Shock doctrine

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, published on September 4, 2007

These laws are always connected to capitalism, the western economic model featuring investment risk for rich return. Klein explains, for example, that the attacks on America on September 11, 2001 gave the legal and political foundation for President George Bush to launch a war in Iraq in order to create a free-market economy there.

Klein argues that "extreme capitalism loves a blank slate" meaning that if a western power can wait until a disaster strikes somewhere else in the world, the vacuum created by the disaster will suck in capitalism. The intent here is to suggest capitalism is a way for western powers to encroach upon new land - a type of modern lebensraum - executed when mother nature or local political instability has run its course.

I for one have great faith that we are not in Afghanistan today to spark McDonalds restaurants there. I also do not believe we are fighting in the middle east to buy cheaper gasoline. I believe these things because even though our government is very effective, it is very much limited in what it is allowed to do (the Constitution) and it is all contained on 100 square miles of land (Washington, D.C.).

Christopher Lomtevas