Caribou Middle School
Recently, I read a book entitled, “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. It focuses on Milton Friedman’s free market theory and describes a “shock doctrine” that has been implemented many times in Chile, Bolivia and the U.S. today. The “shock doctrine” is a theory that there needs to be some sort of a catastrophic shock to implement a solution to the shock as a doctrine. Friedman’s free market theory is that the doctrine should deregulate wages, import prices and export prices. It also states that the country’s main export industries should be privatized.
History has provided countless examples for this, such as Chile under Pinochet, Bolivia under Lozada, and the United Kingdom under Thatcher. A recent example of the shock doctrine that Naomi talks about is the Iraq War. Naomi has her own theory on the Iraq War and 9/11.
In her book, she states that the Bush Administration realized that this was the perfect shock to privatize Iraq’s oil reserves. Bush’s Administration knew that the Iraqis do not act to shock in the same way we do. We panic and become afraid and take any offer proposed by the government because they are the ones that we trust in a time of peril.
On the other hand, the Iraqis stay calm, cool and collected and hunt down whoever attacked them and deal with them. The government had to come up with something to confuse the Iraqis, so they called war on Iraq for the acts of 9/11. Iraq’s people were weakened, and since we had control over them, we could do whatever we wanted.
So, politicians and CEOs of American companies came in, privatized the oil industry and reaped enormous profits. We were under the impression that we were fighting terrorism and willingly (some of us) gave up our rights to privacy in order to combat terrorism under the Patriot Act. It was a win-win situation for the government. They got rich and got more control over us.
The book also compares torture to the shock doctrine. She writes that what torture accomplishes is it “wipes the slate clean” so we can write anything we want on it. You can basically rewrite a person’s life story if the torture is extreme enough. This compares to the shock doctrine as Milton Friedman put it, “Only a crises, actual or perceived, produces real change.” They try to “wipe your mind clean” so you do anything the government says.
The conclusion of the book does not recap the book, instead it talks about people who are against the shock doctrine and want it realized as a worldwide problem. Overall, if you’re looking for a great read, this is the book for you.
