Donald Trump ascension a corporate coup, says activist author Naomi Klein – The Sydney Morning Herald

Author and activist Naomi Klein was on a visit to Sydney last November when Donald Trump shocked the US and Western political establishment by taking the White House.

"I think a great many of us felt that the world had just turned upside down, but [in Australia]I literally felt the world had turned upside down," she says, recalling that moment of supreme disorientation.

Since then, unlike many American liberals, Klein has been fixated less by the drip-drip of revelations about the Trump campaign's murky links to the Kremlin, and more with what she calls the "corporate coup" taking place under cover of the President's antics.

"I'm not saying don't look into Russia, of course that should be investigated," she told Fairfax Media.

"But to say to US voters, 'I am going to protect your jobs, I'm going to protect social security, I'm going to protect your healthcare, I'm going to stand up for the little guy, I'm going to drain the swamp - and then bring in half your cabinet from Goldman Sachs? And pass or try to pass the most aggressive pro-corporate legislation that the US has ever seen? I'm comfortable calling that a corporate coup."

Klein is speaking by phone from her native Toronto, a few days in advance of the global release of her latest book No Is Not Enough, a scathing polemic on the Trump phenomenon.

In many ways the book picks up and continues passionate campaigns she waged in previous volumesNo LogoandThe Shock Doctrine on the failings, as she sees it, of modern capitalism, andThis Changes Everything, her call to arms for urgent action on climate change.

No Is Not Enoughlooks at how the election of Trump has turbocharged those issues for the progressive movement in the US and elsewhere.

Klein's core thesis is that Trump's elevation to the apex of political power in the West is not an aberration but"the logical conclusion of the worst trends of the past half century", including rising inequality.

As a branding exercise, she writes, it's a triumph: the presidency is the "crowning extension of the Trump brand". Trump's wife Melaniaand children are "spin-off brands".

"After decades of seeing the public sphere privatised in bits and pieces, Trump and his appointees have now seized control of the government itself. The takeover is complete,"she argues.

Klein, who backed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential nomination contest, takes plenty of swipes against Clinton in her new volume.

The presidency is the crowning extension of the Trump brand.

Controversially, she argues the Clintons helped pave the way for Trump by "blurring ethical lines" when they allowed the Clinton Foundation to accept massive donations from private and foreign government sources while Hillary was secretary of state under Barack Obama.

Challenged on this harsh judgment Klein pushes back.

"The Clintons blurred the lines, there is no doubt. But what really paved the way for Trump was the narrative of the CEO saviour," she claims.

"The idea that our problems are going to be fixed by a Richard Branson or a Bill Gates out of the goodness of their hearts, with their massive profits that they earned in very large part because of the frenzy of deregulation that took place in the 90s ... when we seriously behave as if a multimillionaire like Gates is going to fix malaria and AIDS and climate change for us, that prepares our brains for Trump's message which is, 'Sure I don't have any experience, but I'm rich so I can fix this'."

Klein is appalled by Trump's announcement the US will pull out of the Paris climate accord, but says this is largely "optics", and that the real damage is being done with dismantling of the Clean Power Plan, the centrepiece of what the US brought to Paris under Obama.

Having seen for herself the impact of coral bleaching when she visited the Great Barrier Reef during her Australian visit, she says climate change remains an "existential crisis".

"You don't get a do-over on a drowned country," is how she puts it in the book.

"In the real world, what matters more than the Trump show is how much carbon is being emitted, and the way countries which are not the US respond to this," she tells Fairfax Media.

"And I think Australia is particularly vulnerable, because you have a government that I think would be quite happy to seize on any excuse to go, 'Well, see we can't be uncompetitive.' "

If there's a silver lining for Klein in the advent of Trump, it's that he seems to be turning voters off those of his ilk elsewhere.

"It seems to be serving as a kind of warning in many places,"she says, "people going, whoa, we don't want to go down that road."

"We have seen this with the European elections, and we may well see it with climate ...it's really about how the rest of us respond."

Not Is Not Enough is released on June 13

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Donald Trump ascension a corporate coup, says activist author Naomi Klein - The Sydney Morning Herald