Naomi Klein: ‘Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist’

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Naomi Klein: ‘Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist’

The Guardian · 1 hour ago

Author and activist Naomi Klein has released a new book, End Times Fascism, co-written with Astra Taylor, which argues that the world's super-rich are exploiting climate breakdown and financial instability to entrench their own power in a "post-democratic" future. In an interview, Klein describes how extreme concentrations of wealth produce a "deranging" psychological effect that fosters a sense of supremacy among the ultra-rich, who she says have grown shameless about openly discussing plans that would once have been kept private.

The book opens with a scene from Davos in 2026, where Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff pitch a gated "paradise city" called New Gaza, built on the ruins of the territory following Donald Trump's announcement of a Board of Peace for Gaza's reconstruction. Klein situates this alongside a global pattern of authoritarian tactics, including anarcho-libertarian economics in Argentina, press suppression in Russia, democratic erosion in Hungary, anti-immigrant politics in Italy, and Islamophobia in India, arguing that today's fascism is distinctive in actively courting apocalyptic crises to hasten a world where only a wealthy few survive and prosper.

  • Naomi Klein's new book examines how billionaires exploit crises for power
  • Co-written with Astra Taylor, it opens with a Davos "New Gaza" pitch
  • Klein argues extreme wealth breeds a shameless, supremacist mindset

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