What Drives Naomi Klein?
Julie Wheelwright, Independent, September 14, 2007 Naomi Klein’s critique of ‘disaster capitalism’ will echo around the world – but its roots lie in a scandal close to her Canadian home The author and activist Naomi Klein has just endured a gentle mauling on the Today programme. Klein had been speaking about her new book The Shock Doctrine, arguing that capitalism’s latest incarnation is about profiting from – even creating – crises. Diane Coyle, an economist and BBC trustee (and former economics editor of The Independent), sniffed that this argument was “another example of American imperialism”. When we meet an hour later at a Soho hotel, Klein seems unruffled. “I did some research about Diane Coyle,” she says, rooting through a file. She hands me a paper entitled “The Role of Mobiles in Disaster and Emergencies”, which Coyle wrote for a mobile-phone trade association. “You can see,” she says, “that I’m a bit of an obsessive.” Ironically, for a woman who has been hailed as the author
