Klein's "No Logo" after 9/11
I just finished re-reading Naomi Klein’s "No Logo", and this time through it struck me as somehow seeming a little dated. I don’t know if this is a function of how much I’ve changed since the late 1990s, or how much the world has changed. It’s not that her argument seems now incorrect; on the contrary, I think most of her critique of the branding of the world is still valid. Corporations are still taking over public space, filling the landscape with ads. More generally, the objects of so much protest by progressives during the later 1990s – the WTO, the WEF – still exist in mostly the same anti-democratic form, only slightly reformed since then. It’s just that her critique seems rather less relevant now, to the current political dilemma we all find ourselves in.
The horrible events of 9/11 reshaped the U.S. political landscape, as they should have, and reminded progressives that there are far worse visions of the future than the corporate-branded world that Klein predicts in No Logo. One of those is a world controlled by religious fundamentalists, of any creed, and gripped by fear. George Bush’s invasion of Iraq also reminded progressives that there are far more important political goals to fight for in this world than simply pushing back against corporate dominance. The question of how to build some sort of peaceful alternative to a Pax Americana now seems crucial. Somehow (and this is something I’m struggling with myself) there has to be a way to reintegrate some of the campaigns of the late 1990s with the current anti-war work, in a more explicit way. After all, they all share a similar theme: democracy, the participation of the broadest possible set of people in the power to shape their global society.
