In the days after the 2016 presidential election, a theory emerged to explain why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump: “identity politics” — specifically Clinton’s routine appeals to women and racial minorities.
This charge was put perhaps most passionately by Mark Lilla, a humanities professor at Columbia University, in a New York Times op-ed called “The End of Identity Liberalism.” Lilla maintained that if the Democratic Party wants to appeal to more working-class white voters, it needs to treat “identity liberalism” with a “proper sense of scale.” For Lilla, focusing on diversity has meant that a generation of young Americans have “shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good.”
Naomi Klein rejects such claims. In her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, the best-selling author and activist writes that “it’s short-sighted, not to mention dangerous, to call for liberals and progressives to abandon their focus on ‘identity politics’ and concentrate instead on economics and class — as if these factors could in any way be pried apart.”
Clinton’s loss, according to Klein, had to do with her track record, not her messaging. As Klein has it, “it was the stupid economics of neoliberalism, fully embraced by her, her husband, and her party’s establishment,” that rendered Clinton without a persuasive case to offer white workers who previously voted for Barack Obama. For Klein, you can’t fully grapple with class without also understanding the marginalized people the economy affects.
This is one of the many salvos Klein throws in her book. According to her, No Is Not Enough is “one attempt to look at how we got to this surreal political moment; how, in concrete ways, it could get a lot worse; and how, if we keep our heads, we might be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically brighter future.”
I recently caught up with Klein by phone while she was in Portland, Oregon, on her book tour. Among other things, we talked about Clinton’s “trickle-down identity politics,” how some liberals fail to understand the implications of climate change, and why Trump’s “Make America Great Again” brand makes him politically vulnerable. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited and condensed.
Eric Allen Been
In your new book, you write that it’s “dangerous” for progressives to listen to the call to do away with identity politics and instead solely concentrate on economic issues. Why in your mind can’t these factors be decoupled?
Naomi Klein
We’ve heard this message — this analysis — that identity politics is the reason the Democrats lost the recent election. That message of, “Shut up. Stop harping on the issues that flow from your racial identity, gender, and sexual identity. You’re slowing us down.” That’s a very alarming message to send at a time of surging violence by white supremacists, gender-based violence, and attacks on transgender people. That’s why I say it’s so dangerous. But it’s also deeply dangerous politically.
It really is impossible to decouple all these issues. The United States, almost more than any other country, has relied on what is often called dog-whistle politics, or explicit or implicit appeals to race and racial division. The classic example of this was the Cadillac-driving “welfare queen” trope of the Reagan years. This idea that the reason welfare needed to be cut is because it was being taken advantage of by black and brown people. And it also presented people of color as exploiters of the public system. This has been the pretext by which that system has been attacked again and again.
I’m speaking to you from Portland, and this is a city that is still grieving from the recent stabbings on the light-rail train here. I was really struck by, in the accounts of what the attacker was saying to the two teenage girls, things like, “Go back to where you come from,” and, “Get off the train. You don’t pay taxes.” In other words, he had absorbed this key idea that people of color are exploiters of the public system. We even see these things from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, where he talks about how the reason cities like Chicago are falling apart is because of immigrants and immigrant crime overloading the system.
That’s just a couple of examples of why I think it’s really impossible to talk about economics in the US without talking about race. I agree with the late political science professor Cedric Robinson that it is probably best to describe the kind of capitalism that exists in the US as racial capitalism. And that’s because the first inputs to the first industrial economy were the stealing of indigenous land and African labor. That was the backbone of the economy. So in order to do those two things, it required a theory of racial hierarchy. It required a hierarchy of humanity that discounted lives based on skin color. This is the roots of scientific racism, which was used to justify industrial capitalism.
Eric Allen Been
Fast-forward to a more recent political moment. You write that Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 presidential campaign, was engaging in what you call “trickle-down identity politics.” Could you talk about what you mean by that phrase and why you think that kind of politics is wrongheaded?
Naomi Klein
What I mean by trickle-down identity politics is the idea that high-end representation alone — having more women and people of color represented in positions of power, recognized in culture and political office and in corporate boardrooms — will lead to this trickle-down equality. And I’m not saying that symbolic victories and that kind of diversity is not important. It was tremendously important, for instance, for a generation of young people to see a black man as the US president and have that role model. I think the same is true in Hollywood, in culture, and having those cultural role models.
What’s dangerous is the idea that this alone is going to erase, say, racial and gender injustice. That these images alone are going to fix people’s reality. We need policies that are designed to close inequalities and inequalities are actually widening in this period. And changing the images is cheaper and easier. Changing the reality requires massive investments in education and services, and the symbolic victories, even though they are important, tend to not cost as much. Gay marriage is cheaper than major investments in the public sphere, which are going to tangibly improve people’s lives. This is not to say it’s unimportant — of course it’s not — it’s just to say it’s insufficient.
Eric Allen Been
In the book, you have a section titled “What Conservatives Understand About Global Warming — and Liberals Don’t.” What is that?
Naomi Klein
What I mean there is that the reason there is such widespread denial of the reality of climate change with power brokers in the Republican Party, and certainly within very right-wing, free market think tanks, is that they understand that if the science is true, then the political or economic projects they hope to advance, which is a radically deregulated market, must come to a screeching halt.
Climate change is true, and so it does mean we need to intervene very seriously in the market. It does mean we need to regulate corporations in a way that governments have been unwilling to do for the last 40 years. We have to place severe limits on further expansion of the fossil fuel frontier if we’re serious about this. It means we can’t develop new fossil fuel reserves and we have to manage a transition away from fossil fuels with existing production. This requires managing the economy, it requires planning, it requires major investments in energy, public investments, major investments in public transit. These things go against all of the economic trends of the past 40 years where we’ve been defunding the public sphere on so many fronts.
I think the right understands this, and therefore chooses to deny reality. Whereas one of the things we see on the liberal side is, instead of denying the science, they deny the implications of the science. I would put the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in this category, where he’s written so many columns about how easy it is to deal with climate change. We can do it and we’ll barely notice. I think people should understand that it is a more fundamental challenge than that.
For decades, there was a huge emphasis on these just small consumer changes that you can make. It created a kind of dissonance where you present people with information about an existential threat and then say, “Well, change your light bulb,” or, “Drive a hybrid.” You don’t talk at all about public policy. And if you do, it’s a very tiny carbon tax and that’s going to do it.
Then I think there are some liberals who do understand the implications of climate change and the depth of change it requires from us. But because they believe humans are incapable of that kind of change, or at this stage in human evolution, I suppose, they think we’re basically doomed. I think contemporary centrist liberalism does not have the tools to deal with a crisis of this magnitude that requires this level of market intervention. And I worry that can lead to a kind of a nihilism around climate change.
Eric Allen Been
Speaking of nihilism, let’s talk about the heart of your book: Trump. You argue that he doesn’t play by the rules of politics but instead the rules of branding. As you have it, his reality show The Apprentice was a game changer for him, one that allowed him to “leap into the stratosphere of Superbrands” and ultimately go on to be elected president.
Naomi Klein
Right. The Apprentice was a game changer in that before the show, Trump was a more traditional real estate mogul who happened to have this endless appetite for self-promotion. He was still kind of in the business of putting up buildings. But his business empire was in crisis, he had multiple bankruptcies, and The Apprentice really saved him. That’s because it came along and provided this priceless platform to build up the Trump brand. I think that Trump, going back to the ’80s, had this intuition for lifestyle branding, and the way he turned his personal life into a live-action soap opera in the ’80s with his extramarital affairs, that’s really the stuff that built up his brand. But he was still more or less a traditional real estate guy.
What The Apprentice did was put him in the same stratosphere as these other hollow brands, companies like Nike, where they didn’t own their own factories — they saw themselves primarily as being in the business as selling a brand idea, a narrative, to the public. Their main production was design and marketing, and then selling their name to all these different brand extensions and so on.
Trump did this, and the big idea that he was selling this absolute freedom, arguably the impunity, that comes with great wealth, and just being the boss who can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants because he’s so rich. This is a problem when it comes to a brand identity, because when we think of brands like Nike, or Disney, or Apple, they have an aspirational brand identity that has some ethics to it. But then we see the underbelly of these brands.
Eric Allen Been
And Trump’s brand is basically being an asshole.
Naomi Klein
That’s right. That’s really a problem, because the only rule of branding is that you need to be true to your brand. You need to repeat your brand, you need to stay true to it, and so brands like Nike that have sort of presented themselves as being about women’s empowerment, revolution, that have this kind of New Age feel to them, they are vulnerable to exposures that show that young women are being paid abusive wages under abusive conditions to make their products. That’s a problem. Disney has this family-friendly image. You can hold them to account to it to some extent if you find that they are treating their workers poorly, for instance.
The problem with Trump’s brand is that his brand is being the guy who can do whatever he wants. He said it on the campaign trail: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Or the on the Access Hollywood tapes: “And when you’re a star, they let you do it.” That’s his brand, and this is a problem. All of these scandals are not doing all that much to cause Trump’s core base to desert him, because what they see is they see their guy and he’s getting away with it. They identify with him, and if he’s attacked, they feel attacked.
Where I think Trump is vulnerable, and I’ve talked about how to culture-jam the Trump brand, and I think there are obviously things you can do to Trump’s brand, like present him as a puppet, not a boss. You can try to make him less rich, but that’s hard, because there are all kinds of ways that the Trump family is monetizing the presidency, and it seems to be working for them.
The brand that I think is most vulnerable is his political plan — that is, “Make America Great Again.” He devised a political brand, and he thinks he can apply the same roles to Make America Great Again as he has applied to the Trump brand, but he made some serious promises with that brand. One of those was how he was going to bring back jobs that pay a middle-class wage. He promised a return to an economy that is going to be very, very difficult to return to, and he promised to protect Social Security, protect health care, and renegotiate trade agreements in the interest of workers.
I think he is very vulnerable, and one of the things that really concerns me is that the Trump show, the endless show that surrounds this president, some of which he’s directing, some of which other people are directing, is so addictive to particularly TV media that there is barely any time left to focus on the betrayals of the Make America Great Again brand.
You can see it physically pains news anchors when they have to spend two minutes on what the Senate is trying to do with health care, because it takes them away from the investigations around Trump. News media ratings have never been so high. They are still addicted to the Trump show, just as they were during the election, and it’s coming at the expense, I think, of the kind of journalism that is much more likely to peel away some of Trump’s support. I think it’s the economic betrayals that are more likely to do that.
Eric Allen Been
You’ve, of course, written a lot on shock politics. Do you see Trump providing a new type of shock tactics?
Naomi Klein
He is. Because what I’ve reported on before is how actual external shocks to societies — such as major terrorist attacks, a market crash, a war, and the disorientation and interruption and state of emergency that follows these events — can become a pretext to very rapidly push through pro-corporate policies that you wouldn’t be able to advance otherwise. This is because people are so focused on the emergency. Trump is different because he is the shock, and there are new shocks every day. There’s just a constant state of gasping and, I would argue, an addiction to this show being put on, the “Trump Show,” as he called in the ’80s. The show is Trump, and it’s sold out everywhere.
I would also argue that he’s an entirely logical extension of many preexisting trends. This is part of the reason why it really is important to put Trump in context, in political, historical, economic, and cultural context, and say, “No, his products may be made in China, but this guy’s made in America.” Because that makes him less shocking, and when we’re not so busy being shocked, we can be more strategic.
This is different than what I have written about before, but what I am really worried about is that there may very well be a major external shock on Trump’s watch. They’re deregulating their markets. They’re dismantling the Dodd-Frank rules for Wall Street, or trying to, which is something that, were it not for the Trump show, would be front-page news on an ongoing basis. It would be getting a lot of analytic energy, but [it] barely merits a footnote in the current climate.
That of course makes market shocks more likely. That is the kind of pretext under which I think we can see even more radical economic policies being put forward if we look at who he’s surrounded himself with. Think about what Betsy DeVos would like to do to the US education system, or what people around Trump would like to do to Social Security. They’re in a position where Trump did make some pretty clear promises on the election campaign, but if there is an economic shock they’ll say, “We have no choice.”
Then he’s already shown his hand during the London terror attacks, and the Manchester attacks. He will not waste any time if there is an attack like Manchester in the US, to use that to push what I call his toxic to-do list. He’s already made it clear that he will blame the courts. He’s already made it clear, the night of the London attacks, when he said that this is why we need our travel ban.
He blamed immigrants for the Manchester attacks even though the bomber was born in the UK. As bad as we’ve seen Trump is, there is worse. Trump has openly talked about it. He’s talked banning entry to the US by all Muslims. He’s talked about bringing back torture; he’s talked about filling up Guantanamo. These are not conspiracy theories — this is just taking the guy at his word.
Eric Allen Been
Finally, you say that politicians need to lead with values not policies. Could you talk about what you mean by that?
Naomi Klein
I think policies reflect values, so it’s not a clear dichotomy. I think there is a shift in values that needs to happen, that this system that values money over all else, that is willing to discard so many people based on a crude cost-benefit analysis, is really reaching its breaking point.
Just look at what happened in London with the Grenfell Tower fire, where we find out that there were repeated requests from coroners to retrofit these public housing buildings with sprinkler systems, and it was deemed too expensive. By one estimate I saw it would’ve cost 200,000 pounds to install sprinklers in the building. This is in the richest neighborhood in the UK, where I’m pretty sure there are people who would spend that on a kitchen renovation.
This really is about whether we’re going to have an economy, have a society, that values human life, that does not dispose of people because they are seen as not economically valuable enough, whether those people are living in island nations that face extinction because we are doing so little in the face of the climate crisis, or whether it’s people living in public housing whose lives are not valued enough to save.
We saw the impact of that during disasters like Katrina, Sandy Hook, and we’re seeing it now with London. I think it is about policy, but more than policy, it is about whether we’re going to become a society that puts the value of human life at its center, and indeed all life.
Eric Allen Been is a freelance writer who has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Vice, Playboy, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and TheAtlantic.com.
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