Zippy
7th March 2002, 16:42
I know some people have read her book, so here is an interview with her. Note, she isnt involved in any left-wing politics, she just has opinions on branding culture; so its nice to read that some other people do care. :)
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Naomi Klein is an acclaimed young journalist whose writings have appeared in The Baffler, Ms and the Village Voice, amongst many others. For the last four years she has been covering the rise of anti-corporate activism in her syndicated column in the Toronto Star. No Logo, her first book, provides the first history of this activism. Mark Lipton of New York University's Culture and Communication department spoke to her for Amazon.co.uk :
Amazon.co.uk: Did the protests during the [December 1999] World Trade Organisation's conference in Seattle catch you at all by surprise?
Naomi Klein: After the protests in Seattle, The Economist went on a rampage attacking the student protesters who were attacking multinational corporations yet wearing Nike shoes and drinking designer lattes. Yet the reason why these movements are working is because we are so branded. We need these brand names as entry points to talk about politics, our communities and even social justice. The brand plays this very powerful role. Even in the act of attacking the brand, the use of the brand name, essentially, is an admission like a ticket. Particularly for young people, you need a brand name as an entry point to engagement. More and more, students on college campuses are taking that next step. I was so heartened by the World Trade Organisation protests in Seattle because college kids got involved, learned about Nike, Disney and the Gap and looked at the political structures behind this agenda. Moving to the political arena is a vital step as it provides a way to talk about this stuff without focusing on what you buy, what you wear, what you should boycott. We do need to talk about being human billboards. But I don't think there's a contradiction between wearing this corporate clothing, eating in these corporate restaurants and having a political critique of the actions of these corporations. I believe they can coexist. This doesn't have to be a consumer movement.
Amazon.co.uk: If not, then where do you suggest we look for our models of activism and social justice?
Klein: There are parallels to the 1930s. All I am suggesting is that we do globally what we have already been successful doing on a national level. I am talking about the need for a global New Deal. If we are going to have globalization, we need global regulations of capital, minimum labour standards and minimum environmental protections. Today, we are getting to that point by using the brands as a way to get there. If you go into schools and tell kids not to wear Nike and not to wear Tommy, you are doomed to failure. What we should be doing is using these brands as popular education tools requiring greater political critique. The best way to take power away from the brand is to engage people politically not so they'll stop wearing the brands because they won't, but when you engaging people politically, brands fall into a place in our lives with genuine political outlets.
Amazon.co.uk: But couldn't the brand itself provide such an outlet, for instance, through the postmodern, self-aware ad campaigns you describe?
Klein: As I have been touring with the book, everyone has expressed concern about the co-opting of this movement, that marketers will be able to absorb an anti-corporate critique and that this movement will be diffused much like every other political movement has been diffused. I fundamentally disagree. I know, from so many young people who I meet, some of who are now protesting the WTO, that if you ask them how they became involved in this issue, they will say, "Coke came to my high school when I was 11 and they signed this exclusive deal with our student council and I fought it". These corporations are breeding a new generation of activists simply by their aggressiveness.
Amazon.co.uk: When you were a student, how were you politically engaged?
Klein: As a student, I was very much involved in the so-called "political correctness" debates. Our critique of advertising revolved around demanding and getting better representations in ads by pointing out, "This ad is sexist; this ad is homophobic; we need more diversity in advertising". It's not that we didn't have a point--we did--but a couple of things have changed. We were not nearly as techno-savvy or techno-literate as today's young people. If our response when we didn't like something was to ban it, the response from younger students is, "Why don't we change it? Why not hack into it and change it?" Further, today's young people want more than change; they demand silence. These ads have to shut up. It doesn't matter how progressive the pictures or how perfectly representational, once in a while these ads have to shut up. These ideas were totally absent from my university years.
Amazon.co.uk: If shifts in technology breed this new generation of young people, what else has modern technology altered?
Klein: I think the technology is giving a lot of young people confidence, if not a wonderful arrogance. Techno-savvy young people realise they know more about the machines than the bosses who are about to hire them--and they know that they have an enormously profitable skill. I see that same sort of arrogance among activists organising list-serves for other activists around the world and those "hack-tivist" forays on-line of anti-corporate targets. This is what gave young people the confidence to take over Seattle. Remember it was a hi-tech operation: cell-phone activists. For a long time, activists were concerned with the stunt-based activism that was played for the media, for the television. Remember the days of TV-friendly activism? The attitude today is much less centered on the spectacle. Today, we can bring our own cameras and have our own Webcasts. We can share our e-mail diaries. I read over 50 personal, detailed accounts of the events in Seattle. Among young people, there is a distrustful impulse. They say, "I'm not waiting to read in the newspaper or to watch on television to see what really happened". Technology is changing the way they receive information. Among today's youth, there is definitely a feeling that you don't need to wait for the media to catch up but that the media can catch up to you. It's why what happened in Seattle was able to take the US media by surprise. The New York Times wrote how the protests happened seemingly overnight. No, they didn't. It's just that the American media didn't notice all the little groups cropping up all over the world that were linked by technology.
Amazon.co.uk: So the Internet is responsible for modifying how activists organise?
Klein: It's not that the Internet is the means by which activists are connecting but the Internet is the model on which organizing is happening. To me, that's this movement's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. If you remember another era of organising, 10 years ago, you met in a room and you decided what your agenda was and then you went to the streets. What I am noticing is that young people are going into the streets before there is consensus at all. The Internet is wonderful at saying "Hey, let's go meet on that street corner". It can get you to the action, but the consensus around the action's ideology doesn't need to happen beforehand. Ten years ago, I think the agenda-setting needed to happen before the action. So, in a sense, this movement is ahead of itself. There was this big show of strength in Seattle, and there have been other big shows of strength. But there is very little consensus about what the actual demands are. Now I think we need a period of backing up and figuring out our agenda. Are we anti-free-trade? Or are we for a different kind of globalization? Because there is a pretty big difference.
Amazon.co.uk: What do you think? What should we demand?
Klein: Transparency and democracy in global governance. In the same way that we have demanded such rights at the national level, we have that right to demand it at the global level.
Amazon.co.uk: One domain missing from your book, for me, was an attack on pharmaceutical companies. Why is that?
Klein: It would have been good in a history of anti-corporate activism to talk about the fight against pharmaceutical companies in the context of AIDS. I think it was probably an oversight. I should have had that in the history of anti-corporate activism. But I don't see a lot happening around pharmaceutical companies in terms of the type of campaign-based activism I describe. There was a moment, in the late 80s, with rallies outside of drug conventions where AIDS activists contributed significantly to activist history. Now, with AIDS in Africa, it is all the more relevant. These drug companies can help solve the AIDS crisis quickly if they weren't so greedy. I do know of people trying to get such a campaign off the ground, to refocus the discussions of AIDS in Africa not around feelings of despair but around the few, specific multi-national corporations that could do a huge amount of good but are not. Also, it is interesting that a few pharmaceutical companies have begun so focus on branding. Prozac and Viagara are truly designer drugs. As pharmaceutical companies rely more on branding, the more they will see such campaign-based backlash.
Amazon.co.uk: Pharmaceutical companies are shrouded in the myths of medical institutions. Is it almost easier to attack the culture industries because they are more visible?
Klein: Definitely. But everything becomes a brand eventually.
Amazon.co.uk: Are you at all concerned about a backlash against you?
Klein: I've gotten a few angry letters from some global media companies that will remain unnamed. But I'm not worried. First of all, everything I wrote is true. And second, even though these corporations are so litigious when it comes to copyright and trademark, they did learn a very important message from the McLibel trial. They learned to be careful who they try to take on because if the agenda is political change then a court case could be the absolutely worst thing for the corporation. All the activists I know want to get sued. The Nike campaigners are so pissed off that Nike won't sue them. They would love to go to court because the real issue behind a lot of this activism is to demonstrate that all our fundamental democratic rights--that we fought for--don't apply to corporations. Corporations are the most powerful entities of our time, more powerful than governments--who are largely beholden to them. There is no transparency, no accountability to anyone but their shareholders unless they are stupid enough to end up in court in which case, all the laws of transparency apply. They've got to deliver. Because I've been writing about Nike, I hear from them all the time. Nike is used to this-*such critique that they make these friendly calls and tell me about the latest wonderful things they are doing. And I listen.
------------
Zippy. :)
------------------
Naomi Klein is an acclaimed young journalist whose writings have appeared in The Baffler, Ms and the Village Voice, amongst many others. For the last four years she has been covering the rise of anti-corporate activism in her syndicated column in the Toronto Star. No Logo, her first book, provides the first history of this activism. Mark Lipton of New York University's Culture and Communication department spoke to her for Amazon.co.uk :
Amazon.co.uk: Did the protests during the [December 1999] World Trade Organisation's conference in Seattle catch you at all by surprise?
Naomi Klein: After the protests in Seattle, The Economist went on a rampage attacking the student protesters who were attacking multinational corporations yet wearing Nike shoes and drinking designer lattes. Yet the reason why these movements are working is because we are so branded. We need these brand names as entry points to talk about politics, our communities and even social justice. The brand plays this very powerful role. Even in the act of attacking the brand, the use of the brand name, essentially, is an admission like a ticket. Particularly for young people, you need a brand name as an entry point to engagement. More and more, students on college campuses are taking that next step. I was so heartened by the World Trade Organisation protests in Seattle because college kids got involved, learned about Nike, Disney and the Gap and looked at the political structures behind this agenda. Moving to the political arena is a vital step as it provides a way to talk about this stuff without focusing on what you buy, what you wear, what you should boycott. We do need to talk about being human billboards. But I don't think there's a contradiction between wearing this corporate clothing, eating in these corporate restaurants and having a political critique of the actions of these corporations. I believe they can coexist. This doesn't have to be a consumer movement.
Amazon.co.uk: If not, then where do you suggest we look for our models of activism and social justice?
Klein: There are parallels to the 1930s. All I am suggesting is that we do globally what we have already been successful doing on a national level. I am talking about the need for a global New Deal. If we are going to have globalization, we need global regulations of capital, minimum labour standards and minimum environmental protections. Today, we are getting to that point by using the brands as a way to get there. If you go into schools and tell kids not to wear Nike and not to wear Tommy, you are doomed to failure. What we should be doing is using these brands as popular education tools requiring greater political critique. The best way to take power away from the brand is to engage people politically not so they'll stop wearing the brands because they won't, but when you engaging people politically, brands fall into a place in our lives with genuine political outlets.
Amazon.co.uk: But couldn't the brand itself provide such an outlet, for instance, through the postmodern, self-aware ad campaigns you describe?
Klein: As I have been touring with the book, everyone has expressed concern about the co-opting of this movement, that marketers will be able to absorb an anti-corporate critique and that this movement will be diffused much like every other political movement has been diffused. I fundamentally disagree. I know, from so many young people who I meet, some of who are now protesting the WTO, that if you ask them how they became involved in this issue, they will say, "Coke came to my high school when I was 11 and they signed this exclusive deal with our student council and I fought it". These corporations are breeding a new generation of activists simply by their aggressiveness.
Amazon.co.uk: When you were a student, how were you politically engaged?
Klein: As a student, I was very much involved in the so-called "political correctness" debates. Our critique of advertising revolved around demanding and getting better representations in ads by pointing out, "This ad is sexist; this ad is homophobic; we need more diversity in advertising". It's not that we didn't have a point--we did--but a couple of things have changed. We were not nearly as techno-savvy or techno-literate as today's young people. If our response when we didn't like something was to ban it, the response from younger students is, "Why don't we change it? Why not hack into it and change it?" Further, today's young people want more than change; they demand silence. These ads have to shut up. It doesn't matter how progressive the pictures or how perfectly representational, once in a while these ads have to shut up. These ideas were totally absent from my university years.
Amazon.co.uk: If shifts in technology breed this new generation of young people, what else has modern technology altered?
Klein: I think the technology is giving a lot of young people confidence, if not a wonderful arrogance. Techno-savvy young people realise they know more about the machines than the bosses who are about to hire them--and they know that they have an enormously profitable skill. I see that same sort of arrogance among activists organising list-serves for other activists around the world and those "hack-tivist" forays on-line of anti-corporate targets. This is what gave young people the confidence to take over Seattle. Remember it was a hi-tech operation: cell-phone activists. For a long time, activists were concerned with the stunt-based activism that was played for the media, for the television. Remember the days of TV-friendly activism? The attitude today is much less centered on the spectacle. Today, we can bring our own cameras and have our own Webcasts. We can share our e-mail diaries. I read over 50 personal, detailed accounts of the events in Seattle. Among young people, there is a distrustful impulse. They say, "I'm not waiting to read in the newspaper or to watch on television to see what really happened". Technology is changing the way they receive information. Among today's youth, there is definitely a feeling that you don't need to wait for the media to catch up but that the media can catch up to you. It's why what happened in Seattle was able to take the US media by surprise. The New York Times wrote how the protests happened seemingly overnight. No, they didn't. It's just that the American media didn't notice all the little groups cropping up all over the world that were linked by technology.
Amazon.co.uk: So the Internet is responsible for modifying how activists organise?
Klein: It's not that the Internet is the means by which activists are connecting but the Internet is the model on which organizing is happening. To me, that's this movement's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. If you remember another era of organising, 10 years ago, you met in a room and you decided what your agenda was and then you went to the streets. What I am noticing is that young people are going into the streets before there is consensus at all. The Internet is wonderful at saying "Hey, let's go meet on that street corner". It can get you to the action, but the consensus around the action's ideology doesn't need to happen beforehand. Ten years ago, I think the agenda-setting needed to happen before the action. So, in a sense, this movement is ahead of itself. There was this big show of strength in Seattle, and there have been other big shows of strength. But there is very little consensus about what the actual demands are. Now I think we need a period of backing up and figuring out our agenda. Are we anti-free-trade? Or are we for a different kind of globalization? Because there is a pretty big difference.
Amazon.co.uk: What do you think? What should we demand?
Klein: Transparency and democracy in global governance. In the same way that we have demanded such rights at the national level, we have that right to demand it at the global level.
Amazon.co.uk: One domain missing from your book, for me, was an attack on pharmaceutical companies. Why is that?
Klein: It would have been good in a history of anti-corporate activism to talk about the fight against pharmaceutical companies in the context of AIDS. I think it was probably an oversight. I should have had that in the history of anti-corporate activism. But I don't see a lot happening around pharmaceutical companies in terms of the type of campaign-based activism I describe. There was a moment, in the late 80s, with rallies outside of drug conventions where AIDS activists contributed significantly to activist history. Now, with AIDS in Africa, it is all the more relevant. These drug companies can help solve the AIDS crisis quickly if they weren't so greedy. I do know of people trying to get such a campaign off the ground, to refocus the discussions of AIDS in Africa not around feelings of despair but around the few, specific multi-national corporations that could do a huge amount of good but are not. Also, it is interesting that a few pharmaceutical companies have begun so focus on branding. Prozac and Viagara are truly designer drugs. As pharmaceutical companies rely more on branding, the more they will see such campaign-based backlash.
Amazon.co.uk: Pharmaceutical companies are shrouded in the myths of medical institutions. Is it almost easier to attack the culture industries because they are more visible?
Klein: Definitely. But everything becomes a brand eventually.
Amazon.co.uk: Are you at all concerned about a backlash against you?
Klein: I've gotten a few angry letters from some global media companies that will remain unnamed. But I'm not worried. First of all, everything I wrote is true. And second, even though these corporations are so litigious when it comes to copyright and trademark, they did learn a very important message from the McLibel trial. They learned to be careful who they try to take on because if the agenda is political change then a court case could be the absolutely worst thing for the corporation. All the activists I know want to get sued. The Nike campaigners are so pissed off that Nike won't sue them. They would love to go to court because the real issue behind a lot of this activism is to demonstrate that all our fundamental democratic rights--that we fought for--don't apply to corporations. Corporations are the most powerful entities of our time, more powerful than governments--who are largely beholden to them. There is no transparency, no accountability to anyone but their shareholders unless they are stupid enough to end up in court in which case, all the laws of transparency apply. They've got to deliver. Because I've been writing about Nike, I hear from them all the time. Nike is used to this-*such critique that they make these friendly calls and tell me about the latest wonderful things they are doing. And I listen.
------------
Zippy. :)