Naomi Klein's Disaster Capitalism video: exploiting disasters for globalism
Naomi Klein (No Logo) and Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Children of Men) have created a short film to accompany her latest book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," whose thesis is that present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention elsewhere.
Klein attributes this technique to Milton Friedman, who is reported to have said that "only a crisis -- real or perceived -- produces real change." She connects this idea to the fundamental notion underpinning CIA torture techniques (as reported in CIA interrogation manuals from 1963 and 1983) -- to produce a state of shock in which the victim is out of control of her faculties, a "suspended animation" that can be exploited to get victims to do things that violate their own ethics or beliefs.
The Cuaróns' filmmaking is superb, as is Klein's writing. This is a chilling and powerful 7-minute film, and it made me want to pick up the book as soon as possible. Link to video, Link to The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Thanks, Csims!)
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Wow. Nicely done. The people who put this short together -- Klein and Cuaron -- could take Michael Moore to school.
Now, compliments aside, can someone tell me how commingling protests against subsidized mercenary warfare and sinister CIA interrogation practices ('Oh, no! Government! Help us!') with appeals for hard-left economic policies ('Oh, no! Government, help us!') will actually accomplish anything?
Because this really just looks like more of the same unfocused, attention-whoring A.N.S.W.E.R.-style propaganda that accomplished so little leading up to the 2004 elections. What else does your cinematic cri-de-coeur have to show us, Ms. Klein, besides a new rendition of the boring parts of The Anarchist Cookbook, all sexed up with Hollywood production values?
The connection with Milton Friedman is, quite simply, BS.
For example, the quote she cites is distorted via cherry-picking:
He wasn't advocating "shock therapy," simply stating a fact about the nature of political change. Change doesn't happen unless there is a reason for it to happen, a motivational force to bring something to being. A bad policy can lead to crisis, a natural event can lead to crisis.
Klein indulges her biases to the point where she dishonestly portrays her enemies as madmen.
The connection with Milton Friedman is, quite simply, BS.
For example, the quote she cites is distorted via cherry-picking:
He wasn't advocating this, simply stating a fact about political change. Change doesn't happen unless there is a reason for it to happen, a motivational force to bring something to being. A bad policy can lead to crisis, a natural event can lead to crisis.
Klein indulges her biases to the point where she unfairly paints her enemies as madmen.
Would be nice to be able to delete dupes...
"Klein indulges her biases to the point where she dishonestly portrays her enemies as madmen."
That's exactly what I mean. What she has to say just sounds so darn _good_, until you actually listen to it. At that point, you realize you're watching neo-Marxist propaganda that has nothing to do with the significant governmental abuses and shortcomings that actually are hurting people.
Aren't there enough _real_ things for her to criticize about practically every move the Bush Administration makes, without corrupting her own message with irrelevant and misleading BS?
The other problem with her thesis-- Klein actively advocated the rise of Moqtada Al-Sadr and his "Mahdi" army in Iraq, depicting them as freedom fighters:
http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2004/08/najaf_to_new_yo.html
Any place Al-Sadr has dominated in Iraq, his thugs have enforced a kind of brutal Islamized mafia rule over the people, making them pay protection money for the price of their violent *sharia* enforcement. Saying this is neither a pro or anti-war point per se-- indeed, Bush's inept removal of Saddam enabled Sadr's rise to power-- but it also deflates Klein's point. She's not really against with violent war profiteering, she's just opposed when multinational corporations are involved. Let a bloodthirsty religious fanatic engage in it, and she'll happily look the other way.
Whatever your views on the subject, keep something in mind:
thin is, in the end, jus a commercial for a product that someone wants you to buy.
So, here we have annother case of someone scaring someone elese to make a buck.
Pretty scary...
Hell of a fucking commercial.
A debate between Naomi Klein and Robert Higgs (author of Crisis and Leviathan) might be interesting.
For those interested in some documentaries on the subject, Adam Curtis had two. First, The Power of Nightmares investigates use of fear to maintain power in politics. The second, The Trap discusses how our modern concept of Freedom (economic or otherwise) is based on a flawed model of human behaviour, and how our ideas of Freedom have led to disastrous consequences.
See:
The Power of Nightmares at Internet Archive
The Trap - Episode 1 at Google Video
The Trap - Episode 2 at Google Video
The Trap - Episode 3 at Google Video (Follow the links on the page to see successive parts of the Documentary.
I have read the book, and it is excellent.
As a fan and follower equally of BoingBoing, Naomi Klein and Democracy Now! I'd like to draw boingers attention to Klein's address to the American Sociological Association recently broadcast on DN!.
The theme was 'Is Another World is Possible?,' and it is a rousing address. It is one that I think demonstrates Klein's ability as a first rater thinker. She acutely attacks the intellectual framework behind the type of disaster capitalism described in her most recent book.
Enjoy!
Naomi Klein at the ASA
It's not really what I think of when I think of Capitalism. It reminds me of a discussion I overheard about a year ago in which someone said that Marx was spot on with nearly every insight he had into the fucked up power imbalances in the world, only where he saw capitalism it was more of an intersection of big business with ruthless state mercantilism.
How many here would entertain the idea that Global Warming(TM) is another example of (real or imagined) disaster as a means to gain power?
#6
You seem to forget the capitalist appetite that initiated the whole conflict in the first place.
As for the unhinged comments about Marxist propaganda: I'd say that a desire to shift the focus and character of government away from extreme militarism and toward peaceful (even welfarist) endeavors hardly qualifies. I distrust anyone who so much as implies that government intervention is inherently misguided or evil; typically they follow the interests of a wealthy elite who prefer a somewhat smaller militarized govt catering to their tiny numbers and not to the masses.
#6
You seem to forget the capitalist appetite that initiated the whole conflict in the first place.
As for the unhinged comments about Marxist propaganda: I'd say that a desire to shift the focus and character of government away from extreme militarism and toward peaceful (even welfarist) endeavors hardly qualifies. I distrust anyone who so much as implies that government intervention is inherently misguided or evil; typically they follow the interests of a wealthy elite who prefer a somewhat smaller militarized govt catering to their tiny numbers and not to the masses.
I am not going to defend the video, it is ridiculous. The book, however, is amazing. It taught me more about geopolitics than several Poli Sci courses combined. And it is a good read.
I love Naomi Klein's films, "The Take" ec. They are uplifting and fun. But I've got different beliefs about how the world operates; I think she's completely outside her depth in international money flows, and how transnational corporations work. That could be remedied by a couple more years in university, and working in the finance and accounting dept. of a global 500 firm for a few years. Preferably outside the U.S. I really don't think Wall Street even gets it. The bureaucracy in corp. headquarters is a world apart.