social change

An interview with Naomi Klein

By Dave Oswald Mitchell
Briarpatch Magazine
December 2008

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and the author of two international bestsellers, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (2000) and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007).

Klein is a firm believer in the notion that, if you can get a powerful idea into the hands of those with the capacity and motivation to act on it, you can change the world. Indeed, in The Shock Doctrine, she documents how the radical free market ideas of Milton Friedman have changed the world – not through their persuasive power or popular appeal, but through the creative exploitation by Friedman’s disciples of whatever shock might happen to present itself, be it a coup, a tsunami, a stock market crash, or a massive military bombardment.

The Shock Doctrine details how time and again, governments of all stripes have used almost any crisis that presents itself as an opportunity to advance radical economic restructuring: gutting social programs, privatizing and deregulating large sectors of economies, and leaving a global trail of devastation in their wake. Committed to nothing less than the exposure of the dominant economic theory of our time as a blood-soaked fraud, Klein shows that unfettered capitalism is an inherently violent ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with political freedom and true democracy.

By providing a counter-narrative that can help people to make sense of these trends, Klein seeks to make us less susceptible to shock and better prepared to defend and rebuild the public sphere in its wake.

Briarpatch editor Dave Oswald Mitchell spoke with Naomi Klein in Regina in September, following her address to a capacity crowd of 800 people.

Briarpatch: You came to prominence as a leading theorist of the antiglobalization movement. Can you talk about what happened to that movement after 9/11?

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