Wisdom » Cinema

"The Shock Doctrine" (2009)

A film that many have hastened to label a new conspiracy theory; others in turn see it as the beginning of a new ideology, a new order - that which will come after capitalism, for capitalism has outlived its time.

A state of shock is not simply the moment when something bad happens to us - shock sets in when we forget our history, lose our past and thereby lose our bearings as well. It is precisely our history that prevents us from straying from our path, helps us maintain clear reasoning and resist shock. It is history that helps us in times of crisis.

With these words of Naomi Klein begins the documentary film "The Shock Doctrine" (2009), directed by British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (born 29 March 1961). The film's authors provide an insight into the once widely used electroshock therapy, which completely erases human consciousness, as well as experiments with deprivation (the forced removal of movement, sleep, speech, light, etc.). All these techniques were applied both to prisoners of war (physical torture) and to entire nations (moral deprivation, humiliation, genuine fear of annihilation).

The film consists of several parts, examining examples of such "shock therapy" in the context of economic crises and changes of political order from the history of Argentina, Chile, Iraq and the former USSR. In essence, the film does an excellent job of laying out the facts and revealing the true causes behind any crisis, war or change of power.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein (born 8 May 1970 in Montreal, Canada, into a Jewish family of peace activists) is a Canadian publicist, sociologist and journalist. A defender of anti-globalisation ideas.

She became well known with the book "No LOGO" published in 2000, which served as a manifesto against the corporate globalisation movement. In 2007 the book "The Shock Doctrine" ("The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism") gained wide resonance worldwide. This book is the boldest and most comprehensive account of the most ambitious and profitable "venture" in the "privatisation of the world" - economic crises, political coups, or disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein links the sharp rise in social inequality in the modern world to the free market ideology and its author Milton Friedman, as well as the so-called "Chicago School" he founded.

In mid-2011 the newspaper Diena published the book "The Shock Doctrine" in Latvian as well.

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman (born 31 July 1912 in New York, died 16 November 2006 in San Francisco) was an American economist of Jewish origin. One of the most prominent representatives of the Chicago School of Economics and neoliberalism. One of the greatest ideologues of free market economics. His most notable work - "Capitalism and Freedom" (Capitalism and Freedom, 1962). In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Based on the central idea of the documentary watched, shock therapy is Milton Friedman's favourite instrument. Many countries in the world have felt it on their own skin and continue to do so today in the form of economic crises. In Friedman's words: «Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.»