From Democracy Now! interview with Naomi Klein:
Watch Part 2 of our conversation with best-selling author and Intercept senior correspondent Naomi Klein about her book, "No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need."
Watch Part 1: No Is Not Enough: Best-Selling Author Naomi Klein on Challenging Trump’s Shock Doctrine Politics
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, The
War and Peace Report, as we wrap up today’s show with Part 2 of our
conversation with best-selling author and journalist Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This
Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Her new book is
called No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s
Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. To accompany the
book, The Intercept recently made this video.
NAOMI KLEIN: Shock.
MEGYN KELLY: Shocking.
STEPHEN COLBERT: I don’t
think I could sit down right now.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: You
mean—
WILLIE GEIST: Historic,
astounding, shocking.
NAOMI KLEIN: It’s a
word that’s come up a lot since November, for obvious reasons.
KELLYANNE CONWAY: He’s
going to inject a shock to the system.
NAOMI KLEIN: Now,
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about shock. Ten years ago, I published The Shock Doctrine, an
investigation that spanned four decades, from Pinochet’s U.S.-backed coup in
1970s Chile to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I noticed a brutal and recurring
tactic by right-wing governments. After a shocking event—a war, a coup, a
terrorist attack, market crash or natural disaster—exploit the public’s
disorientation, suspend democracy, push through radical policies that enrich
the 1 percent at the expense of the poor and middle class.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is
a repeal and a replace of Obamacare.
GARY COHN: We’re
going to cut taxes and simplify the tax code.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The
United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
NAOMI KLEIN: Now,
some people have said that’s exactly what Trump has been trying to do. Is it
true? Well, sort of. But in all likelihood, the worst is yet to come, and we
better be ready. The administration is creating chaos, daily.
JUJU CHANG: Breaking
news: Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has resigned
tonight.
ANDERSON COOPER: All of
a sudden, the White House is concerned about James Comey’s handling of Hillary
Clinton’s email?
CBS NEWS ANCHOR: A
Senate committee will question President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser
Jared Kushner about his meeting with officials from a Russian bank.
NAOMI KLEIN: Now, of
course many of the scandals are the result of the president’s ignorance and
blunders, not some nefarious strategy. But there’s also no doubt that some
savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to advance wildly
pro-corporate policies that bear little resemblance to what Trump pledged on
the campaign trail.
DONALD TRUMP: Save
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
MSNBC ANCHOR: The
White House released its budget for 2018, and among the $4 trillion in cuts it
proposes are billions upon billions of dollars slashed from both Medicaid and
Social Security.
NAOMI KLEIN: And the
worst part, this is likely just the warm-up. We need to focus on what this
administration will do when it has a major external shock to exploit. Maybe it
will be an economic crash like 2008, maybe a natural disaster like Sandy, or
maybe it will be a horrific terrorist event like Manchester or Paris in 2015.
Any one such crisis could redraw the political map overnight. And it could give
Trump and his crew free rein to ram through their most extreme ideas.
But
here is one thing I’ve learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of
crises around the world: These tactics can be resisted. And, for your
convenience, I’ve tried to boil it down to a five-step plan.
Step
one: Know what’s coming. What would happen if a horror like the one in
Manchester took place on U.S. soil? Based on Trump’s obvious fondness for
authoritarianism, we can expect him to impose some sort of state of exception
or emergency where the usual rules of democracy no longer apply. Protests and
strikes that block roads and airports, like the ones that sprung up to resist
the Muslim travel ban, would likely be declared a threat to national security.
Protest organizers would be targeted under anti-terror legislation, with
surveillance, arrests and imprisonment. With public signs of dissent
suppressed, the truly toxic to-do list would quickly bubble up: bring in the
feds to pacify the streets, muzzle investigative journalism—you know he’s
itching to.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You
weren’t called. Sit down!
NAOMI KLEIN: The
courts, who Trump would inevitably blame for the attacks, might well lose their
courage. And the most lethal shock we need to prepare for: a push for a full-blown
foreign war. And, no, it won’t matter if the target has no connection to the
attacks used to justify it.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: What
did Iraq have to do with what?
REPORTER: The
attack on the World Trade Center.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Nothing.
NAOMI KLEIN: Preparing
for all this is crucial. If we know what to expect, we won’t be that shocked.
We’ll just be pissed.
And
that’s important for step two: Get out of your home and defy the bans. When
governments tell people to stay in their homes or show their patriotism by
going shopping, they inevitably claim it’s for public safety, that protests and
rallies could become targets for more attacks. What we know from other
countries is that there is only one way to respond.
EURONEWS ANCHOR: Hundreds
of Tunisians have been defying the curfew in the capital, Tunis.
NAOMI KLEIN: Disobey
en masse. That’s what happened in Argentina in 2001. With the country in
economic free fall, the president at the time declared a state of siege, giving
himself the power to suspend the constitution.
FERNANDO DE LA RÚA: [translated] I declared a state of siege across the
entire country.
NAOMI KLEIN: He told
the public to stay in their houses. Here’s what they did instead.
PROTESTER: Argentina!
NAOMI KLEIN: The
president resigned that night. And eventually new elections were held.
Three
years later, in Madrid, a horrifying series of coordinated attacks on trains
killed more than 200 people. The prime minister, José María Aznar, falsely
pointed the finger at Basque separatists and also used the attacks to justify
his decision to send troops to Iraq. His rhetoric was classic shock doctrine:
division, war, fear—Daddy will protect you. This is how Spaniards responded.
PROTESTERS: [translated]
Resignation! Resignation!
NAOMI KLEIN: They
voted out Aznar a few days later. Many people said they did it because he
reminded them of Franco, Spain’s former dictator.
Which
brings us to step three: Know your history. Throughout U.S. history, national
crises have been used to suspend constitutional protections and attack basic
rights. After the Civil War, with the nation in crisis, the promise of 40 acres
and a mule to freed slaves was promptly betrayed. In the midst of the pain and
panic of the Great Depression, as many as 2 million people of Mexican descent
were expelled from the United States. After the Pearl Harbor attacks, around
120,000 Japanese Americans were jailed in internment camps. If an attack on
U.S. soil were perpetrated by people who were not white and Christian, we can
be pretty damn sure that racists would have a field day. And the good folks of
Manchester recently showed us how to respond to that.
PROTESTER: The
people of Manchester don’t stand with your xenophobia and racism!
NAOMI KLEIN: Something
else we know from history, step four: Always follow the money. While everyone
is focused on security and civil liberties, Trump’s Cabinet of billionaires
will try to quietly push through even more extreme measures to enrich
themselves and their class, like dismantling Social Security or auctioning off
major pieces of government for profit.
Please continue this transcript, or to watch the full program, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/30/naomi_klein_the_worst_is_yet
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