Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism and organized labour, and criticism of corporate globalization,[2] fascism[3] and capitalism.[4]
Klein first became known internationally for her alter-globalization book No Logo (1999). The Take (2004), a documentary film about Argentine workers' self-managed factories, written by her and directed by her husband Avi Lewis, further increased her profile. The Shock Doctrine (2007), a critical analysis of the history of neoliberal economics, solidified her standing as a prominent activist on the international stage and was adapted into a six-minute companion film by Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón, as well as a feature-length documentary by Michael Winterbottom. Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014) was a New York Times nonfiction bestseller and the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
In 2016, Klein was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her activism on climate justice. Klein frequently appears on global and national lists of top influential thinkers, including the 2014 Thought Leaders ranking compiled by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute,[5] Prospect magazine's world thinkers 2014 poll,[6] and Maclean's 2014 Power List.[7] She was formerly a member of the board of directors of the climate activist group 350.org. In 2021, Klein took up the UBC Professorship in Climate Justice, joining the University of British Columbia's Department of Geography.[8][9] She has been the co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice since it was launched in 2021.[10]
Family
Naomi Klein was born in Montreal, Quebec, into a Jewish family with a history of peace activism. Her parents were self-described hippies[11] who emigrated from the United States in 1967 as war resisters to the Vietnam War.[12] Her mother, documentary filmmaker Bonnie Sherr Klein, is best known for her anti-pornography film Not a Love Story.[13] Her father, Michael Klein, is a physician and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her brother, Seth Klein, is an author and the former director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; he is the domestic partner of politician Christine Boyle.[14][15]
Early life and education
Klein spent much of her teenage years in shopping malls, obsessed with designer labels. As a child and teenager, she found it "very oppressive to have a very public feminist mother," and she rejected politics, instead embracing "full-on consumerism".
She has attributed her change in worldview to two catalysts. One was when she was 17 and preparing for the University of Toronto, her mother had a stroke and became severely disabled. Naomi, her father, and her brother took care of Bonnie through the period in hospital and at home, making educational sacrifices to do so.[21] That year off prevented her "from being such a brat".[22] The next year, after she had begun her studies at the University of Toronto, the second catalyst occurred: the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre of female engineering students, which proved to be a wake-up call to feminism.[23]
Klein's writing career began with contributions to The Varsity, a student newspaper, where she served as editor-in-chief. After her third year at the University of Toronto, she dropped out of university to take a job at The Globe and Mail
Works
No Logo
In 1999, Klein published the book No Logo, which for many became a manifesto of the anti-globalization movement. In it, she attacks brand-oriented consumer culture and the operations of large corporations. She also accuses several such corporations of unethically exploiting workers in the world's poorest countries in pursuit of greater profits. In this book, Klein criticized Nike so severely that Nike published a point-by-point response.[26] No Logo became an international bestseller, selling over one million copies in over 28 languages.
Fences and Windows
Klein's Fences and Windows (2002) is a collection of her articles and speeches written on behalf of the anti-globalization movement (all proceeds from the book go to benefit activist organizations through The Fences and Windows Fund).[27]
The Take
Views
Iraq War criticism
Klein has written about the Iraq War. In "Baghdad Year Zero" (Harper's Magazine, September 2004),[56] Klein argues that, contrary to popular belief, the George W. Bush administration did have a clear plan for post-invasion Iraq: to build a completely unconstrained free market economy. She describes plans to allow foreigners to extract wealth from Iraq and the methods used to achieve those goals.[57][58] Her "Baghdad Year Zero" was one of the inspirations for the 2008 film War, Inc.[59]
Klein's "Bring Najaf to New York" (The Nation, August 2004) argued that Muqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army "represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq" and that, if he were elected, "Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a
Other activities
Klein contributes to The Nation, In These Times, The Globe and Mail, This Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The Guardian, and is a senior contributor for The Intercept.[100] She is a former Miliband Fellow and lectured at the London School of Economics on the anti-globalization movement.[101] Her appointment as the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick began in October 2018 and ran for 3 years.[102][103][104]
Klein ranked 11th in an internet poll of the top global intellectuals of 2005, a list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals compiled by the Prospect magazine in conjunction with Foreign Policy magazine.
Honours and awards
- 2009: Warwick Prize for Writing, for The Shock Doctrine[36]
- 2011: Honorary doctorate, Saint Thomas University[115]
- 2011: Time magazine's list of Top 100 Non-Fiction books published since 1923, No Logo[116]
- 2014: Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for This Changes Everything[117]
- 2014: The Observer 'Book of the Year', This Changes Everything[118]
List of works
Books
Filmography
- The Corporation (2003) (interviewee)
- The Take (2004) (writer)
- The Shock Doctrine (2009) (writer)
- Catastroika (2012) (appearance)
- This Changes Everything (2015)
See also
- Alter-globalization
- Leap Manifesto
- Green New Deal
External links
References
- https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTlL-BuD2ul/?igsh=MW9zenE1dDRrb2k4cQ==^
- Commanding Heights : Naomi Klein www.pbs.org, retrieved December 20, 2021^
- Berkeley Talks transcript: Naomi Klein on eco-fascism and the Green New Deal Berkeley News, March 27, 2020, retrieved December 20, 2021^