New Yorker profile on Naomi Klein

OUTSIDE AGITATOR
The New Yorker
December 8, 2008

"Naomi Klein distrusts centralization, institutions, platforms, theories—anything except extremely small, local, ad-hoc, spontaneous initiatives. Basically, she really, really doesn’t like being told what to do…"



An excerpt from "Naomi Klein and the new new left" by Larissa MacFarquhar:

“Naomi takes the responsibility of young people listening to her and looking up to her really, really seriously,” [Avi] Lewis says. “Which is precisely why she refuses to say, ‘Here’s the alternative, here’s what we all have to line up and fight for.’ Suspicion of people who know what the answer is—that’s very characteristic of our generation, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve never gone into politics. It’s very difficult for both of us when people look to us for the kind of certainty that earlier generations had.” One of the few political leaders whom Klein really likes is Subcommandant Marcos, the head of the Zapatistas, in Mexico, who makes a fetish of his elusiveness and doubt.


In “No Logo,” Klein celebrated the anarchic formlessness of the anti-corporate protests—what she wryly termed “laissez-faire organizing.” Her generation of activists was “challenging systems of centralized power on principle, as critical of left-wing, one-size-fits-all state solutions as of right-wing market ones,” she wrote. “It is often said disparagingly that this movement lacks ideology, an overarching message, a master plan. This is absolutely true, and we should be extraordinarily thankful.” These days, the movement long gone, she is not so sanguine about it. “What I was responding to at the time was people on the left who I thought were opportunistically trying to impose their solutions,” she says. “I was hoping that more of an articulation would emerge in a grass-roots way, but it’s not happening—I think because the entire discussion was severed on September 11th. The mainstream N.G.O.s became frightened of being associated with people who seemed quasi-terrorist, and then we started talking about war.” Lewis has never been as enamored as Klein of the movement’s lack of discipline, and she admits now that he may have been right. “Seeing how easy it was for everything to evaporate, without institutions taking that energy and nailing it down—we were too ephemeral,” she says. “It was that experience that made me feel like we need to be more tangible, whether it’s political parties or putting it in writing.” Read the full article here

Here is an interview with Naomi Klein about her books, "The Shock Doctrine" (2007) & "No Logo" (2000) on The Alcove. Watch it on the video player below or here.


Klein and Canadian journalist, Avi Lewis filmed a documentary in 2004 about the Argentinian workers' response to the economic crisis in their country that lasted from 1999-2002. Watch it on the video player below or here.

The Take (2004)

The Take - Synopsis

"In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave.

All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - The Take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They're part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.
The story of the workers' struggle is set against the dramatic backdrop of a crucial presidential election in Argentina, in which the architect of the economic collapse, Carlos Menem, is the front-runner. His cronies, the former owners, are circling: if he wins, they'll take back the companies that the movement has worked so hard to revive.

Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale." (thetake.org)