Naomi Klein: Culture

Naomi Klein is Canadian author and activist. Explore interesting quotes on culture.
Naomi Klein: 88   quotes 2   likes

“Rather than calling attention to the house of mirrors, that passes for empirical truth (as postmodern acadimics did), and rather than fighting for better mirrors (as the ID warriors did), today's media activists are concentrating on shattering the impenetrable shiny surfaces of branded culture, picking up the pieces and using them as sharp weapons in a war of actions, not ideas.”

Naomi Klein

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

War , Truth , Idea , Fight

“We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. … We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. … It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.”

Naomi Klein book This Changes Everything

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014), p. 18
This Changes Everything

Communication , Decision , Chance

“When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question.”

Naomi Klein

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Eight, "Corporate Censorship"

Question

“Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi's and Nikes, grab their caps and backpacks, and Sony personal CD players and head for school.”

Naomi Klein

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

Youth , World , School , Universe

“Too often, however, the expansive nature of the branding process ends up causing the event to be usurped, creating the quintessential lose-lose situation. Not only do fans begin to feel a sense of alienation from (if not outright resentment toward) once-cherished cultural events, but the sponsors lose what they need most: a feeling of authenticity with which to associate their brands.”

Naomi Klein

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

Feeling , Nature , Sense

“In many ways, schools and universities remain our culture's most tangible embodiment of public space and collective responsibility. University campuses in particular —with their residences, libraries, green spaces and common standards for open and respectful discourse - play a crucial, if now largely symbolic, role: they are the one place left where young people can see a genuine public life being lived. And however imperfectly we may have protected these institutions in the past, at this point in our history the argument against transforming education into a brand-extension exercise is much the same as the one for national parks and nature reserves: these quasi-sacred spaces remind us that unbranded space is still possible.”

Naomi Klein

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Four: "The Branding of Learning"

Life , People , Education , School

“With the tentacles of branding reaching into every crevice of youth culture, leaching brand-image content not only out of street styles like hip-hop but psychological attitudes like ironic detachment, the cool hunt has had to go further afield to find unpilfered space and that left only one frontier: the past.”

Naomi Klein

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Three, "Alt. Everything"

Youth , Past

“Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.”

Naomi Klein

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Twelve, "Culture Jamming"

School , Religion , Nature , Rage