Canadian author Naomi Klein already explored in 2007 how shock and awe tactics have been used by governments to push a population into submission so that the government can force unpopular policies or changes on the people. Order the book, and watch the doc. right here.
“Is neo-liberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goals that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing, followed by human rights cleanup operations?”
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism. In 2007 Naomi Klein wrote the book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, Klein investigates that of “disaster capitalism”, based on Klein’s proposition neo-liberal feeds capitalism on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
As John Gray wrote in The Guardian, “There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books.”
After 9/11 the Bush Administration launched a new economy, driven by the notion of an endless war against an undefined notion of evil.
A New York Times and International Bestseller
The Shock Doctrine is being translated into 25 languages
In 2009 it won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Literature.
- Order the book here (720 pages)
“The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous. An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial. The appetite for easy, short-term profits offered by purely speculative investment has turned the stock, currency and real estate markets into crisis-creation machines, as the Asian financial crisis, the Mexican peso crisis and the dot-com collapse all demonstrate.” p513
Alfonso Cuarón, director of “Children of Men”, and Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo”, present a short film from Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Drawing surprising connections between market methods and CIA torture techniques developed in the 1950s, the film explores how well-known events of the recent past have been theaters for the shock doctrine, from Pinochet’s coup in Chile, to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to the war in Iraq today.
Watch the impressive short film here.
And in 2009 English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom released a documentary on the book by the same name. Watch the full film below:
Naomi Klein disowns Winterbottom adaptation of Shock Doctrine
This is why Trump came to power, and Clinton lost
Source for this article comes from British writer George Monbiot, Friday 15 April 2016, “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems,” by George Monbiot.
Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there.
Hillary Clinton was exactly the wrong candidate: a technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.
Read Thomas Frank article here
Photo credit: Renegade Pictures/Revolution Films.