In a speech in the UK Tuesday, renowned author Naomi Klein called President Trump the “political equivalent” of the massive congealed clot of fat and sanitary products that is clogging up the sewers there.
“You know that horrible thing currently clogging up the London sewers. I believe you call it the fatberg?” she said. “Well Trump, he’s the political equivalent of that.”
Said the famed cultural observer behind the bestselling books “No Logo” and “The Shock Doctrine”: “A merger of all that is noxious in the culture, economy and body politic, all kind of glommed together in a self-adhesive mass. And we’re finding it very, very hard to dislodge.
“It gets so grim that we have to laugh. But make no mistake: whether it’s climate change or the nuclear threat, Trump represents a crisis that could echo through geologic time.”
Klein was speaking at a Labour party conference in Brighton, England, criticizing conservative prime minister Theresa May and encouraging supporters of the liberal Jeremy Corbyn.
What is the fatberg?
The fatberg is 130-ton clump of non-biodegradable fat, wet wipes, condoms and diapers that was discovered blocking a section of the London sewers earlier this month. Its consistency has been described as rock-hard.
The clump of fat is hot cooking oil poured down drains that solidifies when it hits the cold sewers.
This is not London’s first run-in with fatbergs: In 2013, a fatberg the size of a bus was removed from the sewers in Kingston-upon-Thames, London. The year 2014 saw the dislodging of a fatberg the size of a 747 from the drains in Shepherd’s Bush, London.
Officials at the Thames Water utility coined the term, and it was added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in 2015.
And the phenomenon has reached American shores: This month, a fatberg was found to be backing up the sewers of Baltimore, Maryland, causing 1.2 million gallons of sewer waste to pour into Jones Falls, a stream that runs through the city.
