I went to the Mall yesterday and bought a copy of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It only took my an entire afternoon via public transportation, since, of course, buses run every hour, I suppose not to impede the tens of thousands of cars using the public roads. And the mall 1. doesn’t even have any fucking sidewalks!
Anyhow, the book is wonderful, illuminating, terrifying. You should—must—go buy it and read it immediately if you want us all to be able to start thinking strategically instead of reacting to each shock as it comes, and the next one is coming; that panting sound you hear in the dark is the wingers, waiting for it. (Despite being long, and heavily footnoted—footnotes are anti-authoritarian, since they enable you to check sources—the book is quite readable. It is not an academic work, though it is analytical). Shock Doctrine integrates all the economic and political shards of my own life since I came of age; and also integrates and vindicates many of the themes and memes and sense-making tools that we’ve been home-brewing in the blogosphere in the years since Bush seized power.
So what I’m going to do, over the next several days—or more than several, the book is long—is read TSD from front to back, and fair-use quote and annotate passages that I find especially suggestive, in a series of posts. (In the beginning, everything seemed suggestive. Even from the first few pages, the sense I had of conceptual doors opening—that I could finally take a mental walk-through of the ground plan for the Green Zone I know I’ve been trapped in—was exhilirating. Even if many of the walls are of cold stone, many of the windows are barred and high up, many of the corners are dark, and even though the sound of screaming comes from behind some of the closed doors.* (TSD’s impact is such that it makes everything else look like The Process Dodge.)
That said, pages 4-6:
The news racing around the [New Orleans convention center] shelter [during Katrina] was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican Congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t, but God did.” Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans’ wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment. “I think we have a clean sheet** to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities.”
1. [Mentally mark that “clean sheet”* phrase; we’ll encounter it again.]
2. I remember during Katrina remarking that the similarity between Iraq and Katrina was that both were gigantic experiments in Conservative
social engineering. Klein’s book validates that intuition.
3. We need to rid ourselves once and for all, completely, of the Incompetence Dodge. The events and processes that we see unfolding in New Orleans, and in Iraq, are not in essence “mistakes” (though of course accidents happen). Rather, they are ideologically driven. They are doctrinal. And they confirm benefits on the drivers in the form of great wealth. “This is working very well for them.”
Over at the shelter, Jamar could think of nothing else. “I really don’t think of it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown. People who shouldn’t have died.”
He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us overheard and whipped around. “What is wrong with these people…
1. [The Mighty Corrente Building actually has a Department of What is WRONG with The People…]
…in Baton Rouge? This isn’t an opportunity. It’s a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?
A mother with two kids chimed in. “No. They’re not blind. They’re evil. They see just fine.”
1. People of the Lie (POTL).
2. And we’re all niggers now, eh?
One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was Milton Friedman, grand guru of the movement for unfettered capitalism and the man credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hypermobile global economy. Ninety three years old and in failing health, “Uncle Miltie,” as he was known to his followers, nonetheless found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal [if you thought it was bad then, wait for Murdoch to get to work] three months after the levees broke. … “It is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the educational system. … New Orleans was now, according to The New York Times, “the nation’s preeminent laboratory for the widespread use of charter schools,” while the American Enterprise Institute, a Freidmanite think tank, enthused that “Katrina accomplished in a day… What Louisiana school reformers couldn’t do after years of trying.” Public school teachers, meanwhile, watching money allocated for victims of the flood being diverted to erase a public system and replace it with a private one, were calling Freidman’s plan “an educational landgrab.”
[It would be interesting to go back and see how many of the “land grabs” organized by the K Street Project were triggered by disasters. Certainly, the theft of Social Security was marketed as the solution to a future disaster.]
I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, “disaster capitalism”.
I’m going to follow Klein and call the subject matter of these posts Disaster Capitalism Theory (DCT). I think this is because Conspiracy Theory (CT) occupies the conceptual niche that DCT should occupy, but DCT outcompetes CT the barren circularities *** of LIHOP vs. MIHOP with conceptual tools that are analytically far more powerful, far more rigourous, have broader historical sweep, and fit the built record far more than CT can ever hope to. (I Cor. 13:12).
As I said: Go buy the book. It’s the perfect read for Talk Like a Pirate Day!
NOTE * Of course, behind other doors comes the tinkling of a piano, the clink of glasses raised in toast, and the smell of fine cigars. It’s a funny old world.
NOTE ** I think the “hot sheets” metaphor must be entirely unconscious.
NOTE *** That’s not to say that CT isn’t important in building the record. But a world-view that depends on conspiracies and cabals doesn’t scale far enough to explain the problems we face. We have bigger fish to fry—or corpses to bury—than Skull and Bones.
Front page
The synopsis of Naomi Klein's book in Harpers
Made we want to copy it all and post it here. She has connected the dots, as they say. Grand unified theory, indeed.
Eventually they will post her article free for all, and I will alert the Corrente media when they do.
How about a link (Powells or Amazon) to her book from this site which sends a few pennies back to Corrente? Or is that too filthy lucre-ish?
“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
I don't mind a little filthy lucre for the hamsters
… but I don’t know how to set it up. Do you?
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
I "hate" to say this but:
I’ve been saying exactly these same things—i.e., that there has never been moment when the Busheviks were acting ’incompetently’—for the last SIX FUCKING YEARS, god-damn it!
And there is very fuukin’ little difference between capitalizing (as it were) on disaster, and stimulating disasters upon which to act, or leaving things undone that might prevent disasters from which capital (political or other) could be gained.
A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
Re: Disaster Capitalism (Addendum)
Capitalism has ALWAYS depended on disaster…
Cf: the procession of economic catastrophes called ’depressions’ have never constituted any bar to growth. They’re the way the elites/aristos recapture the assets they’ve essentially leased to the rest of us.
It works this way: They get our money, they fuck with the economy, they get their goods back, they get our money, they fuck with the economy, they get their goods back, they get our money….
A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
Lab Rats Rule the Lab
ex nihilo, chaos next
swirling clouds
of precious dust
when they settle
open fire
shot glass apocalypse
tastes like heaven
the dead don’t vote
the living don’t know
ex nihilo, chaos next
++++
Chaos
… is the the revealed, laboratory tested, clinically presented, underwriter guaranteed, ubiquitously manifest destiny and plan of the Elder Gods and their Company.
You can bet Friedman, like Greenspan and Rumsfeld, feels no remorse, only contempt for the weaker mortals who lack the greater vision of Hell.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
One answer to shock is resilience
Which so many of the DIY, Lo-Res technologies we’re advocating here provide.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Sorry, I've yet to get on board with "chaos is the plan"
I think we’re dealing with juvenile, authoritarian Manicheans who think they pee perfume.
I think they really believe that they are the Churchills that are going to set everything straight, and that they’ll make good on the Straussian promise that lying the Good (elite) People into ever-more power will create a global city on the hill.
Certainly, they are fear merchants, so in that regard chaos is a big part of their plan. But I think they absolutely believe they are bringing brilliant, world-enriching advancement to this little rock between Venus and Mars.
Yes, they are ideologues
I think that “Chaos is the plan” is a short-hand for a larger, more complex structure that will involve Shystee’s idea of emergent conspiracy.
The juvenile authoritarians are part of the picture.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Add to the reading list
Judging from her articles of the last few years, and now this book, Naomi Klein looks more and more like the successor to Noam Chomsky every day. Good for progressives; bad for Klein, as once the “liberal” media figures up what she’s up to she’ll no longer be taken seriously.
I think they really believe that they are the Churchills that are going to set everything straight, and that they’ll make good on the Straussian promise that lying the Good (elite) People into ever-more power will create a global city on the hill.
VL, I think it goes even further. By the “End Of History” they meant to communicate their belief that the era of the Enlightenment is over, and they see themselves as the vanguard of a new, post-Enlightenment civilization. The old must be torn down in order to make way for the new, and if cities, countries, and people must perish in order to correct the “mistakes” of the Enlightenment and establish the New World Order, then so be it.
…for the rest of us
Reducing the Epitome of Evil to a Sound-bite
Vastleft, you have a good heart. You have a hard time believing there are people who live in the Shadows and use them for their own ends. It all sounds so much like B-rate melodrama. A bad episode of sci-fi. Film Noire gone bad.
The emergent conspiracy theory couples with the shock doctrine well. There isn’t one group of players, but an indefinitely large group of people all angling as individuals to benefit opportunistically from every disruptive incident that even marginally throws the situation into their favor. Consider that if 20% of America supports George W. Bush that’s 60 million people happy with the idea of upsetting your applecart to get what they think is righteously theirs.
There are 150,000
paid killersprivate contractors in Iraq. American. Pinocet Chilean. Stasi. Every spook in the world disgruntled with their wimpy, rule book following state, and looking for a piece of the action from the Real Deal, the NeoCons who think torture in the defense of their bank statement is no vice. The place is a veritable Mordor for the mercenary, and they all want to see the endless war stay that way.You say “we’re dealing with juvenile, authoritarian Manicheans who think they pee perfume.” I agree. Just because they’re childish makes them no less evil. What is evil other than the inability to see yourself as part of a larger world?
As much as resilience, we need to educate. In order to do that we need to reach a people who have trouble keeping attentive for longer than 30 seconds in a row. “Chaos is the plan” is a perfect shorthand for what those juvenile, authoritarian Manicheans who think they pee perfume are willing to do and are doing to grab and maintain power.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
If there is anything worse than being ruled by juvenile
authoritarian Manichean children, it would be being ruled by juvenile, authoritarian, Manichean ADULTS…
we are SOOOOO fucked…
A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner
I saw her Monday at the
I saw her Monday at the Ethical Culture Society in NY for the kickoff of the book here. So, some impressions of the evening.
She spoke for some time about the ideas in the book and also about having spent the past three weeks doing PR for it all over the world since it is being released in 7 countries at once.
Testing the waters was how she put it. And she said the news was not so good. She related many of the questions she had been asked; she said it was like therapy for her. In two different countries she was told that her book had depressed the interviewers. Her answer to that was to “lay off the Prozac and listen to the resisters.” In Germany an interviewer asked her how she would feel if she was quoted in a video by Osama bin Laden. She told the interviewer that IF that were to happen, she would come back and do a special interview with him, but that until it did, she had no comment.
One funny thing was thanking her editor for “de snarkifying her writing.”
She also ended the evening with the line that is in the little film she made with Alfonso Cuaron, which they showed, “Information is shock resistance. Arm yourselves.” So I bought the book. She talked about how analysis ties us to our history and to our culture. And shock disconnects us from it.
She talked about torture both literally and as a metaphor for disaster capitalism. One of the central ideas the CIA developed from experiments in electro shock therapy done at McGill in the ’50’s was to keep prisoners isolated. Hence, now, hooding immediately. Disorienting, regressing people and making them feel powerless. And never letting them talk to each other. As she put it, when prisoners tell each other what has happened to them, they are better able to hold on to their stories by which I took her to mean their life stories, not concocted stories.
Then she related the metaphorical side of it to Milton Friedman’s theories developed in Chicago. His idea that only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. The great experiment for this and his economic ideas of deregulation, tax cuts, privatization etc., which Friedman called economic shock therapy was Chile.
As Lambert says above, things started to come together in people’s minds while they were listening.
Iraq, she pointed out, Bremer fired the army, privatized, deregulated etc.
But don’t discount the incompetence idea. As she points out in the book, under Bremer “Iraq became a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded.” Similarly, it took a coup in Chile to put Friedman’s ideas into practice. They weren’t popular before the coup. And after the coup, it took torture and repression to enforce them.
The idea is to be ready to cause or to take advantage of crises to push through a whole lot of policies fast which otherwise would be unacceptable to the general populace. Her examples, privatizing the school system in New Orleans overnight, trying to force the Iraqis to pass a law giving foreign companies control of their oil, keeping tsunami victims from returning to their coastal villages and then giving the areas to resort developers.
And as we all know from the past six years of Bush, pushing so many policies and ideas after Sept 11th, that you can’t keep up with them. She pointed out how one at a time, they can and are resisted, like privatizing Social Security, not a big success. But Guantanamo, Iraq, Fisa, Katrina, voting fraud. We all know how hard it is just for us to keep up let alone stop them.
The hard part for me in going to these things is the idea of being hopeful about the future. If I were going to live 200 years, it would be easier. But she does feel the right is getting dispirited and defensive in this country. And it was a tonic to listen to her. She speaks as good as she writes.
There's a reason they need so much money to push their ideas
People think their ideas suck.
And they’re right.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
VL - google 'creative chaos neocon'
- Michael Ledeen
- Don Rumsfeld
- George W. Bush
For fuck’s sake, I heard average people saying we needed to “go kick their anthill” (or, alternately, tell them to suck on it) after 9/11. I doubt the Cheney administration had any better ideas, and I think the nightmare of the past 6 years backs me up pretty well. Not trying to pile on here, but what, if anything, other than Hanlon’s Razor, makes you think they were interested in anything other than their personal stock portfolios and reelection funds?
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
scarshaped,
I wouldn’t try to build the case that the neo-cons aren’t ideologues with faulty vision by quoting Ledeen and Rumsfeld. These fools plainly think they’re heroic bringers of a New World Order.
And the Bush quote is precisely the talk of someone who thinks this new fucked-up direction is somehow curative.
Kelley B,
It’s the self-assessment of those who commit evil that is overly generous.
As I’ve noted elsewhere:
Also, a study found in comments to the linked post, observes:
The study is called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” The conclusion would surely be no less accurate if one were to substitute “Unprincipled” for “Unskilled.”
The evil and corrupt are masters of rationalization. In their minds, they’re really the good guys. She was asking for it. History will build us statues.
From Goodfellas:
When grandiose, self-serving incompetents are in charge, one can expect a mix of rationalized looting and disastrous, operatic attempts at “greatness.”
All the while, they will view themselves as the good guys. And much and many will be laid waste as they rationalize their way back to that view, no matter what it costs. Migod, if you counted the soldiers who have died in vain so that some arrogant “leader” wouldn’t have to admit nearsightedness, you’d have a full house in Heaven.