The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

[Dances]

Oh my it's brutal but there. On AIBU. Social scolding hellfire.

Do people have no concept of the risks of overreach by police and of government taking advantage of a crisis situation?

Also, just remembered reading Naomi Klein's, 'The Shock Doctrine' which documented how governments around the world took advantage of national crises to impose right wing legislation. Shocking book and we should be alert to the risks. Has anyone read it?

Would be interested to discuss the risks of goverments pushing through legislation they would normally have no chance of passing.

I read it. Terrified the life out of me. Compelling argument and impressive analysis which made it harder to ignore. Thinking about it is the opposite of cheering so I'm trying to convince myself that people will somehow get mad enough to insist on policies that build community and support the vulnerable - a repeat of post WW2 socialism. Sweet dreams...

I think I didn't get all the through The Shock Doctrine (must pick it up again), but what she said about disaster opportunism has stayed with me.

I'm absolutely expecting the disaster opportunists to take massive advantage of CV. Viktor Orban has done so in Hungary just today, declaring rule by his decree, with no time limit.

Coronavirus: Hungary government gets sweeping powers
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52095500

And in a less dramatic way... Well, I somehow doubt Dominic Cummings has been spending his days working on the UK's practical response to CV. How to make the most of it as a political opportunity is more his style.

I notice that all the big corporations are trying and often succeeding in getting bailed out at huge expense to the public purse. Here in Mexico over half the government's budget goes to paying for a bank bail-out that happened in 1995.

But the logical thing that should happen after this episode is for the rich to realise that, even if they never intend to use it themselves, a good public health system protects their health too.

Just ordered this book - thanks for the mention!

Not read The Shock Doctrine but it sounds like I ought to. Going to order too.

I haven't trusted Naomi Klein since the "death recorded" incident.

I haven't trusted Naomi Klein since the "death recorded" incident.

That was Naomi Wolf!

Regarding Shock Doctrine, Brexit will be manipulated - and was probably even made to happen with all of the dark money and illegal data exploitation - to facilitate extreme economic and societal shock for the benefit of the 1%. With Coronavirus, our economic collapse will be even more complete when we crash out as Cummings and his shady backers have always wanted.

Oh crap, I made the same Wolf/Klein conflation! This is actually a relief.

I really have to read it.

40Readytogogogo
"I haven't trusted Naomi Klein since the "death recorded" incident.
That was Naomi Wolf!"

Oh dear.. what a mistakeatomakea 🤗

Oh my it's brutal but there. On AIBU. Social scolding hellfire
Do people have no concept of the risks of overreach by police and of government taking advantage of a crisis situation?

I’m pretty sure that the wannabe prefects are all firm believers in “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear”.
But yes, I’m bloody terrified. Governments and police forces don’t relinquish draconian powers easily. They have to be made to do it, and I saw some statistic the other day saying that a scary proportion- 80, 90%- think the lockdown should be harsher. It frightens the life out of me that there will be nothing left of normal life to resume even if there is a recognisable end to this.

Out if interest, what was the 'death recorded' incident? Easy to mix up Naomi's...

Long time since I read the book but remember seeing this documentary based on the book.

Thatcher was a big fan of economist Milton Friedman who liked "free market" policies, which often seems to mean private companies taking all the profits whilst the public carries all the cost, PFI anyone? Easy to get rich when you make all the rules.

Doob
I think MN shows that there are arseholes abound but I'm not convinced on 80-90%, based on threads. Or maybe I frightened to think that. Most of it is reactionary bullshit, based on Daily Mail etc stoking the fires and idiots reacting.

Am sure the DM journalists are worried about their jobs like everyone else but they do have some social responsibility

The 80-90% was the result of some survey I read somewhere rather than my personal assessment based on AIBU, although the number for that would be about the same
Unfortunately I can’t remember either the exact number from the survey or where I saw it.

Thanks Doob

It's available on Audible so that's my daily 'Government permitted but socially suspect' walk sorted for, erm......an indeterminate time

It's an excellent book and I've been thinking of it a lot lately.

I’ve been thinking of the Shock Doctrine a lot lately as well.

There is no doubt multinational corporations and right wing governments will be attempting to use Corona to their own benefit.

Like Oldstyle, I’m hoping it will somehow become possible to push for a welfare economy, not only because that will benefit ordinary people, but also because that would surely be the most sensible economic policy to get the whole damn world up and running again.

However, the 1%ers ate hardly likely to reach that conclusion, and neither are political parties dedicated to neoliberal ideology for decades now.

This crisis may pave the way for more, wider, and worse commodification of anything and everything that were natural, and not yet monetised.

Renee Gerlich talked about the Shock Doctrine in her talk last year about neoliberalism, rape culture and gender identity ideology.

She said “One in ten websites are porn sites. The industry is worth more than the combined revenue of the top ten web technology companies. To encourage porn consumption, porn is also normalised through mainstream media. All of this fuels a climate of male sexual entitlement, rape and violation, objectification, body hatred, dissociation, dysphoria and anorexia.These are the disaster conditions that transgender ideology exploits, and that enable whole populations to buy into the idea that not only can women be bought and sold like products, but womanhood itself is a commodity to which men should be entitled. Transgenderism is a neoliberal ideology that treats the natural fact of biological sex itself as something to be ploughed over and substituted with the cash crop of gender identity. It is empowering for the individual to reject biological sex and substitute it for a customised gender that expresses one’s own essential tastes, like your clothes and shoes are meant to do, and even your car, your cellphone screen protector and your toothbrush.

I think we will see such commodifications ramped up to the extreme and legalised by governments in the wake of the Corona disaster.

As we are already seeing the push to commodify pregnancy, breastmilk, and babies, I think that will be normalised even further with the poverty many, many women will be in after Corona.

This is just one that immediately springs to mind, in addition to living wages and workers rights being squeezed even further.

Link to Gerlich’s speech:
reneejg.net/2019/10/transgenderism-neoliberalism-and-rape-culture-brisbane-talk/

I would be inclined to be very careful about the idea of a wlfare culture being a good solution. The idea means different things to dfferent people, but in a lot of cases it means a kind of dependence on the state.

Which can seem better than dependence on corporations. But it can come down to the same thing, in advanced capitalism the state can easily become the social arm of the corporations. They pursue their own good and direct the state to provide the workers and consumers what is necessary to make them useful to capitalist interests. For the individual, the worker, they are disempowered equally by being dependent on the capitalist or the state for their basic needs, and when it is the state providing they don't even have the ability to claim that what they get is rightly earned by them - and so it is difficult to complain when it is made less or comes with strings attached.

In some ways it doesn't matter whether the people at the top controlling the economy and distributing the spoils belong to private industry, or are state actors. The effect can be much the same for the people at the bottom. Where government has been captured programs like universal income can actually increase the power of capital.

out if interest, what was the 'death recorded' incident? Easy to mix up Naomi's...

It was a mistake Naomi Wolf made in a book which seemed to imply that many gay men were executed in England but was her misinterpretation of a the term ‘death’. The book ended up being pulped.

Here’s an Unherd article about it:

unherd.com/2019/10/how-did-naomi-wolf-get-away-with-it-for-so-long/

Her mistake emerged in an interview with Matthew Sweet on the BBC:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-48639663/matthew-sweet-questions-key-evidence-in-naomi-wolf-s-new-book

Incidentally, Naomi Klein herself has suggested there coronavirus crisis could be a way of creating change:

www.democracynow.org/2020/3/19/naomi_klein_coronavirus_capitalism

Yes what ever the outcome the 1% are going to make sure they keep their hefty slice.

Just ordered it

Only 99p on kindle