FrankFortune August 5, 20081

Naomi Klein's greatest talent is for self-publicity. I would say that is her greatest genius. But even as she admits with No Logo, her works lack the depth and insight that is heralded by the publicity. While she packs the back of her books with a laundry list of facts and a toilet roll of figures, such a technique is as old as the hills. Selective fact hoarding does not bring the truth.

The Naomi Klein Project - to become a rich and famous writer - is going to plan. But what do her interventions really offer to those who follow her? Her disturbing egging on of violence at international fora prior to 9/11, provoked a severe backlash from governments around the world, and gifted activists the constrained atmosphere they now live with.

She admits the vapid thinness of No Logo's attacks on brands and logos, but will she in a few years admit the ahistorical and lazy thinking behind the Shock Doctrine? It is a long-standing observation of human behaviour dressed up as a revelation: that humans exploit weakness to get their way.

Most disturbing, however, is what she is trying to achieve as a political project. She calls herself a neo-Kenysian just when such economics are as dangerous and shot through with failure as the market fundamentalists. Do people really wish for more management of their lives by the state, or are they in fact seeking liberation from both the state and heavy-handed corporations? As a case study, the UK's Labour Party has been engaged in just such a project to disasterous ends: people are rebelling against this suffocating state micro-managing and gross waste of public funds. In many ways, Klein panders to an audience of neo-Marxists pining for a new era of state growth. But a quick look around the world at what people really want, will show a far different picture: a global population straining to be made free.