Inside this week's long reads

Support the Guardian Support us   Fund independent journalism Fascists in space: Naomi Klein on taking back the future of our planet In this week’s newsletter: how to recapture our world from the oligarchs and end times fascists This newsletter is supported by reMarkable

Illustration: Sophy Hollington/The Guardian The end times fascists are plotting their escape from our world. Our mission is clear | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor An unholy alliance is working toward an apocalyptic future from which only a chosen few will emerge unscathed. It’s becoming imperative to stop them. Photograph: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Netflix/Fantorangen/Ludo Studio/Zach Hyman/ ZUMA Press, Inc./Apple TV Faster! Louder! Brighter! How the attention economy overwhelmed children’s TV | Natalia Kucirkova It’s not just screen time: the problem with children’s media is that it has become relentlessly hectic, loud and bright, which interferes with learning.

Inside this week’s long read This week we published an extract from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s new book, about end times fascism. We asked Naomi about how we can direct anger into action. When both precarity and anger benefit the neofascist right, how do we channel our own anger to combat them? We need to remember that people have a right to be angry at systems that are failing them, and increased economic precarity is not a figment of their imagination. Our task is to direct these powerful, legitimate emotions at the systems responsible for the erosion of rights and living standards, while inviting people into collective struggle to change those cruel systems. For the invitation to be appealing, the cultures we build on the left have to be welcoming, and they have to offer opportunities for collective joy and catharsis. We have to act like we actually want to build diverse coalitions – which, let’s face it, the left does not always do. Do you worry about silos, about talking to your people? I do worry about it, but I see a lot of evidence that some of the old silos are breaking down. There is actually a huge amount of agreement across partisan lines about the fact that we do not want to live in a surveillance state, whether controlled by Palantir or Google. Most people don’t want their kids to be friends with chatbots either. Or to have a robot instead of a nurse. In my last book, Doppelganger, I wrote about communities being torn apart by battles over vaccines and the rights of trans people. Now many of these same communities are healing reuniting to fight proposed datacentres or Flock cameras. There are still disagreements, but a lot of people are deciding that the common ground is more important. Did you coin the term “end times fascism”? Does it mean you feel the destructive, growth-obsessed capitalists of our age constitute a political movement? I did coin the term but Astra Taylor and I have defined it together. It’s not a monolith or one single movement: fascism is always an alliance of often disparate forces deciding to make strategic common cause. In our book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, we show the points of unity between the main groups (those include an apocalyptic imaginary about the future; a willingness to rank human life and sort the chosen from the damned; and intense interest in bunkers of various kinds). But we also show where they are most in conflict, and how those conflicts can be deepened so that this nihilistic coalition can be successfully weakened. As people who are staunchly opposed to fascism and who firmly believe that we all have a right to a thriving future, our objective is not just to describe and define end times fascism. It’s to defeat it. And finally … if you had a bunker, what would it be like? I’d like to see a global movement of converting underground billionaire bunkers into mushroom farms. Join Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor on Monday 28 September to discuss the rise of ‘end times fascism’ and ask what it means for the future of democracy, equality and the planet itself, as explored in their new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. Book tickets here.

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This week’s audio long reads Democracy v the machine: the birth of the digital age and the warnings that were ignored The rubbishscapes of Essex: why our buried trash is back to haunt us ‘If you build something vastly smarter than you, it better be on your side’: can we stop AI from deceiving us? Listen to the Audio Long Read on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Guardian app

From the archive British National Ploughing Championships in Austrey, Britain 13 October 2018. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters Field of dreams: heartbreak and heroics at the World Ploughing Championships | November 2018 Some compare it to snooker, others to figure skating. But for those who have given their lives to competitive ploughing, it’s more than a sport, it’s a way of life. As summer gives way to autumn, this piece by Sophie Elmhirst is a rare treat. Al Jazeera journalist Wael Al-Dahdoud in Berlin, October 2024. Photograph: Steffen Roth www.steffenroth.com /The Guardian ‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh | October 2024 After his wife and two of his children were killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh became famous around the world for his decision to keep reporting. But this was just the start of his heartbreaking journey. Nesrine Malik spoke to him as he recovered in exile.

What else we’ve been reading “The left has an AI problem” is the kind of sentence that one might find in a hundred annoying Substack posts in any given week. However, Ben Tarnoff has written a Substack arguing exactly this – and, miracle of miracles, it’s not annoying at all. It’s well worth reading. David Wolf, editor James Meek’s latest piece on housing looks at the London borough of Southwark, where massive council blocks are being demolished and developers are muscling in. Meek attended housing crisis meetings and spoke to developers, before gliding along the walkways of the semi-abandoned Aylesbury estate on his bike to chat to residents. Clare Longrigg, deputy editor It was the long read contributor Andy Beckett who first put me on to the work of Alan Hollinghurst; he told me that he thought his acclaimed 2004 novel The Line of Beauty was the best depiction of England in the 1980s he had come across. I inhaled the book last year and am now reading Hollinghurt’s latest novel, Our Evenings, which – although it doesn’t quite have the Line of Beauty’s almost agonisingly perceptive style – is another delight. Yohann Koshy, deputy editor

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