Activists can be a real pain in the ass. They’re always objecting to something, usually something you’ve never given much thought to. They can turn any discussion into an argument, which seems to be their preferred style of conversation. Naomi Klein is among the worst offenders. “I love winning a debate,” she says, in the kind of nonchalant tone of voice people use when they say they love your new haircut. Where some activists live purely for the froth of argument, Klein argues with an agenda. She is always fully engaged and alert in conversation. She is well read on a wide range of subjects and takes pleasure in reciting facts with an astounding level of detail. Klein and her close friend Andrea Schmidt, with whom she often collaborates for research, have been known to ruin nights out for friends by sparring for hours on end—the volume increasing with the degree of inebriation—about Iraqi economic policy or other, equally wonkish topics. Dinners with her husband, Avi Lewis, who, like Klein, considers himself a journalist-activist, have a similar tenor. And this is nothing compared to the wrath she can visit upon her enemies.

In the summer of 2002, Klein agreed to debate Sameena Ahmad, a business correspondent at The Economist, for National Public Radio in New York. The Economist had given Klein’s first book, No Logo, a lukewarm review when it was released in early 2000. But since then it had put a great deal of effort into undermining the book’s arguments about the excesses of branding and global capitalism, even running a cover story (penned by Ahmad) titled “Pro Logo: Why Brands Are Good for You.” The debate became a much-anticipated event among activists, intellectuals and the generally dispute-prone—co-sponsored by The Economist and The Nation, where Klein was a regular columnist—but she wasn’t looking forward to it. She had previously debated another Economist editor who, rather than deal with the facts she presented, would dismiss their source. (“He’d say, ‘Oh, the United Nations, of course they’d say that.’ ” She was profoundly annoyed.) Then, one morning, she turned to her husband and said, “I’m going to quote only facts and figures published in The Economist for the entire debate.” This, says Lewis, is Klein getting up on the right side of the bed: full of vinegar and ingenuity. In a clash of world views she sees no point in agreeing to disagree, and she shows no compunction about playing to win. “I really do believe the facts are on our team’s side,” she says. “It’s very rare to actually get these forums where it’s fair and square and it’s aired. It’s a gift.”

In New York that day, Klein beat Ahmad handily. Every time she quoted The Economist she made a show of it, backing Ahmad into an ever-tighter corner. Describing the perils of the global economy, Klein pointed out that 800 million people live in hunger—yet another figure from The Economist, she said. Ahmad yodelled at the top of her voice, “That’s wrong! That’s wrooooooong! Don’t quote The Economist when you quote statistics—if they’re wrong!” Ahmad was now blubbering nonsense: Was she denying that The Economist ever published such a figure? Or was she saying that Klein ought to be aware that The Economist publishes false facts? Moderator Brian Lehrer ignored the outburst, rather than ask Ahmad to explain herself. Even so, her frustration reverberated into her microphone and rumbled through the public address system. Lewis witnessed the whole thing. “It was so, so sweet,” he says.

“The strategy, generally, for dealing with people like me is to trivialize,” Klein says, “to come up with a reason why it’s not worth debating.” The thing about her, as The Economist realized, is that her public profile makes her difficult to trivialize, and her intellectual rigour makes her impossible to dismiss. Klein knows it, and she has a really big fight to pick right now, and she intends to use herself as bait to draw the world into her argument.