klein and Taylor invoke Walter Benjamin's concept of "jetztzeit"—literally "now time"—a moment so pregnant with revolutionary urgency that it marshals the energy of all movements that preceded it. It is poetic but also literal and observable. To oppose this new fascist strain, society must act with unprecedented speed and force.
"I don't tend to use this language, I try to be measured, but I think I've earned the right to escalate. The moment we're in, people are really mad and however mad you are, it's not enough. Because there is something so profound about no longer believing in the future, about seeing no value in our shared home, in the natural world. They're traitors to creation."
Klein's anger is rooted in the specific and the intimate.
"I've made a choice to live very close to nature in a pretty wild part of British Columbia. On a dark night, it's a blanket of stars. And now we see so many of what I call Elon's space bugs [Starlink satellites] just crawling through the sky. He wants to increase that a hundredfold. Who said he could? Who gave him that right? That's a place where I find my anger. I get really angry about the stars. I get really angry about the orcas. I get really angry about Gaza. Other people will find their anger somewhere else. We have to find our places of deepest love and fight like hell."
What happens next?
End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World arrives on 15 September 2026. According to the New York Times, the book argues that a coalition including religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalists, and tech oligarchs is actively hastening world collapse. CNN aired a segment on 16 September 2026 featuring Klein and Taylor's warnings that these groups are accelerating catastrophe. Additional media appearances and book promotion are expected to continue through September and beyond.
The book's release comes amid broader cultural reckoning with tech power. Documentary filmmaker Matt Shea has examined how crypto billionaires influence politics and challenge democracy, while Hollywood prepares major films examining Silicon Valley's power, even as tech companies rapidly acquire control over studios themselves. Meanwhile, research continues documenting the disproportionate climate damage caused by billionaire-owned assets, and advocates push for taxing extreme wealth to fund social security and reduce inequality.
