Hitchens at Hay
by Will, 25 May 2008
The Dude has made an appearance at The Hay Festival earlier today. New podcast of an interview now available from here*.
*(NB. unfortunately you will have to put up with Naomi Klein and George Monbiot and Gore Vidal and some other Guardianista bullshit all at the same time — actually, to be fair — Klein does make a couple of good points along the way).
Monday 26 May 2008 at 7:42
I haven’t made my mind up on Klein yet (No Logo wasn’t worth the time, but I just took out a copy of The Shock Doctrine from the library), but she’s at least talking about class, which is more than you can say about most of the rest of the poseur left.
Monday 26 May 2008 at 15:33
Reading the copy of “No Logo” that I got from a graphic design book shop in London (they were also one of the few places in the UK that stocked Adbusters at the time) I was struck by the fact that a bit of, you know, class analysis would be a lot more effective than Klein’s self-obsessed schmaltzy volunteerism masking a Gen-X political consumerism. So if she’s actually talking about class now that’s a great improvement.
I’m told “Shock Doctrine” goes wonky when she actually gets to Iraq, though, and the bit I read on the Guardian’s website contained factual errors. Should I read it?
Tuesday 27 May 2008 at 0:09
I’ll let you know when I’m done with it.
Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 0:02
She was plugging this on Newsnight a fortnight ago by means of arguing that the truculence of the Burmese regime towards its’ natural disaster and the overt helpfullness of the Chinese regime towards its’ people in natural disaster were part of the same shock doctrine used by the US in Iraq as a means to gain control of state resources or something.
It seemed a very tenuous argument to be making (stretching) just to make it relevant.