Naomi Klein: Trump Is a Symptom of the Crisis

 Vital and excellent interview. - Molly

Naomi Klein's new book, officially released today, is already on the top of Amazon’s political bestseller list. You can read and listen to her interview here.
"The shocks that Trump is generating himself, whether by design or by incompetence and corruption, but what really scares me is: What happens when there is a major external shock to exploit? Look at who he has surrounded himself with — from Mike Pence, who played a central role in the looting of New Orleans, to vulture bankers like Steven Mnuchin to Betsy DeVos and her dreams of privatizing the school system."

The author and activist on how to agitate against Donald Trump and create lasting change.

BY SARAH JAFFE

This Q&A is part of Sarah Jaffe’s series Interviews for Resistance, which we feature on BillMoyers.com. In it, Jaffe speaks with organizers, troublemakers and thinkers who are doing the hard work of fighting back against America’s corporate and political powers.

In this interview, Sarah Jaffe speaks with author and activist Naomi Klein about the importance of attacking the underlying problems that gave rise to Donald Trump. Her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, officially released today, is already on the top of Amazon’s political bestseller list (and ahead of Newt Gingrich’s latest book).

Sarah Jaffe: You have a new book that, once again, has managed to both scare the shit out of me and also leave me with hope. This book is a synthesis of all of your prior work filtered through the lens of Trump. It is kind of scary how well Trump consolidates all your earlier work.

Naomi Klein: I didn’t set out to do that. I was having a lot of people ask me to update The Shock Doctrine and add a chapter about Trump. I was like, “Well, I am not going to do that, but maybe there is a way that I can write something to prepare people for what happens if there is a major crisis.” Because everyone was talking about “shock this” and “shock that” and how they are using shock and Kellyanne Conway as a shock to the system and all of that.

These shocks are just the shocks that Trump is generating himself, whether by design or by incompetence and corruption, but what really scares me is: What happens when there is a major external shock to exploit? Look at who he has surrounded himself with — from Mike Pence, who played a central role in the looting of New Orleans, to vulture bankers like Steven Mnuchin to Betsy DeVos and her dreams of privatizing the school system. I wanted to do that, but then once I started writing about Trump I was like, “Well, it does have some relevant stuff from No Logo, too.” He is first and foremost a brand who has spawned brands. He breeds brands, in his family.

I don’t think you can understand Trump’s relationship to his voters and how he gets away with what he gets away with, without understanding the pact between a lifestyle brand and its consumer base and how that really transformed the global economy in the 1990s.

Then, there is climate change. I had to get that in. So it turned into being a bit of a mixtape.

SJ: It is interesting because that shows us how shocking Trump isn’t. In the book, you point out that the term “horror” might actually be more appropriate to apply to Trump because he is not that shocking.

NK: I think by naming him “shocking” there is a way in which people absolve themselves. Shocking is like a bolt from the blue. It is something external that ruptures your world. That is why I think the most helpful way of understanding Trump is as living dystopian fiction, in the sense that what dystopian art tries to do is just follow existing trends to their logical conclusion, in exaggerated form, and then reflect that back to people and say, “Well, this is where all roads are leading. Do you want to get off this dangerous road?”

A lot of the emotion is being misnamed. It is not shock. It is the horror of recognition. It is actually really bad dystopian fiction, because it is so predictable. Like, “Of course America would elect Donald Trump as the corporate president.” I really do think we need to interrogate this idea of shock. Of course, there were many people in the United States who were not shocked by Trump’s election because they were very in touch with the racism and misogyny and xenophobia that elevated him and saw him as a fulfillment. There is this way of casting ourselves as innocents: “I am shocked! How could that happen?” It is almost like, “How could this not have happened? Everything has been put into place for this to happen.”

SJ: It is interesting to think back to the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s. It seems very far away, but when you are talking about these questions of hollow brands, the way you described Trump, and then the fact that it would be impossible for Trump to divest from his brand because his brand is his name. But, that movement and that time actually sort of gives some opportunities for ways to challenge Trump and his family.

NK: My point in writing about that movement was not to say, “We told you so,” but there is no doubt that the far right is entering into a vacuum left by neoliberal centrism and liberalism. It is worth remembering that not so long ago, there was a very large, progressive, committedly internationalist movement that was taking on the whole logic of what was called “free trade” or “globalization” or “corporate globalization.” We called it “corporate rule” for the most part, because the problem was not trade, it was the writing of rules for the global economy in the interests of a small group of powerful corporations. Forget hollow brands. The center of that fight was about the hollowing out of democracy. Yes, sure, you can still vote, but the most important decisions about your life are being outsourced to institutions over which you have no control.

The fact that neoliberal centrist parties pushed those deals, signed those deals, negotiated those deals and never aligned themselves with that grass-roots progressive movement left the space open for the Donald Trumps and the Nigel Farages and the Marine Le Pens of the world to come in and say, “We know how out of control you are. We believe you should be authors of your own fate, of your own destiny.” We left these ideas unattended, let’s just say. There are lots of great groups that never stopped focusing on trade, like Public Citizen and Food and Water Watch and lots of groups in Europe. But it stopped being a mass movement in the global north after Sept. 11. It is worth interrogating why that happened.

Please continue this article and listen to the interview, please go here: http://billmoyers.com/story/naomi-klein-trump-symptom-of-the-crisis/