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HuffPost Exclusive: My Interview with Naomi Klein
I sat down with Naomi Klein to talk about her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This revelatory work belongs in that rarefied air with A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Witness to a Century by George Seldes.
Videography by HMS Media.
Here is some of the advance praise Naomi and The Shock Doctrine:
"Naomi Klein is an investigative reporter like no other. She roams the continents with eyes wide open and her brain operating at full speed, finding connections we never thought of, and patterns which eluded us. She shows us, in clear and elegant language, how catastrophes -- natural ones like Katrina, unnatural ones like war -- become opportunities for a savage capitalism, calling itself 'the free market,' to privatize everything in sight, bringing huge profits to some, misery for others. To ensure the safety of such a system, it becomes necessary to constrict freedom, to assault human rights. The torture chambers for some then match the torturing of the larger society. This is a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time." -- Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States.
"Naomi Klein is one of the most important new voices in American journalism today, as this book make clear. She has turned globalism inside out, and in so doing given all of us a new way of looking at our seemingly unending disaster in Iraq, and a new way of understanding why we got there. And she does it in a lucid, reader-friendly style that almost makes it fun to read." -- Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist
"Naomi Klein has written a brilliant, brave and terrifying book. It's nothing less than the secret history of what we call the 'Free Market..' It should be compulsory reading." -- Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
And this was my take on the book:
"This masterful book is a measured but furious call to arms. Naomi Klein is Antigone before the King, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. She has the audacity and the courage to chronicle the human costs of an ideology in which worshiping the markets is not enough; you must actually kill to feed them. Klein is the vanguard, the fire, the resistance and she challenges us not to join the suicide club that enables corporate cannibalism. A spectacular triumph."
So, what to do? Arundhati Roy points us home:
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them."
To read Arianna's take on Naomi's book, click here.
To see an exclusive clip from my upcoming film, War Inc., click here
To see the trailer for War Inc, click here.
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This mischaracterizes both Milton Friedman and the free market he advocated. It's not hard to discover that Friedman wanted people to be "Free to Choose" -- it is, after all, the title of one of his most popular books. His distrust of the government extended far beyond simply advocating lower taxes. He supported the decriminalization of drugs and prostitution, which is far from the Bush Administration. He also was highly critical of the dictatorship in Chile, and spoke there -- as he did elsewhere -- because he believed that giving people control over economic decisions was a step towards overall freedom.
Most galling, though, is the idea that he would somehow support military contractors making huge profits on the war in Iraq. In fact, Friedman opposed going to war in Iraq as well as corporate welfare.
Thank you.
i will purshase Naomi's book today...your research has shone a little light on a frightening but real political force in our world.
John...keep going.
Cusack briefly mentions Eisenhower and the military industrial complex(MIC)during this interview. A recent documentary, Why We Fight, looks deeper into that phrase
http://sonyclassics.com/whywefight/main.html
It turns out that Eisenhower had originally stated it as the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC), but shortened it to avoid offending those in congress with whom he worked closely. As individuals most congressmen are well intentioned and desire to represent their constituency. However, as power has increasingly concentrated into smaller circles these members of congress are paralyzed from affective action, because all they can really do is draft legislation and hope that our civic spirit will do the rest.
wish I could hear the video. but the sound is so low it is inaudible.
I'll just ead the Harpers article.
Nice comments everyone. Actually on subject and intelligent and coherent. Wow. John Cusack and Naomi Kline must bring out the best in us all, eh. I'm a fan! of both of them!
Thanks for loading up this top flight interview.
You two should take this show on the road and use Naomi's book tour to start a cross-country dialogue on the present and future implications of the NeoCon New Economy.
I haven't read the book (yet), but it strikes me that another glaring example of crisis capitalism is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed in 2001 in the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida.
Drafted and sponsored by Rep Bob Ney (R. OH), who is now employed in the license plate manufacturing industry (snark,snark), it bears all the hallmarks of a crisis capitalism power grab.
First, it used the electoral chaos of the Florida recount to essentially privitized vote counting in the country by establishing "security" standards which could only be met by the three or so corporate machine manufacturers: Diebold, ES&S, and Accu-Touch. Second, it earmarked $4 billion of taxpayer money to buy those machines-- and only those machines. And third, it facilitated the milking of the corporate beneficiaries for political campaign contributions-- mostly to Republicans.
(There is possibly a fourth indication-- the damn machines appear to be hackable, thus allowing for the "election" of sympathetic neocon presidents and politicians --- thereby creating a perpetual motion machine for more crisis capitalism!)
Great read
Modern Capitalism is the old yearning and historical practice of traditional leadership, that is, using unfettered business monopolistic practices to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few. Then this concentration is passed on to the owners' offspring from one generation to the next. And dynasties with an intellectual, civil servant ellite turn ordinary citizens and subjects into predictable servants from one generation to another.
Maomi Klein appears to warn us that this aristocratic impulse is alive and well in the modern world. And its ends are being met through the fig leaf of "free market capitalism".
The enemy of opportunity and achievement for common people and the progress of mankind is concentrated power and wealth that is inherited or acquired through dishonest means. Naomi alerts us that this unfettered predatory capitalism may overwhelm the world and turn it into another thousand year reign of the likes of Ancient China between about 100 B.C. and 1200 A.D. Only enlightened, committed and courageous citizens of America and other countries stand in their way. Are we up to the task?
Thank you, Naomi Klein for writing this very important book. People need to know the truth about how the new economy really works.
The arguments for replacing the public with the private sector seem wrong headed. Let's face it: Government is not very efficient. It is ponderously bureaucratic and doesn't adopt well to change. One the plus side, it is rarely driven by corruption and greed. Politicians may be but those people working in public service seem less greed driven then their private sector counterparts. The argument for privatization is largely based on the belief that corporations are more efficient, less bureaucratic, and they easily adopt to changing market conditions. Oh if this were true. Anyone care to argue about the efficiency of GM, Ford, Chrysler, or Boeing, or any large multinational corporation for that matter. And would any one dare argue that these entities are flexible? The truth is a bureaucracy is pretty much the same whether its publicly or privately based. The main disadvantage with the private sector is that it has a long history of greed driven corruption. So do we want our critical public services run by inefficient and inflexible bureaucracies that are mostly honest or the private sector, which suffer from the same inefficiencies and inflexibilities coupled with corruption. This seems a fair question but then I've never been terribly impressed with the way most large businesses operate.
Roger, I think you are dead on right. Ever since the merit system was put in place, the bureaucracy has been the one truly stabilizing force in government. At least until the Bush administration started gutting it, making life unbearable for those who wouldn't toe the ideological line.
What I've never been able to understand is how greed can be the driving force of anyone's life? Yet, that seems to be the operating principle behind an entire 30 year economic/ideological scheme, if Naomi Klein's analysis is right. How much is enough? Is it ever enough? Why not?
Socrates once said, "contentment is natural wealth; greed is unnatural poverty." These guys must guffaw to hear such simple sentiment, but it's true. How hollow such people must be to be so full of greed and so empty of contentment.
"Government is not very efficient. It is ponderously bureaucratic and doesn't adopt well to change."
After this quote you say, "on(e) the Plus side..." and then you go on to make a fair point. just to quibble a bit, what if this IS the plus side. Let's face it, societies take change very seriously and even more slowly . it takes generations to effectuate real change in a culture. Even when we change our practices our proclivities remain old-school. Look at the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision and we see how difficult it is to actually make a change happen. So it seems that if there is a God, this ponderous, bureaucratic inefficiency is precisely what a culture needs to stay sane and to shake out all the unintended consequences of a policy desirable or otherwise. Panic, confusion, disorientation and just plain misunderstanding are the ripest conditions for thievery. Stability is only good public policy when the thieves have completed their pillaging. It seems to me like it is a natural mathematical order that the larger the numbers in a race, the slower must be the pace. Effectiveness not efficiency is the measure of good government; when efficiency becomes our standard for government, we have already lost the race. I HATE BUREAUCRACY! But that's the good news. thank you for your sane perspective. if it seems I'm in disagreement, I have miscommunicated.
And to view it from yet another angle.
Just by observing nature it is obvious that life, and some may say all existence, is only possible within that frail sliver that exists between the balance of opposing forces. These two forces that on their own, with out the opposing nature of the other, would be destructive to our existence. Why do we believe that the rules and forces governing our society would behave differently? Hence, the ultimate fallacy of the “free markets”.
I was thinking of that "failure," Vietnam, which, as Chomsky points out was really a success, because it destroyed the country, thus making it useless to the Chinese.
This, more than anything, frightens me. Her image of the Green Zone like a Carnival Cruise ship in the midst of despair is too telling. The American people don't count any more and could very well end up in the same position as the Iraqis. We're just the latest bunch the international capitalists are dumping. Without social democracy we're sunk, and it looks as if the Marketeers have about ruined what vestiges we have of it in this country.
Naomi's brilliant book is invaluable; should be mandatory reading for every American. Sadly, only a minority would understand and believe it, but she has done a great service, nonetheless.
John is to be commended for his thoughtful questions, which helped illuminate this great work.
It tragic that more people don't notice what is happening. As I wrote to newspeople in November, 2004:
Why has there been so little curiosity from media regarding the documented voting fraud in the elections? This story is so important to our nation and world, that investigative journalists should be all over the fraudulent machine results and suppression of paper ballots in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico. Only a few writers have paid attention and done research, and they are brushed off as conspiracy nuts.
There were many voters who reported maltreatment from partisan officials. There is documented evidence about the easy-to-hack machines. But the media just rolls over and plays dead, mouthing pusillanimous phrases like "We have to move on."
Bush and company have gutted the Clean Air and Water Acts. Energy mega-companies wrote energy policy for this ersatz Administration for years. It's irreparable what they are doing to our natural environment. Dick Cheney personally blasted 70 ducks and boasted of it! That is a metaphor for this Administration's attitude toward the environment. Blast away like there's no tomorrow. Waste all you want, who cares, we won't be here to see the misery. What Dick Cheney said to Sen. Leahy is just how this Administration feels about the environment or anything except getting richer: "Go f--- yourself!"
The citizens of the Ukraine, recently subjects of a totalitarian state, display better citizenship than we supposed experts at freedom-and-justice-for-all, as they stood in the freezing cold, night after night, to protest the rigged results of their election. What's the matter with us?
Shame on the media who dropped the election prematurely. They aid the evil people who are dooming our world.
as the first commentor on this article, why was mine & 21 other comments cleared?
all i wrote was a comment praising the interview, but how annoying the camera work was.
huffington post censoring comments to present a biased view? or is it comments about the presentation of material are viewed as "off topic"?
Um... I just checked a comment of mine I KNEW was there, and the answer may be simple. Comments are listed in top-last order, so the first comments are progressively bumped to the succeeding comment pages. Go look at the next pages of comments, and yours is probably there. (search for your username)
What we need next is for some of the clever Hollywood screenwriters to produce something in the Bourne tradition but with private security forces. Seems like there is a lot of material here and we need new movie villians besides people of Middle East descent.
Art imitates life.
Wait a year.
Naomi has her finger on the Bush-Cheney-Neocon pulse. Robbing our Treasury and shredding our Constitution is all the fascist RepubliCAN'T party is good for.
Sadly, Hillary is part of the machine, too, and it looks like she's going to get a cake walk through the nomination process. She voted for the Lieberman amendment because she want to play with the big boys.
This book will change your way of looking at Bush/Cheney. It gives a new understanding of what truly motivates them to undermine the constitution, and take this country to war for oil. They are not evil, they are greedy, callous, cold hearted entrepreneurs who will use whatever means at their disposal to enrich themselves. Ben Franklin is crying. If Hillary subscribes to the Chicago School of Economics, she cannot be president. Disaster Econmics is immoral,inhumane and a disgraceful exercise of wealth and power which devalues humanity. No wonder they can stand by and allow Darfur and Myanmar, there is nothing in it for Halliburton, Bechtel etc...
They ARE evil Carman - greedy, callous, cold hearted supporting disaster economics - immoral, inhumane (add to this: murder and torture) All ok with them: EVIL.
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