Analysis of Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

1676 Words4 Pages

The term the Shock Doctrine was created by journalist Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism which refers to the idea that economic liberalists formed an entire industry take advantage of disasters such as natural disasters or military coups and privatize everything they can get their hands on. The name of this industry is the Disaster Capitalism Complex and it is comprised of the corporations and organizations that see recently shocked areas as ripe for the emplacement of economically liberal policies and institutions. The term originated from an experiment that was funded, in part, by the CIA and took place in Canada where a doctor tested many different methods of shocking people such as electrodes, sensory deprivation for days, LSD, and other drugs, on student volunteers. The goal was to see if it was possible to erode all that a person was, take their mind back to infancy, and rebuild it as the doctor wished. There were many uses for this technique, if it was proven possible, such as getting information from a suspect or curing psychological disorders like depression. After many trials it was proven that it is possible to erode a person, but none of the subjects had their minds successfully reconstructed again. Test subjects had terrible debilitations for the rest of their lives, ranging from memory loss to full psychological breakdowns without warning. This same idea is put to practice by economic liberals. If a disaster occurs and everything is wiped clean they come in and free up the markets, remove trade barriers, remove social programs, and privatize everything from the military to education before there is a chance of things to return to normalcy. If there are any problems such as reb... ... middle of paper ... ... homeland security, privatizing the military, and reconstructing geographical areas after a disaster. However the reconstruction efforts done by this industry are far from innocuous, the goals were to build up a recently destroyed area as a security state. This was done both inside our country and on foreign lands. From New Orleans to Iraq the Disaster Capitalism Complex was there to rebuild a privatized security state to further their own profits. With the War on Terror, foreign policy was explained as based on ideology instead of economic resources. This made it much easier for private corporations, funded by the government, to take actions over seas in the interest of themselves. The government could explain anything that created controversy as necessary for national security to fight terrorism. “It was the pinnacle of the counterrevolution launched by Freidman.”7

More about Analysis of Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Open Document