Naomi Klein.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview

Naomi Klein inherited some of her politics. Her grandfather was blacklisted by Joe McCarthy for being a union agitator at Walt Disney, where he worked as an animator. Her grandmother worked for Henry Wallace in 1948. Her father fled the United States as a Vietnam-era war resister and became a medical doctor and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her mother was a feminist filmmaker for Canada's National Film Board.

But upbringing is not destiny, and Klein has created her own. She was a student journalist and activist at the University of Toronto. She edited the leftist Canadian publication This Magazine . In 2000, she became an instant sensation when she published No Logo , which served as a manifesto for the anti-corporate, global justice movement. After that, she chronicled the rebellion against neoliberalism in Latin America. With her husband, Avi Lewis, she made a film called The Take , which is about autoworkers in Buenos Aires who occupy their idle factory.

A columnist for The Nation and The Guardian , Klein published the monumental book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in 2007, which systematically refutes the claim that democracy and free markets are inseparable. In part, the book is a history of U.S. imperialism since the overthrow of Allende's Chile. And in part, it's an exposé on how Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, the U.S. Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all do the bidding of U.S. corporations and banks, especially in times of crisis.

Klein was recently profiled in The New Yorker , which called her "the most visible and influential figure on the American left what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago."

I spoke with her three days after Obama's election, just before she addressed an overflow crowd in Madison, Wisconsin, at a forum sponsored by the Madison Institute. Both in the interview and at her talk, I found her to be engaging, brilliant, and unflinching, yet funny and down to earth.

Q: What was your first reaction to Obama's victory?

Naomi Klein: Well, I made a really conscious choice that I was going to enjoy the night. Obviously, I'm keenly aware of what a centrist Obama is, and that there will be lots of disappointments to follow. But that doesn't negate the power of that evening. I have some really hard-core anarchist friends, and I told them, "Listen, you're not going to take this night away from me. I will not hear it the...