Astra Taylor

When I titled my book "Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone" I really did not anticipate how hard that phrase would eventually hit.

If the AI bubble bursts, "we need a people-first bailout," says writer @astra.bsky.social.

"The robots aren't inevitably coming. The point is that the bosses have a drive which is to deskill and devalue and dehumanize our labor." Naomi and I had a lot of fun at this event with @novaramedia.com hosted by the inimitable Ash Sarkar www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKGx...

good stuff

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

MAGA having a normal one over on the Twitter machine

It really is nice to be pleasantly surprised. I was absolutely ready to spend the night doomscrolling.

One benefit of holding leaders accountable for crimes is that if Flávio Bolsonaro tries to overturn this election, he knows exactly where he’d end up. In prison, next to his father.

Here’s something you should know about minks: They have lungs and airways remarkably similar on a cellular level to those of people. They’ve spread flus and infected humans before with COVID-19. Right now, bird flu is spreading on a Utah farm filled with thousands of them… 🧵

gift link to transcript/audio formats! www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

So good to talk to Charlie, who is brilliantly doing his part to puncture the AI bubble (both its financial and marketing/mythological manifestations)

Fake ladies and real threats - Brazil is on the front lines of the technofascist wars. Pay attention... @astra.bsky.social @democracynow.org

Not good!

Huge follow-up reporting to my scoop: The Guardian confirmed America Next—the conservative nonprofit founded by Bobby Jindal that was offering students $ to disrupt El-Sayed events—paid a firm registered to Tommy Teepell’s dad Timmy $250k for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed.

Thanks so much to @maddow.bsky.social for having me on to talk EARLY VOTE, No Kings, and our quest to get answers from Meta 👇

On Monday, Peter Thiel gives his the final installment of his Antichrist lecture series at a Masonic lodge in #Nashville. Across town, I'll decode his Antichrist obsession in a church full of activists. Why is the #Palantir billionaire so obsessed with the 👿? Sneak preview:

I started to read @naomiaklein.bsky.social and @astra.bsky.social’s new book, and it turns out to be exactly about this (👆) and the perfect thing for my European friends. I recommend it to all of you.

Holy moly did Aaron Sorkin write this or is this real life?? Treat yourself and watch the whole thing. I want to watch these kinds of interactions for the next 6 years on the national stage. We've got to do our part to help get Abdul to the Senate.

every democratic member of congress should be giving meta hell right now, and every democratic state government needs to be announcing investigations for election interference — these were early voting events

#nokings in Burlington NC today So proud of Alamance County, the Alamance Hour of Action (40 weekly actions this year!) and @alamanceresists.bsky.social If you’d have asked me in 2020 if this place could do this, I’d have laughed. But some great & talented organizers organized …and here we are!

What a coincidence that TikTok, partly owned by the pro-Trump oligarch Ellison family, shut down the account for a critical documentary of pro-Trump oligarch Elon Musk. </s>

Whether it was the insistence that Thiel is just trolling, or the incredulity that Trump would actually interfere in elections, or the apparent ignorance that fascism is a *right-wing* project, this interview was a trip. As comedy, it's gold. www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

Let’s learn from past crashes and be ready w bold transformative demands. No AI bail outs. No impunity.

Fascinating tidbit in this interview with former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), he says that Texas Republicans anti-transgender ads aren't "resonating." "What Republicans are talking about is just not what the swing voter is really interested in." www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic...

bravo

Hundreds showed up tonight at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis for a rally to support Rep. Ilhan Omar after her DC home was searched by federal agents this morning. The Department of Justice says it was "part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation".

How to defeat tech billionaire power? Look at Solano County. When billionaires invaded their community with plans to build a "tech utopia," Democrats AND Republicans banded together to fight back. In a triumph of local democracy, they stopped the project...for now. 🎁 www.wsj.com/us-news/sili...

Excellent piece, and ends with a quote from John Kenneth Galbraith: “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” Sums up a lot of what @astra.bsky.social have been writing about in ETF... www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/o...

My god. A Virginia data center ran backup diesel generators full blast for 24 hours, creating a giant cloud of toxic smoke that choked its human neighbors. The government claimed there was nothing they could do.

I got to talk to @tajjaisen.bsky.social for this piece! I just watched a man flinch as I told him that the price of Mark B. Smith's EXIT STALIN is $49.99! The timing is uncanny! (Here's hoping publishers are reading this and thinking about how to do something, anything, because NF *is* in trouble!)

If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

‘If we’re looking for soldiers goose-stepping down the streets, that’s not the fascism of our era. We’re in an era of automated weaponry and influencers. This is not the Fordist fascism of yore.’ @astra.bsky.social on fascism in the time of AI, on the podcast: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Some thoughts I shared while in the UK, where Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has acknowledged that anti-genocide protestors "were right" but activists are still serving long prison terms for stepping in where their government failed. @astra.bsky.social

On the podcast: @naomiaklein.bsky.social and @astra.bsky.social join @adamshatz.bsky.social to discuss what fascism looks like in the age of AI, and why we have reached a point where tech billionaires declare they are ‘unapologetically on Team Humanity’. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

"Fascism surges in moments of real material crisis." Another (maybe the best) reason to design for reliable recovery, not just immediate safety.

As Churchill famously said, we shall debate fascist semantics in the New York Times, we shall debate it on Channel 4 News, we shall debate it on the BBC (coming soon)... We shall never surrender! @astra.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/cd0kC...

Sally Hayden is in conversation with Naomi Klein & @astra.bsky.social re END TIMES FASCISM: And the Fight for the Living World 🔥 Then, Sally’s touring the US with her book, This is Also a Love Story: Searching for Good in a Divided World. If she’s at a bookstore near you—go! I wish I could!

Could the bipartisan AI revolt help us prevent end-times fascism? Here's what my friends Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think.

Wow what a nice review.

I just saw a film about the AI-enabled apocalypse. Only it's not science fiction. It's not even in the future. It's in the present. The film is called NAZA. See it. @theguardian.com @us.theguardian.com youtu.be/98xLCdc7t7E

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/b...

A few days late on the draw, but I'm still totally floored by this. True thanks to all who have read, spread the word, shaped our thinking, or put up with me when I'm deep in the writing zone. And the biggest huzzah to my amazing co-author and book tour buddy @naomiaklein.bsky.social

My broader take on all three German state elections and why focusing only on the success of the far right is both incomplete and self-defeating.

The ‘End Times’ Fascists Want Doomsday. Can They Be Stopped? Another great conversation, as @mehdirhasan.bsky.social interviews @naomiaklein.bsky.social & @astra.bsky.social zeteo.com/p/naomi-klei...

AI is the cancer

Forget grandiose talk of curing cancer - this is what AI is actually doing to healthcare. In the words of one cardiologist: “it’s bots fighting bots, agents fighting agents, a horrible dystopic future nobody wants to live in.”

Awful: Trump's Office of "Remigration" has just been exposed making sordid payments to authoritarian governments to take third-country deportees, leading to serious abuses. Dems tell me they will try to defund the agency if they win power. They should. 1/ New piece: newrepublic.com/article/2157...