Journalist, essayist, environmental activist and critic of capitalism, Naomi Klein has been a key figure on the North American left since the publication of her first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. In 2007's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, she analyzed the destabilization of the world by capitalism, which manages to preserve its hold on the world by exploiting moments of crisis. Last year, Klein published Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, in which she examines the influence of online conspiracy theories and the future of the left.
This interview was conducted in English. It has been edited for concision and clarity.
It's a devastating result from the perspective of the planet, from the perspective of public health, from the perspective of militarism. Am I surprised? No, I'm not surprised. I think the lesson from the European elections and the British elections [which took place in June and July respectively] was that we are in a change moment. People are angry. They're unhappy. They're in the mood to throw out who is in power.
Honestly, I think for this loss, the responsibility is mainly Joe Biden's, because Joe Biden should have stepped down in December in time for there to be a primary. And then there could have been candidates who ran against the Democratic Party's policies. But there really is not a way for a sitting vice president to run as a change candidate.
The costs of that are extraordinary. And it will not be borne by the elites of the Democratic Party. It will be borne by the base that they ignored and sacrificed during this election. The entire strategy made no sense to anybody who understands voter turnout. They took their base for granted. They sacrificed traditional Democratic voters and ran with Republican voters, even to the point of making an alliance with the Cheney family, who stand for everything that my generation despises about the Republican Party that lied the country into the Iraq war.
It was a strategy that was devised, I am convinced, by the donors to the Democratic Party who did not want Kamala Harris to run with left economic policies. They didn't want her to run on public health care. They didn't want her to run on regulating Big Tech. And they somehow persuaded themselves that they could win by courting Republicans.
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