The New Republic Trashes Naomi Klein (apparently not that difficult)

[Oxcoug]

Watching parts of a Naomi Klein program on FORA a while back I was amazed that someone who didn't seem to know what fascism is decided to write a book on America's "fascist shift." Her "research" shows as so unserious that it left me dumbfounded that tens of millions of people apparently take her quite seriously. Put simply - Klein is a Coulter-esque clown, doing a clown act for an audience that takes clowns seriously. The frightening thing is that so many actually look to her for intellectual guidance.

Jon Chait of TNR obliterates any claims she makes on seriousness in this piece http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.ht...0-945d1deb420b

This passage is especially mindblowing. It's one thing for Klein not know intellectual history and the politcs of the think tank world better than this, but it's fantastically telling that apparently no one in her editorial echo chamber knew enough to keep it from getting into print.

"She recognizes that neoconservatism sits at the heart of the Iraq war project, but she does not seem to know what neoconservatism is; and she makes no effort to find out. Her ignorance of the American right is on bright display in one breathtaking sentence:

Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think-tanks with which [Milton] Friedman had long associations--Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute--called itself "neoconservative," a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.

Where to begin? First, neoconservative ideology dates not from the 1990s but from the 1960s, and the label came into widespread use in the 1970s. Second, while neoconservatism is highly congenial to corporate interests, it is distinctly less so than other forms of conservatism. The original neocons, unlike traditional conservatives, did not reject the New Deal. They favor what they now call "national greatness" over small government. And their foreign policy often collides head-on with corporate interests: neoconservatives favor saber-rattling in places such as China or the Middle East, where American corporations frown on political risk, and favor open relations and increased trade. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation has always had an uneasy relationship with neoconservatism. (Russell Kirk delivered a famous speech at the Heritage Foundation in which he declared that "not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.") And the Cato Institute is not neoconservative at all. It was virulently opposed to the Iraq war in particular, and it opposes interventionism in foreign policy in general.

Finally, there is the central role that Klein imputes to her villain Friedman, both in this one glorious passage and throughout her book. In her telling, he is the intellectual guru of the shock doctrine, whose minions have carried out his corporatist agenda from Santiago to Baghdad. Klein calls the neocon movement "Friedmanite to the core," and identifies the Iraq war as a "careful and faithful application of unrestrained Chicago School ideology" over which Friedman presided. What she does not mention--not once, not anywhere, in her book--is that Friedman argued against the Iraq war from the beginning, calling it an act of "aggression."

It ought to be morbidly embarrassing for a writer to discover that the central character of her narrative turns out to oppose what she identifies as the apotheosis of his own movement. And Klein's mistake exposes the deeper flaw of her thesis. Friedman opposed the war because he was a libertarian, and libertarian conservatism is not the same thing as neoconservatism. Nor are the interests of corporations always, or even usually, served by war."

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Oxcoug

Nor are the interests of corporations always, or even usually, served by war."

Wow, the ignorance of this statement is shocking.