#naomiklein — Public Fediverse posts

What happens when you realise a crisis isn’t always treated as a tragedy? Book review: The Shock Doctrine

I finished The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and immediately had the uncomfortable experience of wanting to recommend a book that made me deeply uncomfortable.

I don’t believe in every argument Naomi makes; however, I wanted to recommend it because, whether you agree with her or not, she definitely changes the way you look at the world once finished and surely that’s a book worthwhile.

Published in 2007, the book explores a simple but unsettling idea that moments of collective crisis, whether natural disasters, wars, financial collapse or political upheaval, often create opportunities to push through economic policies that would ordinarily face far greater resistance.

Sinister, I know. Naomi traces this argument across decades and continents, weaving together economics, politics and history into a narrative that’s equal parts investigative journalism and historical analysis. She moves from Chile under Augusto Pinochet to post-Soviet Russia, the invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, arguing that each crisis became an opportunity for sweeping political and economic change.

Reading it felt like watching hundreds of seemingly unrelated events slowly click together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Whether that pattern convinces you is almost secondary. The real value of the book lies in the questions it leaves behind…

Who benefits from crisis, who decides what recovery looks like and who exactly are we rebuilding for?

I found myself thinking whilst reading the hurricane Katrina chapter (one of the many crises mentioned in the book) how we often describe events as inevitable, as though history simply unfolded on its own. Klein makes you question the opposite as she asks us to consider who made decisions in the background, who held power and who profited from moments when everyone else was distracted by survival.

It’s a perspective I don’t think I’ll easily shake moving forward, especially as someone studying health science. I couldn’t help but draw parallels with public health.

Despite it being the most uncomfortable reading experience of 2026 thus far, I have to rate it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I tried to read it without annotating to much on my first pass as I suspect I’ll revisit this repeatedly over the years underlining sentences and adding thoughts.

Would I recommend it?

Yes, with one caveat. Read it as an argument to interrogate rather than form a solid conclusion. And definitely follow the footnotes and additional research in the back for a comprehensive overview of what Naomi is talking about.

Who is this for?

I think readers interested in political economy, history and public policy will get the most from it. That said, don’t let the subject matter put you off. Klein writes in an accessible, engaging style and despite its length and extensive footnotes, I found it surprisingly easy to read.

Thank you for reading Extracurricular! Subscribe for more thoughts collected between books, uni and research rabbit holes ★

‚We’re All Living in the ‘Mirror World’ Now‘

Höre Ezra Kleins Gespräch mit Naomi Klein (auf YouTube und allen Podcast-Plattformen nachzuhören, Transkript bei der New York Times, 2026). Sehr empfehlenswert, u.a. – aber bei weitem nicht nur– wegen Naomi Kleins Bemerkungen zu einer neuen Strategie für die Linke. Sie spricht von einer welcoming left, von neigbourism und eco populism.

Voran geht eine lange und differenzierte Analyse des Erfolgs des Trumpismus, für Ezra wie für Naomi Klein eine Form des Faschismus. Die Spiegelwelt, die Welt der Querdenker, mit der sich Naomi Klein schon lange beschäftigt, habe gesiegt. Sie bestimme die globale Realität, obwohl und vielleicht weil die „aufgeklärte Seite“ der Gesellschaft sie lange nicht ernst nahm – so wie wir hier die Spiegelwelt derjenigen, die von den Kickls, Kunaseks und Amesbauers vertreten werden, nicht ernst genug nehmen.

"The reason why we ended up calling it 'end times #fascism' is because I think it gets at the narrative structure of all of these movements, and it is the same narrative structure as the rapture."

#NaomiKlein on #Trump 2.0 and "End Times Fascism"

https://youtu.be/Pw7nMKN7Bfc
#USpol #USpolitics #politicalTheory #Trumpism #neofascism #SiliconValleyRight #oligarchy #FarRight #NewRight

Online Event Oct 30 7pm ET | #NaomiKlein & #HalaAlyan in Conversation

hosted by #JewishCurrents' EIC #ArielleAngel

"How do our feelings affect our political choices? How do we defuse and redirect Jewish fear in light of its increasing weaponization? What is—and should be—the role of both mourning and rage in Palestinian and in Jewish communal politics? How do we guard against political nihilism?"

info/registration https://jewishcurrents.org/event/volatile-emotions-naomi-klein-and-hala-alyan-in-conversation

#PalestineSolidarity #USpolitics #Gaza

@palestine

Doppelganger
A Trip Into the Mirror World

"What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?"

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#NaomiKlein
#NaomiWolf

“When Naomi Klein Realized People Regularly Confused Her With Naomi Wolf, She Went Down A Rabbit Hole”, Naomi Klein, Vanity Fair (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-book).

#NaomiKlein #NaomiWolf #IdentityCrisis #Doppelgänger #Identity

Wenn jemand, der bisher irgendwie links bzw. liberal gebrandet war, ins rechte #Querdenker Paralleluniversum abdriftet, macht mein Hirn automatisch so eine Art Schnell-Check für Indizien im bisherigen Werk, manches springt einen dann förmlich an. So etwas ähnliches, nur sehr viel ausführlicher, hat #NaomiKlein mit der völlig Off-the-Rocker gegangenen #NaomiWolf gemacht, mit der sie sehr oft verwechselt wird. @jbirken hat eine super #Rezension dazu geschrieben:
https://54books.de/wege-des-nichtsehens-naomi-klein-schreibt-in-doppelgaenger-ueber-politische-verwechslungen/

"Klein looks at how '#FarRight movements feign solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, and new-age wellness entrepreneurs turned #antivaxxers further scramble our familiar political alliances.' #Doppelganger explores 'what it feels like to watch one’s identity slip away in the digital ether, an experience many more of us will have in the age of AI.' "

https://www.wgbh.org/forum-network/lectures/doppelganger-with-naomi-klein

#NaomiKlein #books #NaomiWolf #conspiracism #diagonalism

"In her new book #Doppelganger Klein uses the fact that she is commonly confused online for a very different writer, #NaomiWolf, who has called #Covid19 vaccine programmes ‘mass murder’, as a device to explore modern themes including online identity, #ConspiracyTheories and the 21st Century supremacy of the ‘personal brand.' "

#NaomiKlein on conspiracies, climate and the 'personal brand'

https://pod.link/794389685/episode/a51008ce1615bc9d814ad06033b5a1f9

#conspiracism #antiscience #disinformation #antivaxxers #diagonalism #books

"It’s a huge mistake, Klein thinks, to see Wolf in recent years as having ‘lost it’. The New York Times no longer calls her, so she took her followers with her ‘over the edge’, where she found the new and even bigger audience of #VirusDenialists and #AntiVaxxers, wellness gurus and religious fundamentalists.."

Jenny Turner reviews #NaomiKlein's "#Doppelganger"

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n19/jenny-turner/short-cuts

#NaomiWolf #conspiracism #diagonalism #disinformation #Antivaxx #Covid19 #CovidDisinfo #AntiScience #books

Pluralistic: Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger" (05 September 2023)
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/

This article by @pluralistic is a compelling review of Naomi Klein's new book, and shares some hard truths about leftists, liberals, progressives, and conservatives.

#NaomiKlein #NaomiWolf #Doppelganger

#NaomiKlein’s #Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is a polymathic work that serves up new #political heuristics with the firepower we’ve come to expect from the coiner of “disaster #capitalism.” A Dante-spiral through our circles of cultural hell, it’s also a memoir of #demoralization, #selfevaluation, and persistent hope.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vR0xTUzExMjIzODk4NDI/episode/MjcxNzAzYTAtNTFhMC0xMWVlLWJiZDAtYTc0YTk5YmQ5NGRk?sa=X&ved=0CJsCEM-BB2oXChMIyKum5fWpgQMVAAAAAB0AAAAAEAE

Ay yi yi. I had heard about this Naomi Klein work, but this excerpt is fascinating. I had to put it down and come back to it because it was so much. What a weird and clever strategy it feels that looking at Naomi Wolf to assess the state of...[gestures vaguely] things....

But I don't know how to shake them out of it. Might have to see if the book tells us.

#ConspiracyTheorist #NaomiWolf #antivaxxers #SteveBannon #NaomiKlein #Doppelganger

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

"If there is one message I should have taken from the destabilising appearance of my doppelganger, this is it:

Once and for all, stop eavesdropping on strangers talking about you in this crowded and filthy global #toilet known as #SocialMedia."

— Naomi Klein

#NaomiKlein and her anti-truth doppelganger #NaomiWolf

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

#NaomiKlein tells about her doppelganger, #NaomiWolf:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/26/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-conspiracy-theories

' When she was casting nearly every public health measure marshalled to control the Covid pandemic as a covert plan by the Chinese Communist party, the World Economic Forum and Anthony Fauci to usher in a sinister new world order, I began to feel as if I was reading a parody of The Shock Doctrine, one with all facts and evidence carefully removed, and coming to cartoonishly broad conclusions I would never support. '

The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 2

Second In A Series
Activists Afoot!

As I suggested in my first post in this series on MCRC v. EPA, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission would have us believe that “anti-mining” forces worked secretly with and even infiltrated the EPA, and the agency’s objections to CR 595 followed a “predetermined plan.” The EPA, it claims, had decided to oppose the haul road even before the MCRC application was reviewed.

This sounds like legitimate cause for concern: permit applications should be reviewed on their merits, not pre-judged and not according to some other anti- or pro- agenda. We certainly wouldn’t want someone in the Environmental Protection Agency to be “pro-mining”; there are enough well-paid mining lobbyists already haunting the hallways in Lansing and Washington, DC. But in this case, the anti-mining label is being used as a term of opprobrium, and to distort and deliberately misrepresent what the Environmental Protection Agency is chartered and required by law to do: in short, to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect the environment.

When it comes to proving the insinuations it makes, the MCRC complaint offers slim evidence.

For example, the complaint makes a big fuss over a November 28, 2012 letter from Laura Farwell, who lives in the Marquette area and is described here as “a prominent environmental activist.”  The letter is addressed to Lynn Abramson, then a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Thomas Fox, Senior Counsel of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking them to “weigh-in” with the EPA on CR 595. (Exhibit 1).

EPA must determine whether to uphold its original objections to proposed County Road 595 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), pursuant to its supervisory authority over Michigan’s delegated wetlands permitting program. Tom may remember that during the August 30, 2011 meeting at EPA Denise Keehner of EPA’s office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds definitively reiterated EPA’s position and stated that the haul road would not happen.
Thus, this letter is to request, respectfully, that you weigh-in as soon as possible with the EPA on its decision.

The MCRC complains about Farwell’s use of the word “definitively” here and casts the 2011 meeting in a sinister light:

on August 30, 2011, a very different type of meeting regarding CR 595 took place at USEPA Headquarters in Washington, DC. MCRC was neither invited to nor informed of the meeting. In attendance (as far as is known at the present time) were top USEPA officials, Congressional staff, KBIC representatives, and a prominent environmental activist opposed to the construction of CR 595. It further appears that USEPA made no formal record of the meeting.

Without a formal record, it’s impossible to know what transpired at this meeting, and if the complaint is going to rely on Farwell’s memory of the conversation, then it should also take into account her intentions in paraphrasing and recounting it, one year after it took place. The language here — “a very different type of meeting,” “neither invited nor informed,” “as far as is known at the present time,” “no formal record” — doesn’t help in that regard, and it’s meant to suggest that conjurations were already afoot.

It’s clear the MCRC was not included in some discussions at EPA. There’s nothing extraordinary or illicit about that. All concerned parties had been meeting with and petitioning the EPA for several years at this point. The complaint is still a long way from proving that the EPA “surreptitiously met with a number of environmental activists vocally opposed to the road,” and an even longer way from proving that there was anything like an anti-mining coalition assembled in secret at the offices of the EPA.

In an ironic twist, these allegations of secrecy and whispering behind closed doors may come back to haunt the MCRC: at a Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting this month, the Marquette County Road Commission itself faced accusations that it had violated the Open Meetings Act in planning to bring its suit against the EPA. Public officials who intentionally violate that act are ordinarily fined and incur other liabilities; in this case, there would be some eating of words as well.

By November 28, 2012, the EPA had, in fact, “decided against the proposed haul road,” as Farwell puts it in the email she sent along with the letter to Abramson and Fox. The EPA had entered objections to the Woodland Road Application (in March, 2010) and announced their objections to CR 595 (in March, 2012).  Even so, a Fall 2012 public meeting held by the EPA “in Marquette…for more input” had Farwell worried. She was not at all confident the EPA would uphold its original objections to the haul road.  The matter was still far from being “definitively” settled.

Whatever reassurances Farwell was given at that 2011 meeting — or thought she had been given, or recalled having been given, one year later — were clearly at risk of getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. The purpose of her letter is to prevent that.

There is nothing surprising in all this. Those watching new mining developments in the Upper Peninsula are constantly having to chase after the EPA and demand that the regulator step in and do its job.

Jeffery Loman, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and a former federal regulator, has repeatedly put the EPA on notice and complained of the agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act.

In May of this year, the grassroots environmental group Save the Wild UP filed a petition with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that Eagle Mine was issued the wrong regulatory permit. The appeal requested that the EPA require Eagle Mine to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to protect the Salmon Trout River and other surface waters from the discharge of mining effluent. The Appeals Board did not contest the facts put forward in the petition, but dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. They hardly proved themselves to be staunch allies.

So watchdogs and environmental groups, too, have reason to gripe about the EPA and often feel powerless in the face of bureaucratic inertia and ineptitude. Laura Farwell herself seems to have felt that way, and that’s why we find her asking Abramson and Fox for help. The MCRC complaint exaggerates her influence at the EPA when it describes her as “a prominent environmental activist.” The epithet is used here to create the misleading impression that within the offices of EPA Region 5 and the confines of Marquette County there are political opponents with resources to match the power of multi-billion dollar, multinational mining companies.

Laura Farwell and her husband Frank moved to the area in 2006 from Madison, Wisconsin. They are members of the St. Paul Episcopal Church and participate, along with their son Cody, in the church’s Earth Day tree plantings. The couple donated some money to the UP Land Conservancy. Farwell has also organized events for the Cedar Tree Institute, which works to bridge “faith communities and environmental groups.” (She is described on the Institute’s site  as “a concerned mother and local citizen.”) She is thanked for “working quietly behind the scenes” in a 2011 Earth Keeper TV video on the environmental risks posed by the Eagle Mine; and she’s copied along with many other local citizens in a Google Group post dated April 9, 2012, urging people to comment on CR 595 before the public comment period is closed.

Farwell’s commitments to land conservation are pretty clear, and while the complaint asks us to recoil in horror at the phrase “prominent environmental activist,” cooler heads are just as likely to be impressed by Farwell’s dedication to the people around her and the place where she lives. Maybe that dedication is all it takes to be a prominent environmental activist in the view of the Marquette County Road Commission.

Some locals, on the other hand, are legitimately concerned that nationally and internationally prominent environmentalists — like Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and their ilk — ignore the current situation around Lake Superior, or fail to give it the serious attention it deserves. National media have barely taken notice. Farwell herself admits that to the great and powerful in Washington DC “the proposed haul road may seem like some little back trail in the middle of nowhere,” but she urges that it will cut through “critical wetlands resources” and “enable the industrializing of this rural Great Lakes watershed by international mining interests.”

Farwell’s letter tries to create some urgency around the CR 595 issue by putting the road in context and specifying whose interests would be served by the industrializing of the region. A serious assessment of CR 595 would significantly widen the lens, taking into account the cumulative effects of all the new mining activities around Lake Superior: all leasing, exploration, development and active mining throughout northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario. Otherwise, we miss the big picture, and without that perspective, it’s just too easy to parcel out the land, the water, and the future of the region to the highest bidders.

The MCRC complaint, too, places CR 595 in the context of “mining and economic development in the Great Lakes region” in a few places, but only to make the specious argument that those who oppose or question the road are opposed to mining and therefore opposed to the region’s prosperity. These are the ideological leaps the complaint makes. Those who don’t make these leaps are called activists or anti-mining obstructionists. That is a political, not a legal argument.

It’s never too late to have a serious discussion of what sustainable economic development and true prosperity for the Great Lakes region might look like. How might we best organize our lives together in this place? is a fundamental political question. But at this juncture, it appears, the MCRC can’t afford to let that conversation happen. This lawsuit is an attempt to shut it down and stifle dissent. Where business leads, society must obediently follow. To question this order of things, as Laura Farwell seems to have repeatedly done, quietly, behind the scenes, is to commit some kind of nefarious act.

This is where the attitude on display in this complaint gets worrisome. With this lawsuit, the MCRC pretends to have the political authority to direct economic development in the region (not just to build and repair roads). But that is only pretense, and things in Marquette County are not as they appear. The public still does not know who is funding the Road Commission lawsuit, what they stand for and what they expect in return for their support. The real powers lurk behind the scenes.

#501c4 #antiMining #BillMcKibben #CedarTreeInstitute #CleanWaterAct #corporatePoliticalActivity #corruption #CountyRoad595 #CR595 #EagleMine #EarthDay #environmentalEthics #environmentalPolitics #environmentalism #EPA #GeorgeMonbiot #JefferyLoman #LauraFarwell #LundinMining #LynnAbramson #MarquetteCounty #MarquetteCountyRoadCommission #MarquetteCountyRoadCommissionVEPA #MCRCVEPA #mining #NaomiKlein #OpenMeetingsAct #politicalAuthority #politics #power #SaveTheWildUP #secrecy #StandUP_ #ThomasFox #TomCasperson #Water