The Shock Doctrine

I spent most of my time last weekend watching old movies and videos. The most interesting part of the video marathon was a documentary titled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, produced by Knopf Canada or popularly Random House Canada. The video, featured Naomi Klein a journalist, social activist and author who was named one of Ms Magazine’s Women of Year in 2001, and declared by the Times (London) to be “probably the most influential person under the age of 35 in the world.”

The New York Times describes her work as an “ambitious look at economic history and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world. ““Disaster capitalism,” as she calls it, is a violent system that sometimes requires terror to do its job. Like Pol Pot proclaiming that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was in Year Zero, extreme capitalism loves a blank slate, often finding its opening after crises or “shocks.” For example, Klein argues, the Asian crisis of 1997 paved the way for the International Monetary Fund to establish programs in the region and for a sell-off of many state-owned enterprises to Western banks and multinationals. The 2004 tsunami enabled the government of Sri Lanka to force the fishermen off beachfront property so it could be sold to hotel developers. The destruction of 9/11 allowed George W. Bush to launch a war aimed at producing a free-market Iraq.”

As a journalist on the ground (mostly in disaster-stricken countries), her research finds its roots fifty years ago, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which according to the video produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.”

The video, for its introduction, brings back the viewer to the time when shock therapy, was covertly employed by the CIA not only to silence or torture those who try to expose the tyranny in the US military, but as a means to literally replace the “old self” to a new one creating a new breed of military intelligence similar to those spy movies we see like the Bourne series. Klein finds parallelism in shock therapy in the way capitalism has been done not only in the United States but in other countries where the US has economic interest.

Thus, for a country to prosper in economic terms, it has to undergo some kind of a deep crisis. The crisis could be natural or created -- the latter may be justified even at the cost of its citizens if only to force the needed economic reforms to bring a country back to its feet. Shock doctrine employs the use fear and public confusion and allows those in power and the wealthy to advance their economic agenda with little resistance. This reminds me of the Martial Law years. The chaos that swept the whole nation was believed to be the handiwork of Marcos in order to introduce his idea of the Bagong Lipunan. And I can only surmise that Marcos may have been a student of Milton Friedman because that part of our history seems to be the same as that of those in Cambodia, Chile and Argentina which by the way, were products of the shock therapy according to that video.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of this documentary in my opinion is that it offers numerous case studies that capitalism comes with its evil sides – and for the most part of it, condones the use of harsh methods to perpetuate its ends even if those ends were meant to bring the greater good.

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