Terry Newman: Naomi Klein: From No Logos to Nazis
- Naomi Klein apologized on Bluesky for praising Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner without doing proper research, after accusations of sexual misconduct against him surfaced.
- Platner faced multiple allegations, including coercing a woman into sex and sending explicit texts to several women, leading him to suspend his campaign.
- Klein overlooked earlier warnings, including Platner admitting to having a Nazi SS emblem tattoo, and received criticism for her delayed reactions and justifications.
- Klein’s career evolved from anti-corporate activism in the 1990s to a more somber focus on climate alarmism, austerity, and anti-Zionist positions in recent years.
Last Tuesday, Canadian author, documentarian and activist Naomi Klein admitted on Bluesky that she “truly f—ked up” for not doing her “due diligence” on Graham Platner, who recently won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in Maine, before she praised him as an “extraordinary political communicator” in March.
Klein’s apology followed last Monday’s publication of Politico’s interview with Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old woman who accused Platner of forcing her to have sex with him five years ago, after she objected.
But last Monday wasn’t the first time Platner’s sexual impropriety made the news.
Back in May, Platner’s wife informed his campaign that he had sent sexually explicit texts to numerous women. Despite this, she posted a video excusing her husband’s actions, saying, “being newly married is hard.”
On Wednesday evening last week, Platner announced that he was suspending his campaign and exiting the race.
In her post on last Tuesday, Klein admitted that, “Enough was out there at the time,” and that she “should have been more cautious,” while apologizing to women “who came forward only to be disbelieved and smeared.” This mistake, she wrote, “gutted” her.
What Klein failed to mention was that months before she praised Planter, he admitted on a podcast that he had a Nazi SS emblem tattooed on his chest.
Numerous people pointed this out to her on social media back in March, prompting a follow-up post saying that she “didn’t see the podcast and … stuff people are flagging, which suck.”
But she qualified her feigned displeasure by saying: “He is surging and I think it’s worth understanding what he’s doing right.”
Klein rose to fame in the late 1990s after publishing her first book, No Logo, a critique of the brand strategies of large corporations like Nike and Disney, whose marketing campaigns sold lifestyles and identities that she believed were turning people into passive consumers.
In the book, Klein criticizes Nike for opening factories in foreign countries in order to avoid unions, take advantage of vulnerable workforces and increase profits, blaming the rise of temporary and low-paid McJob’s on competition among corporations for cheap labour.
This was Klein’s more innocent, well-meaning, anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-globalist and pro-labour period.
After No Logo became an international bestseller, Klein, who married Avi Lewis, now leader of the NDP, in 1998, published more books, becoming a lifelong professional activist.
Klein’s activism, which began with spunky culture jamming — rewriting corporate ads in order to critique companies — has grown increasingly hopeless and dark. It includes climate alarmism, austerity activism and her upcoming co-authored book, “End Times Fascism.”
Like Lewis, Klein is also a vocal anti-Zionist and suggested in an interview with Democracy Now last year that Israel weaponized October 7 trauma to justify “genocide” in Gaza.
One thing’s for sure — Klein has come a long way from “handing out little cutting tools to allow people to cut designer labels off their clothes” at a New York No Logo book promotion.
National Post
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