Is no enough?
I have just finished Naomi Klein's new book 'No is not enough' and it is a comprehensive and compelling account of Trump and the conditions which enabled him to become US President. I read 'No Logo' when it came out and twenty year old me found it interesting but slightly over-rated. It sold a s**t ton because it was bang on the millennium Zeitgeist and was linked to the 'anti-capitalist' movement. Her later books are better.
What makes this worth reading amongst all the billions of trees and gigabytes spent chronicling Trump is Klein's ability to link his rise to the power of branding and shock politics. The first point is obvious but understated. Trump and his brand are indistinguishable. His self-created image of the ruthless all conquering business icon (or 'winner') is instrumental in his rise and also his ability to withstand criticism. The shock politics part also applies analysis from her earlier work and details how neo-liberals take advantage of crisis to re-order political agendas. Hurricane Katrina and Russia are two places where high ranking Trump officials (Pence and Tillerson respectively) used crisis to ram home an agenda of privatisation and a market (or oligarchical) domination of the public realm.
For Klein, Trump is not a freak occurrence but a radical extension of the logic of corporate neo-liberal takeover. Why pay lobbyists pay the Government when they can just run the Government? The second most worrying thing is that, though Trump has struggled to get his agenda across thus far, he and his team are classical disaster capitalists who could radically transform America if a 9/11 event put them in position to do so. War would strengthen them at home and would also drive up the price of oil, which they want for obvious reasons.
This leads on to the most worrying thing, which is climate change. Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement is a disaster for the planet but great for the oil people who are part of his Government. They can all afford to have their grand-kids live in Elysium though the rest of us cannot.
Naomi Klein says that the environment - and by connected necessity - the political world needs urgent radical overhaul in order to prevent the duel catastrophes of planetary destruction and right nationalist takeover because the centrist liberal mainstream does not have sufficient answers and created the conditions for Trump's rise. In her estimation it needs radical solutions and structural economic change in order to do what is needed to sustain the planet; politically difficult though all of that is.
Yeah I agree. This podcast gives a good synopsis. Its a good book.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2017/jul/04/naomi-klein-trump-neoliberalism-left-failed-books-podcast
What makes this worth reading amongst all the billions of trees and gigabytes spent chronicling Trump is Klein's ability to link his rise to the power of branding and shock politics. The first point is obvious but understated. Trump and his brand are indistinguishable. His self-created image of the ruthless all conquering business icon (or 'winner') is instrumental in his rise and also his ability to withstand criticism. The shock politics part also applies analysis from her earlier work and details how neo-liberals take advantage of crisis to re-order political agendas. Hurricane Katrina and Russia are two places where high ranking Trump officials (Pence and Tillerson respectively) used crisis to ram home an agenda of privatisation and a market (or oligarchical) domination of the public realm.
For Klein, Trump is not a freak occurrence but a radical extension of the logic of corporate neo-liberal takeover. Why pay lobbyists pay the Government when they can just run the Government? The second most worrying thing is that, though Trump has struggled to get his agenda across thus far, he and his team are classical disaster capitalists who could radically transform America if a 9/11 event put them in position to do so. War would strengthen them at home and would also drive up the price of oil, which they want for obvious reasons.
This leads on to the most worrying thing, which is climate change. Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement is a disaster for the planet but great for the oil people who are part of his Government. They can all afford to have their grand-kids live in Elysium though the rest of us cannot.
Naomi Klein says that the environment - and by connected necessity - the political world needs urgent radical overhaul in order to prevent the duel catastrophes of planetary destruction and right nationalist takeover because the centrist liberal mainstream does not have sufficient answers and created the conditions for Trump's rise. In her estimation it needs radical solutions and structural economic change in order to do what is needed to sustain the planet; politically difficult though all of that is.
Yeah I agree. This podcast gives a good synopsis. Its a good book.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2017/jul/04/naomi-klein-trump-neoliberalism-left-failed-books-podcast
41-45, M
