Naomi Klein, Writer and Activist HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk with me, as an Dali. President Trump is meeting his

fellow leaders of the G20 summit in Hamburg this week when big issues

like International Trade and climate change will be on the agenda. My

guest is the progressive Canadian and American writer and activist

Naomi Klein and she says that Donald Trump's becoming president amounts

to a corporate takeover by Brand Trump and is calling for mass

protest against it. Are her radical policies a panacea against the

current ills in the United States? Naomi Klein, welcome to HARDtalk.

You have just written a new book, No Is Not Enough. Is it liberal

critique of Donald Trump? I am try to concentrate less on Donald Trump

the personality, the personality, the extremist, the shock machine

that has everybody gusting with his tweets and put him into the context

really off the last 40 years of economic history and how we arrived

here. In this culture where we have had the chance of lifestyle brands

and we have humans merging with corporations, we worship wealth,

consumption is a way of life. We have dominance raised logic on our

economy at every level so Trump makes sense and I want to put him in

context. In what way does he represent all that? As you say, he

has become a 1-man mega brand with his children and wife spin-off

brands. He breathes brands within his family. This is the first time

we have had a political figure of this stature who is a fully

commercialised superbrand. The Trump Corporation is built around his

personality so it isn't just that he has refused to divest from his

business would be -- which would be problematic enough, the business is

Trump. This relates to that first book I ever wrote which is No Logo

and the brands in the 90s was less about selling and making products

and more about building ideas and then creating these branded cocooned

lifestyles and Donald Trump did that. He started off building

buildings and then he just started building Brand Trump especially

after he had the Apprenticed. His brand employs 34,000 people. A lot

of people that are reliant on his organisation. I don't see what that

has to do with... He is more than a brand. Look, the people who make

most of the buildings that they are the Trump logo are not employed

direct league by Trump. His main business model is to build his name

-- directly. There is a figure from last year's C N N Money. They looked

into the whole Trump organisation and that is the figure they came up

with. What are you saying, that he doesn't build... He leases Brand

Trump. To say there is 34,000 employees under the Trump brand. --I

am just saying. Is he more than a brand in that he stands for

policies, very clear policies and he taps into the zeitgeist when he

says, look, I'm not happy about globalisation. He said, in

particular about globalisation in June last year, it makes that elite

very wealthy that has left millions of our workers with nothing but

poverty and heartache. He is not the only political figure on the right

that is tapping into huge levels of dissatisfaction around corporate

globalisation. Marine Le Pen is doing the same in France and the

Brexit campaign in the UK tapped into that same energy and he ran on

this campaign to bring back jobs, to stand up for the working class. What

he is doing in power is very, very different and that's why as you said

in your introduction, I said this is a takeover. Not just a brand Trump

but ExxonMobil that is taking -- taking over... Rex Tillerson lived

at ExxonMobil for his entire adult life. After campaigning against

Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, accusing his Republican rivals like

Ted Cruz of the same, Trump has turned around and appointed five

former Goldman Sachs executives to his Cabinet which is unprecedented.

So you are saying the money is associated with Donald Trump.

Eleanor Forte in saying is where he is governing is quite different to

the way he campaigned. There was a political brand called Make America

Great Again. What he has done is pushing policies that systematically

read is to be at wealth to the 1% of the 1%. He is doing it with tax

policy and infrastructure plans, healthcare, social security. That is

not what he campaigned on. Interesting you bring up the

campaign when you say that's not what he campaigned on because the

Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, spent billion on his

campaign -- her campaign and Donald Trump spent $600 million. If you

look at your argument, just looking at the campaign, it would seem that

big money flowed more to the Democratic candidate. That is not my

argument. That is a point to make, though, isn't it? You can make that

point. Hillary Clinton paved the way for Donald Trump, as I said in the

book. He did not win the election but she lost at the election. This

golden throne was not going to be a saviour to the working class will

stop he won because the Democrats were not able to energise their base

and that is why I say no, it's not enough. It is not enough to critique

trump. They have to be an economic project on the progressive side that

speaks to the need for jobs and security that Trump was speaking to.

He was selling lies. One thing he has done is paid up the

Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement because he thinks that trade has not

served the United States well and says he wants to renegotiate

Nafta... To make it more like TTIP. He taps into the zeitgeist and has

criticised countries like Japan and Germany because they have huge trade

surpluses. He was to bring jobs to the United States. Well, he says

that, he says that. If we look at what he is doing, he will actually

end up driving down wages. His secretary has been out there

reassuring business audience is that when they renegotiate Nafta, they

are going to do to make it more like the Trans-Pacific Partnership which

is exactly what Trump campaigned against. Of course, he raised these

hopes but I don't believe he is going to bring the jobs back and

support middle-class lifestyles. He did it to get elected and it was a

resonant promise but that is wide my argument is that Progressives need

to step up into this moment with a real 21st-century jobs programme and

I'm passionate about climate change and the fact that we need jobs that

are going to support middle-class families and working-class families

but also bring in missions down very, very quickly and luckily we

can do this, we can create huge numbers of jobs in efficiency,

public transport, renewable energy. This is the future, not creating

more coal and weapons jobs. Even if they might not be as well played as

-- paid as you might like, at least he wants to bring jobs back. I know

you say in your book that buries outsourcing in Trump's organisations

but... -- and various. He wants to bring back some labour. You have to

accept that time I tell if he does do that. He is saying that free

trade isn't all it is cracked up to be an error people worried about

protectionism now when the US and so on. Absolutely. I am saying there

must be some things that you agree with him on. What I say is the

reason that Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign and Marine Le Pen

have been able to be as successful as they have been is because this

terrain which is right that -- rightfully progressive has been

seeded because centrist parties that originally opposed these trade deals

ended up negotiating them and advancing them further. Bill Clinton

and this is a huge reason why Hillary Clinton was not trusted a

mug working-class families in America is that Bill Clinton

promised to renegotiate the whole agreement of Nafta and ended up

pushing to agenda much further. -- trusted among working-class

families. This is why we have seen a wave of support for figures like

Jeremy Cameron and Bernie Sanders who stand for a more progressive

economic policy. There is some overlap between progressive voices

such as yours and what Donald Trump is pushing. Jelinek there is

overlap, of course. But -- there overlap. We ignore the impact of

communities and hid behind trade deals that were better for companies

than workers." Donald Trump has opened up the space where you have

people saying these things. Saying things. He has opened debate amongst

senior corporate figures. Absolutely, there is a shifting

political ground and that is happening for a variety of reasons.

The economic project that began under Reagan and Thatcher has been

in crisis since the 2008 crash. There is a vacuum. Where the

ideological project as privatisation and corporate free-trade deals used

to be. On the right you have these populist figures who are coming in

and mixing a feeling that economic decisions are all being made by

these remote bureaucracies which is true, that economic conditions are

becoming more and more precarious and mixing it up with xenophobia and

racism and misogyny. You have populist sentiment on the right-wing

and argument -- arguably Donald Trump is a populist from the centre

right. You mentioned Jeremy Corbyn and arguably you yourself. There is

common ground is what I am saying. Buries ground, certainly, in this

tapping in of the anti- establishment feeling out there. --

There is. But surely you can't say I don't need any of Wall Street's

money and then bringing in five Goldman Sachs people into your

cabinet. What I am saying is we can't just expose... It is so

obvious to expose that Donald Trump is a fraud but the real issue is

what our Progressives go to do in the US? This is a real concern

because this is a malleable moment. There is a moment now, especially

with what we are seeing with healthcare, there planned to replace

Obama Kate is to keep millions of people off their health insurance

coverage. -- ObamaCare. At this moment, we are seeing a rise in

interest in single-payer healthcare but who is blocking that the state

the Democrats. This is why the road to Donald Trump is not one we can

just pin on the rest of us that Republican side of the political

argument. You have mentioned twice that he is associated with big money

and so want that some of the most greatly admired figures in the

United States and Europe are extremely wealthy, usually men. You

have all gates who was applauded for his efforts in tackling tropical

diseases -- Bill Gates. You have Richard Branson with whom the rat --

Barack Obama holidayed with reach -- recently. What is the matter if

these people have a great deal of money if they use it for the public

good? The argument I'd make is that that whole idea that we can

outsource the most pressing problems that we face as global citizens,

whether it is climate change or infectious diseases, whether it is

poverty itself, to, rather than doing this with democracies, with

accountability, we are going to hand it over to, as you say, Bill Gates,

Richard Branson... I wasn't going -- saying that. You said that Bill

Gates... I didn't say that. Nobody said that Bill Gates can help fix

Africa but his efforts need to be a applauded. Sellar don't have that

robber with charity but at the moment the Gates foundation has

arguably more power than the World Health Organization and many people

who work within the UN system talk about being absolutely stunned by

the amount of power wielded by private, unaccountable wealth. This

is something I have written about in the past with Richard Branson and

the wild claims he has made about how he is going to use his billions

from fossil fuel burning to fix climate change and there is no

accountability for that money. Are you saying we should do away

with philanthropy? Tax them at a fair level and use that money

democratically to solve problems collectively. That logic created a

situation where we acquainted great wealth with great wisdom. If you

make money in software it must mean you know everything about

everything, health, agriculture. That created a context for Donald

Trump to save, vote for me, I don't know anything about governing and I

have never held public office but I am so rich - this was his pitch...

He has surrounded himself with other rich people, he has aged McMaster,

National Security Advisor. He has outsourced the government to his

son-in-law. You say he has outsourced half of the government. I

have to say he was criticised for not appointing enough people. 5% of

556 Federal positions have been filled, which means... They don't

believe in government. So many others haven't. He argues against

the fact that you say there is a grand, master plan. It could be

more... Steve Bannon has been open about the master plan. He said the

goal is to deconstruct the administrative state and that is why

they have appointed people to head up government agencies who don't

believe in the existence it of those government agencies. This is true

for energy, the EPA, education, Betsy Davos doesn't believe in

public education. He won't get anything done if he hasn't filled

550 positions. They don't believe in government. There is a grand master

plan and that is the same we have lived in for 40 years, which is what

Reagan said, government isn't the solution, it is the problem. It is

Margaret Thatcher's vision that there is no such thing as this

society. Donald Trump went before the people and said he would protect

healthcare and social security and it is finishing the job that Reagan

and Thatcher started. Margaret Thatcher believed in a community of

communities, that society remark. Misquoted her.

LAUGHTER. Donald Trump has tapped into the

zeitgeist. Two thirds of American voters who don't have a degree voted

for him. I don't know if it was the zeitgeist. 145 academics and writers

issued a statement in support of Trump and one was a philosophy

professor at the University of Texas, he said Trump is pro-

American, concerned about immigration because of economic

effects and about factories closing down. These are not... Trump is

concerned about Donald Trump. This is his animating mission in life. It

is to enrich himself and build himself up. Anybody who tells

themselves otherwise is... You are dismissing a lot of people who voted

for him. I am not dismissing all of the people who voted for him. He ran

a deeply dishonest campaign at a moment which, as you say, he tapped

into the antiestablishment zeitgeist, running against an

extremely establishment candidate with a message that was "All is

hell" to which Hillary Clinton said "All is well" and it isn't well.

People are in pain. They need good jobs. They need security. There is a

tremendous amount of fear. Those who didn't vote for Donald Trump, the

majority of American people, too many were not excited about Hillary

Clinton. She had depressed voter turnout compared with Obama in 2012.

They felt the system had failed them. I believe the Democratic Party

has abandoned workers, not just white workers, the working class

generally and those most vulnerable in the working class in the US are

those of colour. So, what they peddled was an entity identity

politics mostly about name checking different groups, recognising them,

"ICU" and not offering improvements in daily life. Hillary Clinton

oppose their strong campaign for a 15 dollar minimum wage she couldn't

get behind it. She said, maybe 12, you know? This is what it means to

fight for women's rights, who are overwhelmingly the women who are in

those precarious jobs, working multiple jobs to pay the Bills. She

represents a particular kind of identity politics, a leave in

feminism that benefits elites. To go back to the white working class, it

is the white male working class who feel neglected who voted for Donald

Trump. Professor Angus Steed and and and cakes, a noble lorry at, they

are at Princeton university, they have done a great deal of study on

the white male working class -- Anne Cates. They showed that the

mortality rate for the poorly educated for white males has soared

since 2000 -- Nobel laureate. They are more likely to die than black or

Hispanic males. They are likely to be at the bottom of the run. That is

what I said, they have been perhaps neglected by progressive voices. By

everyone. That is where Trump spoke to them and they heard him. The

solution is not to say, well, for get identity politics, we will just

focus on the white working class. It is to connect the dots. They are not

the only ones discarded by this system. It is true that they are the

ones who had the highest level of expectation. They had the better

jobs, they tended to have those manufacturing jobs that paid enough

to support a family, it you know, in the auto sector and so on. So it is

untrue that they have suffered the most under these economic policies.

In fact the wealth gap between white and black in the United States has

widened because since 2008, since the financial crisis, it was Omer --

overwhelmingly black Americans targeted for sub-prime loans. They

have lost an enormous amount of wealth. If you are in the higher

part of the economic hierarchy you have further to fall. There is more

a sense of betrayal perhaps among those white men that are taking

their own lives, whether drugs, suicide and that death by despair

study is in the book. So are you not with your arguments now playing into

people's fear, uncertainty and doubt, by saying, look what's

happening, you know, Donald Trump could spark a war, for instance, to

push up oil prices and that kind of thing. Are you not playing into

people's fears? People are afraid already. What I am trying to offer

is a plan that goes beyond just saying no to Trump, resistance to

Trump, this # In response to Trump is the

resistance. I think we need to resist the most dangerous of his

policies. We have seen some inspiring resistance in response to

the Muslim band. We saw the huge women's march on Trump's first day

on the job. The problem is even if we resist every one of the attacks

we would still end up in the same place we were when Donald Trump was

elected, and that was the ground that produced Donald Trump. We have

to get to the issues he was able to play on in order to be a elected.

Jeremy Corbyn's campaign shows the power of a bold, forward-looking

progressive agenda... The leader of the Labour Party in the UK. He

didn't win the election, did he? He did a lot better. He was dozens of

seats at less than the Conservatives. He did better but he

didn't win. He started to do better when they issued their manifesto,

which was so bold, which was about healthcare, which was about jobs,

which was about free education. That is not about fear. It is the

opposite of fear. That is what you want to promote for the United

States? Yes. I think it is the only way of resisting and defeating

Trumpism. Calling for mass protest finally? I don't think they are

enough. I think we need vision and protest. We have had a lot of

protest. People get exhausted by only protesting. I think what will

keep people in the long haul is a vision for the world they want

instead. Who has that vision among the leaders in the United States

politicians? I am not sure we have seen exactly who that leader is yet.

Bernie Sanders has part of it, Elizabeth Warren has part of it,

Nina Turner has part of it - the new head of our revolution, which is the

congressional wing of Bernie Sanders's campaign. I also think a

social movements have it at the grassroots and that is where I am

putting a lot of my hope right now. Naomi Klein, thank you very much

indeed for coming on HARDtalk. Thank you.

The rain came pretty much non-stop across northern England and southern