Naomi Klein: “It’s time to grow the hell up”

By Trish Elliott
ActUpInSask.org
Sept. 24, 2008

Canada’s left-centre political parties should form an alliance, author Naomi Klein told a packed house in Regina last night.

“A coalition has to be the goal…Stephen Harper will weaken everything in this country that we care about,” Klein said to an audience of 800 at the University of Regina’s Education Auditorium.

The lecture, a fundraiser for Briarpatch magazine, created a stir not seen in Regina for some time. Many people were turned away at the door, while those lucky enough to nab the last tickets sought out seats in the crowd, which swelled to a full house a half-hour before the event started. Organizers seemed surprised and pleased by the number of people waiting to hear Klein speak.

Klein has been a popular commentator lately, since the U.S. economic crisis served to highlight the key argument of her 2007 book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, Klein argued that right-wing authoritarian leaders use moments of crisis to expand their power and re-write the rules in favour of corporate capitalism.

“As you can imagine, I’ve had a busy few days,” Klein said, noting that major U.S. news outlets like CNN have suddenly picked up on a buzz surrounding her latest work.

Speaking of the proposed U.S. government bail-out of Wall Street, Klein said such a move is “wholly consistent” with the corporate class’s ongoing practice of using public wealth to shore up corporate interests. But she predicted this time it won’t be easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

“So much of the financial sector has revealed itself as an Enron-style shell game,” she said. “It’s not a bail-out, it’s a stick-up.”

People not fooled

Klein added that transferring the economic crisis from Wall Street to Washington will be “explosive,” precipitating a new round of cuts to a badly weakened public sphere. She said a planned protest march on Wall Street on Thursday, Sept. 25 signals that not everyone supports the bail-out.

There’s a lot at stake, according to Klein. Pointing to Hurricane Katrina as an example, she warned Americans face a future in which heavy weather caused by global warming intersects with crumbling infrastructure.

Klein noted Katrina had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it hit New Orleans, suggesting it was not an act of nature, but an act of government that left the population vulnerable to flooding and disorder.

She described how the right wing then used the disaster as an opportunity to demolish public housing that stood in the way of land developers seeking access to downtown property. She also noted that the city’s only public hospital has yet to re-open.

Klein said she was struck by how many political and business leaders referred positively to Katrina as creating a ‘clean sheet,’ echoing early settlers who wrote that small pox was God’s way of clearing aboriginal peoples out of the way of development.

“Wary” of Harper

In Canada, Stephen Harper fits the archetype of the father-figure type leader who steps in during crises and reassures the population that all will be well as long as he is given more power, she said.

“I think we need to be extremely wary of how a new Harper government would fit in as this (U.S.) crisis migrates to Canada.”

“It’s an important time for 800 people to gather,” she said, referring to the overflowing hall. “We can fall apart and look to leaders to save us, or we can rise to the occasion. We can regress or we can grow up – and it’s time to grow the hell up.”

During the question period that followed, Klein defended her ideas and expanded on key points. Asked why the media isn’t working more aggressively during this federal election, Klein – herself a journalist – said news organizations have well-founded fears of retaliation, which may be cause them to stand back on tough issues.

“This government is so vindictive,” she said, using the experience of her partner Avi Lewis as a case in point. Lewis was cited by government officials as a reason to shut down a program that funded international marketing of Canadian arts and culture. A government memo referred to the award-winning journalist and filmmaker as a “general radical.”

Lewis hadn’t himself applied for funding, but was invited to an Australian conference that had received funds to bring in Canadian filmmakers, Klein explained. The result of the trip was a distribution deal in Australia, recouping the National Film Board’s investment in The Take, a Klein-Lewis film.

Strategic voting

The lecture ended with a film short about Shock Doctrine by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, director of Children of Men, Y tu mamá también and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. A longer film with another director is currently in the works, Klein said.

Afterwards, people remained in the hall to discuss strategic voting in the federal election. Klein recommended a national coalition called VotePair, which has set up a vote-coordinating web site.

The site includes a ‘vote exchange’ system where voters can ‘trade’ Green, NDP and Liberal votes across the country, according to which ridings a particular vote will have the most impact in turning back Conservatives.

A Saskatoon-based coalition called NotMyPrimeMinister has also set up a web site. The site features posters you can download and “plaster your town” with, a coalition organizer said.

Visit:

www.departmentofculture.ca

www.votepair.ca

All photos by Dave Oswald Mitchell. For reprint permission, please contact editor AT briarpatchmagazine DOT com.