Ron Radosh

December 3rd, 2008 5:41 pm

Naomi Klein’s “New New Left”- The Second Time is Farce

For a thorough and devastating critique of Klein, one must turn to a review by Jonathan Chait, who is no kind of conservative. Chait explains that in Klein’s world the practitioners of free market capitalism are trying to implement their plan to create pro-corporate policies through “the imposition and exploitation of mass trauma.” Everything comes down to that. Most people, he points out, would think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with things like land, security, religion and ideology. Not Klein. She believes that “Israel decided to provoke bomb blasts in its buses and pizzerias largely…because building blast walls and bomb detectors became more profitable than living in peace.”

That such simplistic claptrap gains thousands of followers- more abroad than at home-is in itself frightening. Chait himself—he is a bona fide left liberal-agrees that there are major problems in America like income inequalities that need to be addressed. But, he concludes, “Klein’s relentless lumping together of all her ideological adversaries in the service of a monocausal theory of the world ultimately renders her analysis perfect nonsense.”

Neither Klein not her husband think much of or have hopes for Barack Obama. “The main feeling Obama creates in me,” Lewis says, “is fear, because I see people fooling themselves. If you actually look at his policies, what they reflect is the triumph of the right-wing political paradigm since Reagan, and I think he could set things back dramatically.”

The people wanted an anti-war leader, Klein says. But instead, Obama was really saying “we’re going to send more troops to Afghanistan.” Viewing him as a regular politico, Klein accuses him of telling his audience what they want to hear, “and then in the back rooms he’s making deals and signing on to the status quo.” He isn’t, she says, demanding nationalization of the oil companies!

Her hope: point out whenever and wherever she can, that the Wall Street crash proves everything she has been saying. Then the Right will apologize and the Left will triumph.

Naomi Klein will be waiting a long, long time, until some decades later, a new Naomi Klein will carry on the cudgels, and some writer will say how the 2008 Klein is so passé.

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46 Comments

1. Pat Murphy:

A (small) factual correction. Klein’s husband is Avi Lewis, not Stephen Lewis. Avi Lewis is Stephen’s son.

Dec 3, 2008 - 8:27 pm 2. David Thomson:

“…he is a bona fide left liberal-agrees that there are major problems in America like income inequalities that need to be addressed.”

There are no income equalities that need to be addressed. We should care less that someone like Bill Gates has far more money than the rest of us. This may shock you—but economic improvement of the masses is all about “trickle down” economics. The Gates of the world make the pie bigger for everyone. Who cares that he can afford the best of everything? The hoi polloi live vastly better because of the wealth he created.

Dec 4, 2008 - 1:21 am 3. Pajamas Media » The “New New Left” - The Second Time is Farce:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Dec 4, 2008 - 2:33 am 4. العاب:

this is an excellent post ,I’m grateful to you , thanks a lot.

Dec 4, 2008 - 3:24 am 5. JFM:

I have read one of Chomsky’s books (more exactly half of it). In every page he was fumng about the “antifascist resistants” America had helped to suppress. It happens I know a bit about WWII. His “antifascists”, didn’t move a finger until Soviet Union was invaded. In fact they often helped Stalin’s Nazi friends. In France’s case they didn’t wait until defeat to help the Nazis: they undermined French Army’s morale, sabotaged its tanks and planes while diverting railway wagons carrying supplies to war factories. They also called “French proletarians to fraternize with German soldiers” and contributed to prevent the retreating French Army to blow bridges. So I simply couldn’t understand how anyone could take this clown (Chomsky) seriously.

That, without counting his ciolation of all academic rules (eg you don’t quote your own books as proof). Also, from hearsay since I am not a linguist, his linguistic work is mediocre a t best: since his theis is Anglo-centric and the “invisbles” are a kind of magic: a valid theory must explain what hapen but aslo doesn’t happen and with the invisibles anything can.

So what remained from Chomsky was a clown for bored rich white kids with too much time in their hands and now we have another one. Great.

Dec 4, 2008 - 3:37 am 6. TPitman:

“He isn’t, she says, demanding nationalization of the oil companies!”

I’m sure Venezuela’s immigration policies are sufficiently open to allow she and her husband to move to Hugo’s socialist wonderland. Putin would probably be happy to have them on board, too. There are plenty of “paradises” to choose from. So pick one, Naomi, quickly.

Dec 4, 2008 - 4:35 am 7. maurice:

P. Murphy:

And last time I looked, the execrable Avi was working for the English side of Al-Jazeera.

Dec 4, 2008 - 5:13 am 8. scot:

Gee, it’s nice to see her “9/11 was great performance art” comments won’t hound her for the rest of her career…

I’ve read up on Klein and her work way back when “No Logo” first came out. It was readily apparent she is a wannabe revolutionary. She came from a leftist family, but was never active until later in life so she seems dead set to make up for lost time and reason be damned.

Her main failure is that she paints with an overly broad brush that makes up her simple worldview – everything is tied to “evil capitalists” when in fact Friedman would have condemned some of the same acts as she does (but for different reasons).

Dec 4, 2008 - 5:20 am 9. Craig:

“…Naomi Klein, whose book, The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was on the The New York Times bestseller list for 28 weeks.”

If capitalism is such a malaise, why isn’t she giving her book away?

And everyone lined up to buy her book? Why don’t you demand that 50 percent of all copies be handed out free of charge. Hey, it’s for the good of the people.

Dec 4, 2008 - 5:35 am 10. Brian Richard Allen:

Yes, Craig, she’ll give them away.

And the mobbed-up Marxist murtadd Muslim Arab-African, B Hussein bin B Hussayn bin Hussayn Muhummad Ubama and his missus will give up one lobster and caviar high tea per quarter in order he might be his actual brother’s keeper.

And perhaps another snack or two — and/or a session or two of NMF’ingP’s gutter-ball practice — for the criminal alien aunt.

For his Boston welfare queen aunt, that is, the close relative of the grandmother who (before he became the Indonesian, Barry Soetoro and travelled to Pakistan) witnessed his birth in Mombasa, Kenya.

And for whom, these last several weeks, ICE put all criminal alien deportations on hold.

Those give-away books.

That brother.

And that aunt.

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifUBAMAcated 90028

Dec 4, 2008 - 6:37 am 11. Bernard Chapin:

She thinks Obama is a right winger…I’m still giggling. For the unfamiliar, let me say that Dr. Ron’s memoir, unlike Klein’s book, is a must read.

Dec 4, 2008 - 6:43 am 12. Fred Beloit:

David, I don’t care if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are loaded. What they do that I don’t like is they encourage higher taxes on the rest of we Americans so that their favorite charities will be funded by us as well as them.

Dec 4, 2008 - 7:30 am 13. Jason S:

If the education system was doing its job then people would be leaving school with the ability to form rational concepts and make objective value-judgments. They would have sufficient intellect to be able to see right through infantile left wing dirge like that peddled by Klein and Chomsky (whose works contain footnotes which reference his own works!)

Alas, our education system has been dominated by those with the very same left wing mindset for at least 40 years. They’re churning out a steady stream of gullible, thoughtless, uneducated, irrational dolts – the perfect market for such books.

Dec 4, 2008 - 8:01 am 14. Chris in Toronto:

Right on, Jason!

Dec 4, 2008 - 8:20 am 15. fred:

Cultural Marxists like Klein and her husband are incapable of even filtering in tiny flecks of reality into their brains.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

Dec 4, 2008 - 8:40 am 16. Chris Jones:

Naomi Klein is a raving lunatic. I’ve never understood how so many people could buy into her totally absurd and irrational conspiracy theories. Every damn time something happens, that broad is on TV hocking her stupid book, claiming this all a part of the “Shock Doctrine.”

Dec 4, 2008 - 8:47 am 17. Dr. Lumplevin:

It is so refreshing to find those few, brave, visionary souls who have not given up on Communism and Marx after almost one hundred years of seeming abject failure and untold human misery. It is encouraging that they can even sell books and draw crowds from an ideology that, by any remotely reasonable scenario, should have been long ago buried alongside Shakerism, Mithraism, feudalism and Nazism. That Communism continues to endure popularity in elite cafes, obscure academic salons, and amongst rich, privileged intellectuals gives we on the Left great hope that it may yet be revived, not as a philosphy that was tried and found imperfect, but rather one that was just imperfectly tried.

One day the hundred million or so that died under this bold, compassionate social construct and experiment will be considered as martyrs and heroes-the necessary collateral damage that is needed to construct a society of social justice and world peace.

Dec 4, 2008 - 9:18 am 18. The Historian:

“CHOOSING” HILLARY: A BACKROOM DEAL
Don’t believe the “team of rivals” hype. Anyone observing the Clintons over the past two decades knows better, as explained at this link:

http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-hillary-think-convention-deal.html

Dec 4, 2008 - 10:13 am 19. David Thomson:

“David, I don’t care if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are loaded. What they do that I don’t like is they encourage higher taxes on the rest of we Americans so that their favorite charities will be funded by us as well as them.”

I agree with you entirely—but that’s not what I was addressing. My sole point is that the state should never engage in directly spreading the wealth among the citizenry. Bill Gates has made all of us wealthier. He has made the economic pie bigger. Never make fun of “trickle down economics.” This is how the a successful economy works.

Dec 4, 2008 - 10:28 am 20. Pat J:

Amazing. This author misspell’s MacFarquhar’s name twice and doesn’t even get the name of Kelin’s husband right. And borrow his title from Larissa MacFarquhar’s subtitle. And he claims to fear for the future of American journalism? Somebody give this man an AP Stylebook.

Dec 4, 2008 - 10:40 am 21. Philippe S:

The Shock Doctrine is the most thoroughly discredited public policy book of the last 10 years. It’s been destroyed by right-wing statists, left-wing statists (e.g., the New Republic), and even non-statists (e.g., Cato). It is truly astounding that anyone still takes this woman seriously. She’s Mao in makup, Stalin in a skirt, a hip-huggered Hitler — just the kind of smiley-faced fascist that George Carlin warned us about. Much more dangerous than the socialists in the tanks.

Dec 4, 2008 - 11:05 am 22. tanstaafl:

Klein is regularly on a worldwide, never-ending tour, where hundreds line up to hear her speak.

Gee, just think of all the “capitalists” that have enabled po’ lil Naomi’s travels around the planet, the conveyances she rides in, the hotels she stays in, the clothing she wears, the items she uses, the food she eats…

It was about 5 years ago that I first became acquainted with Ms. Klein’s…mental meanderings…and gave up on ever finding anything of interest (or truth) lurking in her tangled neural circuits.

With this point “Israel decided to provoke bomb blasts in its buses and pizzerias largely…” Naomi takes her own self way (way !) over the top.

A place she inhabits with some female contemporaries such as the “other” Naomi (Wolf), the girl who dressed candidate Al Gore in olive drab clothing, among other achievements. And the interestingly hysterical radio personality, Randi Rhodes.

Dec 4, 2008 - 11:43 am 23. tanstaafl:

Chomsky’s quite old now.

People like Noam and Naomi (evil twins?) grow rich bashing capitalism in books, essays and speeches.

I hope I’m not spreading a rumoUr (oh, what the heck…) but I vaguely recollect Chomsky in his olde age purchasing some fabulously expensive boat to further embellish his “important old man” lifestyle.

A boat manufactured by evil capitalists, to be sure, & not made out of tofu by the local food cooperative.

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.

Dec 4, 2008 - 11:55 am 24. Barrett:

Tell me why she is even being given the time of day. There are all kinds of kooks out there.

Anyone can make use of selective facts to promote any kind of absurdity. A syllogism can be logically correct, but wrong in reality.

Meanwhile, she is deriving wealth and enjoys a lifestyle that can only be obtained from the capitalist (actually quasi-capitalist) system she bashes.

Does anyone remember the picture of lines for milk, bread and eggs from the Soviet Union? Case closed.

Dec 4, 2008 - 12:24 pm 25. kevin c:

KLIEN AND HER MENTOR CHOMP SKY AND HER PET DOG SOROS HAVE AN COMBINED IQ LOWER THAN THE NUMBER OF WORLD SERIES WON BY THE CHICAGO CUBS SINCE 1909.

Dec 4, 2008 - 1:07 pm 26. kevin c:

WHAT STUPID DOLTS LIKE DR LUMPLEVIN AND NAOMI COMMIEKLIEN NEVER WANT TO ADMIT IS SIMPLE. KARL MARX MADE SEVERAL FATAL FLAWS. HE ASSUMED MEN WOULD BE WILLING TO CEDE POWER WILLINGLY. HE ALSO ASSUMED THOSE SAME MEN WERENT GREEDY AND SELFISH THEMSELVES. IN OTHER WORDS DR LUMPBRAIN, KARL MARX WAS A USELESS IDIOT AND ANYONE WHO BELEIVES IN THAT IDEOLOGY FALLS INTO THE SAME CATEGORY. OBVIOUSLY DR LUMPBRAIN, YOU CONTINUOUSLY GLOSS OVER THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY. PERHAPS BECAUSE YOU FIT IT.

Dec 4, 2008 - 1:15 pm 27. fred:

Kevin C @25,

Dr. Lumplevin @16 is writing satirically. Re-read it, I think you misunderstood him. He’s making fun of the Marxists.

My prior comment on the quality of Ms. Klein’s mind was deleted by Mr. Radosh, and I wish to re-state it here. I have had some experience of reading Ms. Klein’s work going quite a ways back. I became familiar with her work by the early nineties, a few years after I had left the Left. I was really not impressed. The filters of her mind, conditioned as it is by her Red Diaper Baby parents, only selectively interpret reality. Ergo, Garbage In = Garbage Out. We shall see if my assessment is again deleted by the censors.

Dec 4, 2008 - 1:36 pm 28. mishu:

Oh brother. My comment was censored. How come? Was it because I wrote islamist?

Dec 4, 2008 - 2:20 pm 29. RF:

“She believes that “Israel decided to provoke bomb blasts in its buses and pizzerias largely…because building blast walls and bomb detectors became more profitable than living in peace.””

Wow that’s almost like the Jew’s provoking the Nazi’s to the Shoah.

/sarcasm off

Dec 4, 2008 - 2:44 pm 30. mishu:

…because building blast walls and bomb detectors became more profitable than living in peace.”

I agree. It’s more profitable to stand up and defend yourself and your way of life. There’s no profit in submission.

“There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace–and you can have it in the next second–surrender.”

– Ronald Reagan

Dec 4, 2008 - 3:40 pm 31. Joshua:

Did this quote come from before or after Nov. 4? If it came afterward, big whoop – other leftists have been lining up for weeks now to bash their one-time Messiah.

Dec 4, 2008 - 6:03 pm 32. Pat Murphy:

Maurice:

I’m not attacking Mr. Radosh’s article, simply pointing out a (small) factual error. For what it’s worth, I believe that both Klein and her husband are political idiots. And that’s being kind!

Dec 4, 2008 - 8:24 pm 33. The Collapse — The New Clarion:

[...] to what? To turn against socialism? To be free? (The New Yorker has a long piece on Klein. Ron Radosh and Jonathan Chait review her book.) The only remarkable thing about this book, which I won’t [...]

Dec 5, 2008 - 5:57 am 34. Former Torontonian in the USA:

Ahh — no poor socialists, the Lewis’s, Stephen and Michelle or Avi and Naomi. Parents’ house in north Toronto worth easily US$750,000. Ditto for Avi and Naomi. Being a third generation leftie propagandist pays very well, even with confiscatory Canadian taxes which prevent the rest of us from enjoying an equal standard of living.

Dec 5, 2008 - 1:23 pm 35. robert verdi:

The culmination of Kleins policies can be found in Zimbabwe.

Dec 6, 2008 - 6:30 am 36. misanthropicus:

In re Naomi Klein/ # 5 JFM:

The western left/commmunists history is a history of infamy – a history of absurd subservience to the Komintern and the Soviet Union’s interests.
I will remind you here only Lilian Hellman’s and her enlightened coterie’s attitude during the Finnish War.

And what gives even more dramatic dimensions to the distorted history which is taught in American schools, is that if you ask students about a war that happened in Europe in the thirties, they’ll all talk about the Spanish Civil War where the left was the good side and Franco’s army was a collection of monsters, and not about the Soviet Union attacking Finland without any provokation, and with utterly untenable justifications – and the Soviets’ actions and sub-sequent victory and unfair peace conditions being firmly supported by communists erywhere in the world.

P.S. vis-a-vis Guernica: during the Guernica bombing died about 300 people, while during the Barcelona May days, when the pro-Stalin communists took on syndicalists and anarchists, died close to 900 – as now tell this Naomi Klein.

Dec 6, 2008 - 7:30 am 37. Alex Bensky:

I’m not exactly surprised that Ms. Klein is not living down among the proletariat. I would guess that in her home she has an elaborate stereo system, various sorts of kitchen gadgets, central heating, and any number of other things that are produced by someone other than artsy crafts groups.

Dec 6, 2008 - 10:02 am 38. Cristina:

# 2 David Thomson:

Absolutely. I, for one, don’t look askance at Gates’ wealth. I don’t give it a moment’s thought because of the immense social value of Gates’ work. On the other hand,I do resent Oprah’s wealth because it’s built on the dumbing down of our culture. However, I wouldn’t do a thing to level her earnings. As a believer in free markets and in people’s free choices, even to obnubilate themeslves with trash culture, as long as there’s a market for Oprah’s “product,” I say: So be it. My cultural/ideological preferences and class animosities should not translate into impositions on the outcome of market forces. It’s been tried before, with tragic results. It’s impossible for me to understand how people like Naomi Klein can ignore the hell that communists brought about to peoples everywhere they ruled, all in the name of “social justice” and equality of outcome.

Dec 6, 2008 - 11:52 am 39. Harry:

What’s with all the extremist rhetoric? It’s unproductive. Capitalist excesses can be tempered far short of communism/socialism . . . . legislation enforced for the general welfare might do the trick . . . . tobacco, seat belts,
what-have-you . . . .

Dec 6, 2008 - 2:18 pm 40. Anti-Israel:

This is the mentality of Republican Party voters and many americans out there loyal to this FASCIST CAPITALIST SYSTEM:

AND READ HOW MANY US CITIZENS THINK, AND WHY USA IS FUCKED UP, BECAUSE AMERICANS LOVE ROCKEFELLER A LOT MORE THAN CHE GUEVARA:

THERE ARE RIGHT-WING HOMELESS PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY !!

“There are no income equalities that need to be addressed. We should care less that someone like Bill Gates has far more money than the rest of us. This may shock you—but economic improvement of the masses is all about “trickle down” economics. The Gates of the world make the pie bigger for everyone. Who cares that he can afford the best of everything? The hoi polloi live vastly better because of the wealth he created.”

Dec 6, 2008 - 6:28 pm 41. Jabba the Tutt:

Just to add to David Thompson’s comments on this point: “…he is a bona fide left liberal-agrees that there are major problems in America like income inequalities that need to be addressed.”

The really is that there would be no end to “addressing inequalities”. I live in rural Michigan, how do I become equal to someone living in Manhattan and vice versa? I like football, how is that equalized to someone, who likes art galleries?

“Addressing inequalities” allows to the leftist to continuing demonize freedom and unlimited interference into the lives of everyone, otherwise how do you “address inequality”.

So, bottom line, who’s a bigger nutcase of distopian nonsense: Naomi Klein or Jonathan Chait? I call it a tie. They’ve both maxed out the nutball meter.

Dec 7, 2008 - 9:48 am 42. Steve Skubinna:

Never forget that beneath the innocently earnest passion for fairness and equality displayed by creatures like Klein lies an implacable evil, which leads inexorably to concentration camps and mass graves. These are the sorts of people who profess love for humanity and somehow find it needful to slaughter it by the millions.

Dec 8, 2008 - 6:47 am 43. fred:

Hey, Anti-Isreal: Don’t be a DouChe. Socialism has never worked anywhere. Capitalism works because if people aren’t required to fend for themselves, they wind up not doing crap. This was figured out at Plymouth Rock, by the way.

Dec 8, 2008 - 7:06 am 44. Anthony Esson:

What a load of poisoned nonsense.

Dec 8, 2008 - 8:27 am 45. dan:

i’m always grateful for the fine BS-detectors liek those of Mr. Radosh and of other converts from the Left or New Left to what is referred to as conservatism but is simply in fact non-marsxism-leninism – by god they are good at doing that – but Naomi Klein always seemed to me to be something like the E! Channel version of the more venerated Chomsky et al.

one thing: it is discouraging that the red diaper parents should have exerted such total influence over their children. “give me a child of 8 and i shall make him a life-long bolshevik,” said lenin.

we are deeply in danger. the america we now know will not at all be the America our grandchildren live in. look at England! poor, poor Anglosphere.

Dec 8, 2008 - 11:34 am 46. Mark:

Read the first couple of Chapters of her book “The Shock Doctrine” at Borders. I was glad I hadn’t bought it as it was pure BullSchumer. Not much more than lies & misstatements represented as fact. No one the NYT’s crowd fell for it. She could only have published this book after Milton Friedman died, as he would have destroyed her “arguements” in seconds. She fails to understand the basics: Free Markets = Liberty; Socialism = Slavery. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Dec 8, 2008 - 5:38 pm