The recent new book – and accompanying film – of Naomi Klein causes already a lot of discussion. And it is good that there are (semi*) open places like the Guardian mini-site to provide this.
Sorrily I haven’t read the book, thus I can’t really decide on some raised detail information, also I can’t really declare yet to what extend N.Klein claims the ‘shock doctrine’ as being installed entirely purposefully and how accurate her analysis is (as this is seemingly a main point in the guardian discussions 1 / 2).
Nevertheless the research project she undertook seems pretty interesting and important to me in times when first a ‘shock and awe‘ based theory could become an official (military) strategie to install instantly your (mostly western-oriented) goals*. So it is definitly an aspect which took over our strategies – how to cope with each other. Consequently on first view I can quite easily follow her interest in how these inductions influenced and formed the fields of politics, financial politics and consequently the associated social impact.
Regarding the collected information so far, I might tend to agree to some of the points as brought up by Joseph E. Stiglitz in this Bleakonomics entitled NYT article, especially that the pure comparison with CIA shock therapy is not throughoutly working. Despite this, the theory of taking chance for an economic shock therapy is not too unconvincing, and even might this just address the following lower instincts, which unconciously revel their racist background attitude. As described in one of her most obvious and catchy examples in the excerpt about the rebuild of New Orleans (published on the website) after its tragedy.
| … There are no accidents in the world as seen by Naomi Klein. The destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina expelled many poor black residents and allowed most of the city’s public schools to be replaced by privately run charter schools. The torture and killings under Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and during Argentina’s military | YouTube link |
| dictatorship were a way of breaking down resistance to the free market. The instability in Poland and Russia after the collapse of Communism and in Bolivia after the hyperinflation of the 1980s allowed the governments there to foist unpopular economic “shock therapy†on a resistant population. And then there is “Washington’s game plan for Iraqâ€: “Shock and terrorize the entire country, deliberately ruin its infrastructure, do nothing while its culture and history are ransacked, then make it all O.K. with an unlimited supply of cheap household appliances and imported junk food,†not to mention a strong stock market and private sector. (link) | |
Guardian Shock Doctrine website
* as I could not figure how long comments are open
* terror attacs (like car bombs, suicide bombing, etc… ) play on a different level, while they attempt for the shock by bringing mainly minority issues upfront, they most of the time lack the power to continue to bring them through, but more likely create an, at least argumentative, ‘opportunity’ for the opposite side to install further suppressing strategies on exactly these minorities
