NAOMI KLEIN’S NEW BOOK THE SHOCK DOCTRINE GIVES THE LOW-DOWN ON DISASTER CAPITALISM
January 21st 2008 02:07
Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is set to rattle a few cages, especially if Mark Groubert’s rather sensationalist review in Crooks and Liars is anything to go by.
A breathless Groubert reports, “A divinely inspired work, Naomi Klein has tapped into the zeitgeist of modern day destruction capitalism. In 400-plus pages and extensive footnotes, she melts the myths surrounding the so-called global free market. Apparently, it is neither global, nor free and anything but a market.
“The Shock Doctrine, based on her historical research, and four years of boots-on-the-ground investigation by Klein, reveals the shocking truth that connects Pinochet’s Chile, the Falklands War, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis and Hurricane Mitch all in terms of rapid fire corporate restructuring of these societies and their economies. Along the way, we go through Poland following communism, South Africa after apartheid, Sri Lanka recovering from the tsunami, Iraq after mission accomplished and New Orleans’ privatisation post Katrina.
“The shocking truth is that most of the world’s economists now believe this. (He was given a Nobel Prize to make sure of the fact.)
“At first you won’t believe this parallel history laid out by Klein and then later, near the end of the book, you will be unable to see the world in any other way than through the prism of Shock. It is the political equivalent of reading Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky for the first time. Whole swaths of recent history have been reinterpreted for the reader, who if you are like me, will be stunned that the connections hold up so solidly.”
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