Klein, Naomi 1970–

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Klein, Naomi 1970–

PERSONAL:

Born May 8, 1970, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada; daughter of Michael (a physician and educator) and Bonnie (a filmmaker) Klein; married Avi Lewis (television personality). Education: Attended University of Toronto. Religion: Jewish.

CAREER:

Journalist. Former editor, This Magazine; Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, columnist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, 2004, for reports on Iraq published in Harper's; Best Documentary Jury Prize, American Film Institute Film Festival, for The Take; honorary doctor of civil laws, University of King's College.

WRITINGS:

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Picador (New York, NY), 2000.

Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, edited by Debra Ann Levy, Picador (New York, NY), 2002.

(Coauthor and producer) The Take (documentary film), Barna-Alper Productions 2004.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of syndicated column appearing in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Nation; contributor to other periodicals, including Globe and Mail, Saturday Night, Village Voice, and Baffler. The Shock Doctrine has been translated into over two dozen languages; No Logo has been translated into twenty-eight languages.

ADAPTATIONS:

A seven-minute companion film was created to accompany The Shock Doctrine and appeared online.

SIDELIGHTS:

Raised by liberal parents who left the United States for Canada to protest the Vietnam War, Naomi Klein might have been expected to pursue the activist journalism career she would later follow. Her father was a physician and teacher at McGill University, and her mother became somewhat infamous for making an antipornography film; her grandparents, furthermore, were avowed Marxists. As a young girl growing up in the "me generation" of the 1980s, Klein rebelled for a time against her elders' antimaterialism and became an avid consumer and mall shopper. Her mother's antiporn film, This Is Not a Love Story, was the cause of great embarrassment for the teenager, who read Toronto newspaper headlines about how her mother was a "bourgeois feminist fascist." "I think it's why I embraced full-on consumerism," she reflected in a Common Dreams article by Katharine Viner. "I was in constant conflict with my parents and I wanted them to leave me the hell alone." Her mother had a stroke at age forty-six, and Klein put off college for a year to help care for her. In 1989, her feminist side was awakened when a man marched onto the University of Montréal campus and shot fourteen women to death, screaming at them for being feminists. That news story helped inspire Klein to pursue a journalism career that would also lead to her activism and several best-selling books.

While attending the University of Toronto, Klein worked for the student newspaper, for which she once wrote an article about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; although she was Jewish, she was not a fervent Zionist, as many of the Jewish students on campus were. Klein received a number of threats of rape, which only inspired her all the more to become an outspoken feminist activist. Before completing her degree, she dropped out of school to take an internship at the Toronto Globe and Mail; then she took on the job of editor at This Magazine, an alternative political publication. At the time—the early 1990s—Klein felt that the political left had lost its direction, but a new movement began to arise by 1995, the same year that she returned to university. "I met this new generation of young radicals who had grown up taking for granted the idea that corporations are more powerful than governments, that it doesn't matter who you elect because they'll all act the same. And they were, like, fine, we'll go where the power is. We'll adapt. It didn't fill them with dread and depression," she told Viner. She added: "The young activists I know have grounded their political activism in economic analysis and an understanding of how power works. They're way more sophisticated than we were because they've had to be. Because capitalism is way more sophisticated now."

An anticorporate movement was growing in Canada and the United States, and this was becoming the clarion call to arms of the new left, who began to feel that regulating groups such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank were fostering a form of globalization that was taking advantage of the world's poor while simultaneously destroying unique cultures. News was disseminated of sweatshops where workers were paid pennies, denied access to food and toilets, and forced to work long hours and endure other humiliations, and consumers in the West were beginning to realize that their shopping habits were helping large corporations profit while thousands of underpaid third-world laborers suffered. Klein had found her story, and she wrote about it in her first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, "which has been called ‘the Das Kapital of the growing anticorporate movement,’" according to Viner.

No Logo is a heavily researched work that discusses how anticorporatism gained a foothold among the left and examines corporate greed and strategies, such as the use of logos and the adoption of lifestyle messages—rather than product messages—to win over consumers. In other words, companies such as Nike, McDonald's, Tommy Hilfiger, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks no longer sell products so much as they appeal to consumers' need for a message, such as being cool or being smart and savvy. The book touches on subjects ranging from education to labor rights to censorship. Becoming increasingly influential in Western cultures, especially in North America, corporations wield increasingly more power and are able to sell more goods at inflated prices (for example, Nike selling tennis shoes for over a hundred dollars that were made in a third-world country for five dollars). As they gain wealth, these companies branch out, purchasing other companies, including media outlets, which they consequently control. "The resulting book is likely to disturb even the most hardened of cynics," commented Gary Marshall in Spike magazine.

No Logo was published in 1999, the same year that riots erupted in Seattle, Washington, to protest a World Trade Organization meeting. The timing was superb, and Klein's book became an international best seller. Klein was pleased to see such activism, as it highlighted a shift in American attitudes about third-world labor. Whereas the first reaction to companies outsourcing work overseas was anger at those who were taking former American jobs, now there was a noticeable sympathy for foreign workers who were being exploited by wealthy Western corporations. "Klein persuasively argues that there is good reason and a certain synchronicity for the growing solidarity … between the young Western casual retail workers and the young factory workers of Asia and South America who make the products that carry the sought-after labels," remarked Jeannie Rea in Arena.

Klein followed No Logo with Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, a collection of her newspaper articles that focus on the globalization phenomenon. Here, "Klein argues that globalization has only delivered its promised benefits to the world's wealthiest citizens and that its emphasis on privatization has eroded the availability of public services around the globe," reported a Publishers Weekly critic. Declaring it a "lighter, more accessible book than No Logo," New Zealand Marketing magazine contributor Jonathan Dodd called Fences and Windows an "enjoyable, thought-provoking" book. In the New Internationalist, John Lee felt that Fences and Windows is perhaps more effective than Klein's debut because it contains less of what he considered corporate bashing and more analysis of what might be done to fight globalization within local communities. Thus, he concluded, this second work by Klein is "potentially a greater manifesto for change."

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism offers a unique analysis of how the capitalist system takes advantage of wars, natural disasters, and other shocking events. An obvious example is the way the company Halliburton has profited from the war in Iraq and another contractor company, Blackwater, gained financially from hurricane-devastated New Orleans. Klein traveled to Iraq in 2003 and to New Orleans in 2005 to witness how government-supported companies profited from these disasters and wars while the victims continued to suffer. Klein also discusses how the American government has plotted to overthrow foreign rulers for its own self-interest, such as in the CIA-backed overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile in 1973. Klein "delivers a powerful blow to the prevailing belief that democracy and unfettered capitalism go hand in hand," reported Charlotte Abbott in Publishers Weekly. "A dissenting history of the last 40 years," Abbott wrote, "the book shows how U.S. economist Milton Friedman and his ‘Chicago School’ followers, working as advisers to foreign governments and through institutions like the International Monetary Fund, have exploited political upheaval and natural disasters to impose ‘free markets’ around the world." "The Shock Doctrine's significance comes from Klein's ability to tie together seemingly unconnected events from contemporary history, reanimating defeats or rollbacks of social justice so as to learn from them," concluded John Elmber in Briarpatch, adding that the book "is an important contemporary history, a primer that leaves its audience that much more ready to fight back when the next shock comes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AdAgeGlobal, October 1, 2001, "What's Next for ‘No Logo’ Naomi? The Attacks on America Raise Questions for a Movement That Opposes Global Capitalism," p. 10.

Arena, August 1, 2001, Jeannie Rea, review of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, p. 38.

Booklist, September 1, 2007, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, p. 30.

Bookseller, June 29, 2007, "The Shocking Truth," p. 22.

Briarpatch, July 1, 2004, "Occupy—Resist—Produce: When Corporations Cut and Run, Workers Are Staking a Claim"; February 1, 2008, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," p. 29.

Canadian Dimension, January 1, 2008, "Warm Words from the Margins of Empire."

Commentary, December 1, 2007, "A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy," p. 82.

Design Week, November 7, 2002, "Don't Sit on the Fence: The Explosive Follow-up to No Logo [and] Fences and Windows Saw Its Recent Soft Launch; Mike Exon Outlines the Book's Hard-hitting Message," p. 36.

Dollars & Sense, November 1, 2001, "Adopt a Logo."

Ecologist, September 1, 2000, Gard Binney, review of No Logo, p. 60.

Economist, November 9, 2002, "Why Naomi Klein Needs to Grow Up; Face Value."

Ethics & International Affairs, April 1, 2003, Rebecca DeWinter, review of Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, p. 166.

Habitat Australia, January 1, 2008, Jodie Davis, review of The Shock Doctrine, p. 29.

Herizons, March 22, 2003, "Fences of Enclosure, Windows of Opportunity," p. 35; January 1, 2008, "Shock Doc: Naomi Klein Has a Remedy for the Injustices of Neo-liberal Policies. Read Her New Book and Call Your Member of Parliament in the Morning," p. 20.

Independent, September 14, 2007, Julie Wheelwright, "Brainwashed by the Market: What Drives Naomi Klein?"

International Journal on World Peace, December 1, 2007, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," p. 124.

Journal of Corporate Citizenship, September 22, 2001, "No Logo," p. 127.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2007, review of The Shock Doctrine.

M2 Best Books, April 7, 2005, "Naomi Klein Unhappy about ‘No War’ Book."

Maclean's, September 10, 2007, "Naomi Klein Talks to Kenneth Whyte about War, Free-Market Fundamentalism and a Breed of Politicos Who Thrive on Disaster," p. 20.

Marketing Week, April 28, 2005, "Words That Hurt," p. 29.

Multinational Monitor, January 1, 2003, review of Fences and Windows.

NACLA Report on the Americas, November 1, 2007, "Body Shocks: A 40th Anniversary Conversation with Naomi Klein."

New Internationalist, September 1, 2001, Katharine Ainger, review of No Logo, p. 28; April 1, 2003, John Lee, review of Fences and Windows, p. 31; November 1, 2007, Peter Whittaker, review of The Shock Doctrine, p. 31.

New Media Creative, July 1, 2001, "Profit Always Wins," p. 7.

New Statesman, October 15, 2007, "The Price of Freedom," p. 54.

New York Times, April 3, 2000, "Canada's Anti-Corporate Crusader," p. 6; September 10, 2007, "Free-Market Mischief in Hot Spots of Disaster," p. 1; September 29, 2007, "It's All a Grand Capitalist Conspiracy," p. 16.

New York Times Book Review, September 30, 2007, "Bleakonomics," p. 12.

New Zealand Marketing, February 1, 2003, Jonathan Dodd, review of Fences and Windows, p. 9.

Progressive, January 1, 2001, Susan Douglas, review of No Logo, p. 38.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 1999, review of No Logo, p. 48; August 26, 2002, review of Fences and Windows, p. 59; March 28, 2005, "‘No Logo’ Klein on Iraq," p. 10; July 23, 2007, review of The Shock Doctrine, p. 59; July 30, 2007, "After the Deluge: Exploding the Myth of the Global Free Market," p. 23.

Report, January 20, 2003, "Brand-name Beauty: How a Montreal Native Became the Leading Voice of the Anti-globalization Movement," p. 36.

School Library Journal, November 1, 2000, Christine C. Menefee, review of No Logo, p. 184; December 1, 2000, Trev Jones, review of No Logo, p. 56.

Sojourners, March 1, 2001, "Just Stop It," interview with Naomi Klein, p. 30.

This Magazine, November 1, 2002, "The Rebel Sell: If We All Hate Consumerism, How Come We Can't Stop Shopping?"

Time International, January 22, 2001, "Gaining Street Cred: A Fast-selling, Anticapitalist Screed May Lack Perspective, but It Explains Why the Mobs Are Angry," p. 66.

Toronto Life, October 1, 2007, "What Naomi Wants: No Logo Condemned the Evils of Corporate Branding and Made Naomi Klein the Voice of the New Left. With Her Latest Book, the Stakes Are Higher: She Uncovers and American Conspiracy and Names Names. Portrait of an Agitator in Act Two," p. 90.

Women's Review of Books, January 1, 2003, "Passing the Ammunition," p. 5.

World Literature Today, March 1, 2008, "Shock Waves: How Free-Market Economics Spread across the Globe; an Interview with Naomi Klein."