Book Club Night Kit

End Times Fascism

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Cozy night

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor trace a strange shared conviction running through doomsday preppers, bunker-building tech billionaires, and hardline nationalists: that the world is ending and only some people deserve to make it through. It is short, bracing, and written with enough humanity that a group can sit with it together instead of alone.

The World Is Probably Fine. Come Have Stew.

We are reading Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's End Times Fascism, a short, sharp book about people who have decided it is all over. Come sit in a warm kitchen, eat something soft, and talk about staying.

Reading level: Moderate

Best for: A club that likes big ideas but wants to leave feeling closer to each other, not bleaker.

Discussion

Warm-up

1.Before we get into any of it: where did you read this, and did you need to put it down and do something comforting partway through? Tell us what that something was.
2.What is one small, ordinary thing in your life that makes you feel like the world is going to keep going, a bus route, a neighbor, a bakery, a group chat?

Digging in

1.The book sits with people who are quietly convinced everything is ending. Was there a moment where you recognized a version of that feeling in yourself, and how did it feel to see it described out loud?
2.Klein and Taylor write about the fantasy of escape, of leaving and being saved elsewhere. Have you ever daydreamed an escape plan, and what does it say about what you were tired of?
3.This is a book about who gets counted as worth saving. Who came to mind for you while reading, the specific people you would not want to leave behind?
4.The authors keep circling back to staying put and tending what is here. What is something you have chosen to stay with and care for even when leaving would have been easier?

Going deep

1.Without giving away where the authors land, the book seems to be arguing for something warmer than survival. What did you personally feel invited toward by the end, and did you want to accept the invitation?
2.Reading this may have changed something small in how you move through your week. Is there anything you are doing differently, or want to, even if it is very modest and unglamorous?

On the table & to sip

To eat

Big pot of white bean and greens stew with torn bread

Pantry food, the kind you make from what is in the cupboard. It quietly answers the bunker-hoarding impulse with a pot meant to be shared, and it can simmer while people arrive.

Cheese, pickles, and preserves board

All the preserving and putting-by that the book's preppers do out of fear, done here out of pleasure. Easy to assemble, invites grazing and lingering.

Skillet apple crumble with whipped cream

One pan, warm, a little indulgent, and communal by design. A gentle counterweight to a heavy read, served while the harder questions are on the table.

To sip

Hot spiced cider with orange and clove (no alcohol)

Non-alcoholic, warm in the hands, and built from keepable things (dried spice, stored fruit) that the book's themes of stockpiling turn on their head.

Mulled red wine, kept low and slow on the stove

Slightly indulgent and old-fashioned, the drink of people hunkering down together rather than apart.

Whiskey and honey hot toddy

A restorative, small-batch comfort for the guest who found the book genuinely rattling.