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The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
News Type: Other — Seeded on Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:15 AM EDT
Article Source: Democracy Now!
"Some of the most infamous human rights violations of the past thirty-five years, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market reforms."
"Well, the shock doctrine, like all doctrines, is a philosophy of power. It’s a philosophy about how to achieve your political and economic goals. And this is a philosophy that holds that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster. It could be a terrorist attack. It could be a war. But the idea, as you just saw in the film, is that these crises, these disasters, these shocks soften up whole societies. They discombobulate them. People lose their bearings. And a window opens up, just like the window in the interrogation chamber. And in that window, you can push through what economists call “economic shock therapy.” That’s sort of extreme country makeovers. It’s everything all at once. It’s not, you know, one reform here, one reform there, but the kind of radical change that we saw in Russia in the 1990s, that Paul Bremer tried to push through in Iraq after the invasion. So that’s the shock doctrine.
And it’s not claiming that right-wingers in a contemporary age are the only people who have ever exploited crisis, because this idea of exploiting a crisis is not unique to this particular ideology. Fascists have done it. State communists have done it. But this is an attempt to better understand the ideology that we live with, the dominant ideology of our time, which is unfettered market economics."
Both quotes are from Naomi Klein, investigative journalist, in her new book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"
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- Groups: Political Analysis, Worldviews, Mid-East Vine, The War Room
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In the article / interview there is alos a link to a video called The Shock Doctrine Short Film.
Anyone who has studied the ideological deformation of the deformed middle classes tied to the class oligarchy, servile to its criminal policies, both economic, and imperial strategies, would recognize that the class elites, are in fact the "shock troops" of fascism, class despotism and imperialism. Naomi Klein, shows culturally, how ecoomic and imperial policies produces shock polices, but in fact they are the ideological shock troops of the reactionary middle class tied to oligarchy and imperial fascist policies, that made up corporate fascism, deformed middle layers, as shcck troops for fascism. This goes beyond the issue on a cultural level, it goes to the heart of the deformed class elties, failed political clases, within class societies, like Late Capitalism, i.e. Corporate fascism.
I suspect you know a lot more than you are willing to acknowledge. You would in fact be making larger political and cultural points, as Naomi Klein is doing with American fascism.
Are you talking to me? I mean, who do you mean by the 'you' in the above quote?
I acknowledge I do know a lot, but for instance, your comment #1.1 is a difficult read for me. I am never sure if I do understand what you write. (And I guess, this goes for more newsviners reading your texts).
"human beings beings beings what they are" are delicately balanced beings of natural essences should be respected for what we are, just that, not of god but of this planet, a complete organism, self contained and complete, suseptible to outside influence, but able to interpreter its surroundings and decide the best way to go, always with Gods nod.