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Naomi Klein |
Every generation needs a messiah to save them – enter Naomi Klein
THE secret of happiness was laid out to a packed hall of more than 600 people in Euston on Monday evening.
They’d come to hear the buccaneering political celebrity writer Naomi Klein who, I discovered, can draw a crowd like a rock star – and they’d come to hear her lambast the evils of capitalism.
Ms Klein, festooned with awards as a campaigning journalist and film-maker – her first book was the international best seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies – also had another mission: to promote the paperback version of her latest book, The Shock Doctrine (Penguin, £8.99).
At first, she teased the awe-struck audience with news of a scientific survey carried out in the States that found conservatives were happier than radicals or lefties because of their ability to “rationalise” depressing situations.
Assuming the hall at Friends House was full of “malcontents” – another name for radicals – Klein conducted her own audience poll and found that, unlike conservatives, the audience thought it was a problem if some people didn’t have more of a chance in life than others.
Did they think they’d be better off if they worried less about how equal people are? Again: silence.
Thus, conservatives are happy because they don’t worry about the world.
All true, but tell me something new, this old cynic thought.
The crux of her hour-long lecture was that capitalism had evolved into a machine that was now able to make profit from disasters – whether they were acts of nature or man made political cataclysms.
It was all about people in power cashing in on chaos.
In the wake of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, fishing villages have passed into the hands of hotel magnates and water supplies have been privatised.
In New Orleans, the Katrina disaster spelled the end of public housing and the birth of privatisation.
Out of the misery of the Iraq war, big US companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton were making millions, while the Iraq oilfields were threatened with a takeover by BP and Shell.
Klein hoped a form of “disaster collectivism” will be mustered to oppose “disaster capitalism”.
It wasn’t the usual audience of lefty politicos who applauded and whistled at the end of her talk. She has tapped into a much wider pool of malcontents – the opponents of the Heathrow extension and those who think the government is dodging necessary action on climate change, for example.
There is a tide here of political passion that could shake governments.
A gathering of this importance should have merited a few paragraphs at least in the capital’s evening papers. But not a word.
Nor did the broadsheets bother to mention it.
Whatever the silence, however, people are drawn to Klein as a kind of prophet who cannot be ignored.
I had to push my way out of the building past hundreds who filled the foyer, queueing to buy her book.
The Dark Knight is stalking Hampstead
I’M told film director Christopher Nolan was in Hampstead last week to oversee the finishing touches to the second instalment of his Batman series.
Nolan, who grew up in Highgate and whose father Brendan is a leading light in the Highgate Society, came from Hollywood to use George Martin’s Air Studios in Lyndhurst Road, opposite the Royal Free Hospital, to record the film score. I spoke to his father, who told me he popped in to see his son at work: “Quite extraordinary,” was his verdict.
“They come all the way to London because it is home to the very best orchestras.
“I’m told even the Vienna Sinfonia could not do what the film score requires.”
Christopher’s film credits read well: Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins were all well received, and I am looking forward to the next Batman flick, called The Dark Knight, which is out in July.
Bard de Boulogne
BREAK-a-leg style wishes go out from this column to the cast and crew of the Tower Theatre. I hear they are taking their production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night out to Paris next week for a week-long run in the French capital.
Directed by Dartmouth Park resident John Morton (pictured), a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, the show, in a theatre in the Bois de Boulogne, expects around 2,500 visitors – not bad for amateur players, and it also shows a remarkable thirst across the Channel for the Bard.
“We have dialogue boards in French so the audience, which often includes students and school groups, can easily follow the action,” John tells me.
“It is helpful, but can be a bit unnerving for the actors: they notice the audience are not looking directly at them on stage, but slightly to the side where the subtitles are.”
And then, a strange but happy calm did fall...
IT is a scene you seldom see: council boxwallahs from across the political spectrum toasting each other’s health and patting each other on the back for a job well done.
I witnessed a rare moment of government harmony last night (Wednesday) as Labour, Tory and Lib Dem alike basked in the four-star glory of their exemplary Audit Commission report. Instead of the usual bun fight, councillors and guests, including media pundit Tony Travers, enjoyed cava and jam sponge at the University of London Officers Training Corp in Bloomsbury.
After the appointment of Camden’s first opposition mayor, Nurul Islam, last week, Town Hall seems eerily cosy at present.
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