Embracing hereness

We all feel it — a sense of loneliness, despair, and malaise in our society. People find it hard to get out of bed and go to work, most notably at schools, hospitals and other public systems. Smiles and nods on the street are sometimes met with confusion. And social media rants about “the other” are rampant.

Our loss of humanness seems inevitable — that somehow the end times are coming.

But perhaps this loneliness is manufactured, and there is an exploitative and deliberate intervention into who we are — that there are forces trying to tear us apart.

Canadian writer Naomi Klein (No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything) and Winnipeg-born author and filmmaker Astra Taylor (The Age of Insecurity) push back against the forces which would want us to collapse and relinquish all hope in their collaborative book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. “The mayhem now being unleashed online and in our lives is anything but inevitable,” the pair writes.

Part history, part exposé on unbridled oligarchical capitalism and totalitarianism, Klein and Taylor endeavour to make sense of the new ilk of fascism we see around us. The new fascism, what the pair dub “end times fascism,” refers to an ideological stance founded on the sacrifice of our species anchored in evangelical, tech bro and ultra-rich circles that have migrated towards each other in a perverse marriage.

Governments across the world, and most especially the Trump regime in the U.S., have aligned themselves with the religious right (content on ushering in the end times) and the tech oligarchs (intent on destroying Earth for the creation of their bunkered intergalactic utopias) to create a front fundamentally hostile to our species and our planet.

For Klein and Taylor, end time fascism “is a crisis of rampant impunity of concentrated power and wealth” coupled with our addiction to apps, phones and fabricated narratives that pit each other against ourselves. We are led to believe the end of the world is inevitable and there’s nothing we can do about it. Greed, messianic beliefs and unlawfulness are the norm, crippling Earth’s systems, destroying our connection with each other and clouding our memory and understanding that we belong.

In End Times Fascism, the oligarchs are named: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos, to list just a few. As Klein and Taylor reveal, there is an elite group of thugs, messiahs and unhinged leaders who gather often and are explicit on FOX News, Steve Bannon’s podcast and in the commons about their intent. And we only have to look at the unbridled growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and resource-sucking data centres as evidence of how reckless this class of billionaire bandits is.

Klein and Taylor expertly explain the impact of this lawlessness: “AI is only possible because of the mass theft of the commons, from the pillaging of art and culture and the scraping of our personal data and social media posts to train its models, to the huge amounts of energy, water, and minerals consumed to build and run the supercomputers.”

We are being duped and exploited. Earth is being taken from us while we play Candy Crush, bet on NFL football and verbally assault our neighbours on Facebook.

The malaise deliberately created by religious fanatics, psychotic billionaires and evil politicians is pervasive and needs to be challenged at every level. Leaning on a rich mountain of theory, the authors conceptualize this time we live in well: “Totalitarianism, (Hannah) Arendt’s memorable phrase, is ‘organized loneliness.’”

Organized loneliness — say that three times out loud.

This band of fascists wants us to feel alone, helpless and desperate. These are ingredients to their hold on wealth, capital and global resources.

And so what can we do? Klein and Taylor point to the antidote to fascism — hereness. It’s the notion that everyone and everything has the right to live well on Earth, the central tenet being that we live on the best planet and that it belongs to everyone. And as the authors put forth, “We are convinced that our collective safety will come only when our elites are forced to imagine living and surviving here, with the rest of us.”

And this means a check on wealth — creating limits of how rich people can become. It means regulating and ensuring the public owns AI, and nurturing communities founded on love, belonging and shared prosperity. From New York City, Minneapolis and Memphis, the authors point to hopeful examples.

There is a farmers’ market at the end of this reviewer’s street. Twice a week, the community gathers to check in, to buy produce from local suppliers, listen to local musicians, looking each other in the eyes for connection.

At the other end of the street there are three schools where families develop powerful bonds with each other.

In these spaces, we are not alone — there is hereness. These spaces on our planet are the antidote to those who wish to destroy us. Let’s double down on these, protect our kids and our home and ensure everyone has the means to a decent life.

Rather than organized loneliness, let’s bet on intentional, inclusive hereness. End Times Facism is a handbook for hope, connection and human flourishing.

Matt Henderson is superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division.