Naomi Klein

Quotes

1. It's Recession-proof

2. 

   When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?

3. 

   It was this wave of reforms that turned China into the sweatshop of the world, the preferred location for contract factories for virtually every multinational on the planet. No country offered more lucrative conditions than China: low taxes and tariffs, corruptible officials and, most of all, a plentiful low-wage workforce that, for many years, would be unwilling to risk demanding decent salaries or the most basic workplace protections for fear of the most violent reprisals. (p190)

4. 

   When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty. (p409)

5. 

   Suddenly we are no longer prisoners of the never-ending present in our social media feeds. We are part of a long and complex collective story, one in which human beings are not one set of attributes, fixed and unchanging, but rather, a work in progress, capable of deep change. By looking decades backward and forward simultaneously, we are no longer alone as we confront our weighty historical moment. We are surrounded both by ancestors whispering that we can do what our moment demands just as they did, and by future generations shouting that they deserve nothing less. (from "The Art of the Green New Deal")

6. 

   Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.

7. 

   ...extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves. In a way, it had happened already to the antiwar movement.

   p. 327

8. 

   Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.

9. 

   ...This is what Keynes had meant when he warned of the dangers of economic chaos—you never know what combination of rage, racism and revolution will be unleashed. (p264)

10. 

    Too often, however, the expansive nature of the branding process ends up causing the event to be usurped, creating the quintessential lose-lose situation. Not only do fans begin to feel a sense of alienation from (if not outright resentment toward) once-cherished cultural events, but the sponsors lose what they need most: a feeling of authenticity with which to associate their brands.

11. 

    The dirty secret of the neoliberal era is that these ideas were never defeated in a great battle of ideas, nor were they voted down in elections. They were shocked out of the way at key political junctures. (p450)

12. 

    When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question.