Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Identifying and combating the opportunists hastening global breakdown. From two of the left’s sharpest thinkers, this inspired book maps the ideas common to three virulent strains of contemporary politics. Many religious “fanatics,” tech billionaires, and ethno-nationalists “are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating,” write Klein (The Shock Doctrine, 2007) and Taylor (Remake the World, 2021). “End timers” predict “only a small, deserving group of humans will survive” a chaotic future. If this apocalyptic worldview isn’t new, it’s “extraordinary” that doomsayers of the “new fascist right,” having capitalized on major crises, now steer numerous governments. Ethno-nationalists, the authors write, vilify people fleeing wars and other strife, “displacing the very real awareness that we are approaching planetary limits onto the world’s vulnerable.” Silicon Valley, courting President Trump, has “abandoned” green-friendly policies, building massive “fossil-fuel-burning data centers” for its “giant human elimination machine”: artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, extreme right-wingers now lead the Israeli police and the U.S. military, where their actions align with the outlook of the “messianic right.” These dire forces aren’t insurmountable, write Klein and Taylor. They find hopeful signs in Memphis, Tennessee, where activists oppose a data center, and Minneapolis, site of a 100,000-strong “anti-ICE general strike.” The authors propose additional ideas for fighting back; these are smart but familiar. With an eye toward “AI containment,” they’d “strictly regulate” tech and “redistribute” much of the wealth the industry generates. Backing taxes that would act as “robust controls on wealth,” they parry the argument that this would discourage innovation. Higher World War II-era taxes paid for “public research that produced transistors, microchips, satellites, and the start of the internet.” Righteously alarmed, the authors have given us a new way to grasp some of our biggest problems. An astute, original-minded analysis of the apocalyptic thinking that links tech, politics, and religion. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.