The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

If you want to know what the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is all about, look at what she tells Gail Kastner, a living survivor of one of the CIA's torture programs from the 50s;

"I'm writing a bookabout shock. About how countries are shocked - by wars, terror attacks, coups, and natural disasters. And then how they are shocked again - by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of the first shock to push through econoic shock therapy. And then how people who dare to resist these shock politics are, if necessary, shocked foa third time - by police, soldiers and prioson interrogators."

Or, if you want to know what the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is all about, look the fuck around. We've been shocked by the COVID-19 pandemic, by the government and corporations who have taken the opportunity to expand their wealth and roll back regulations while only tossing crumbs to the rest of us, and now we're being shocked by police brutality all across the country as we rally in solidarity against the austerity and racial violence that's ravaged our communities well before COVID.

 It is almost impossible to express how profoundly important Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is. It ties the machinations of capital and imperialism with a tidy bow called the shock doctrine, an idea cooked up by Chicago School economists (generally known for their Libertarianism). Klein delves into the world's largest corporations and their owner's efforts, internationally united under banners like the World Bank and the IMF (or just hiding behind powerful governments), to force countries all over the world and throughout time to seize resources, commodities, cheap labor, and more. They just have to get around pesky things like democracy and popular support for things like social programs.

To do this, the slate must be cleared. People need to be forced into desperate situations, thrown into disorganization, and given little choice over what is to come. Sometimes, this happens after a massive disaster or things beyond the control of the powerful. Sometimes capital will push these situations with tricks like development loans that have austerity and privatization clauses baked in. Othertimes capital will grow impatient and design coups or wars to force it.

Once the citizens are effectively tricked or brutalized into accepting that they aren't in power, massive amounts of wealth transfers ensue. Land, resources, state-owned assets, and even people are forcefully taken or given outright by the corrupted or swindled governments that once held them in the name of the common good. Once, if ever, citizens rise up to speak out and organize against this plunder, the response is torture, the militarized (sometimes privatized) law enforcers, black bags, and bombs.

Klein is there to document all of it (sometimes even physically there as she does quite a bit of on the ground reporting in places like Post-Katrina Louisiana or Post-911 Iraq). "The Shock Doctrine", "the Washington Consensus", "Neoliberalism", whatever you want to call it has been continuously deployed in South America, the South Asia Sea, China, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and even right here in the US. It disproportionally affects BIPOC and the poorest people of the world. It's been deployed by companies like Ford, Chevron, Apple, Boeing, US Steel, Haliburton and more. It won't matter how many flashy, social justice jargon-laden PR statements corporations put out in their new efforts to market shit we don't need, once you read The Shock Doctrine you'll never forget these companies are not on your side.

In fact, there is no going back after reading The Shock Doctrine at all. You'll see it everywhere you look, at scales large and small. Reading Klein's books was probably the biggest shock of all. Learning that capital is organized and living and active in its efforts to direct more of everything in the world that holds value, from tangibles like the rainforest to things as precious as our free time, directly to those that own it, is terrifying. The only question you'll have after reading about it is what you can do to stop it.