The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine offers stunning facts and indicting historical events, adeptly strung together in a narrative of free market ideology and...

1. Institutions like the US government, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund purposefully use th...

Klein describes free market ideology, championed by Michael Freedom and the Economics department at Chicago University, as a force growing i...

Klein introduces the reader to Ewen Cameron, a psychologist at the University of Mcgill who researched the effects of psychological trauma a...

Klein weaves her narrative from 1960’s Brazil to present-day USA, with examples from around the world. The evidence all works to demonstrate...

Late in the narrative Klein takes us to the immaculate gated community of Sandy Springs, Georgia. This republican suburb north of Atlanta in...

Inspired by Michael Friedman and Chicago School theories, powerful individuals and institutions – especially but not exclusively the IMF, th...

In 1964 the US supported General Branco's Junta in Brazil, selling government firms and throwing the country open to foreign companies. ...

General Suharto took power riding an anti-communist purge, supported by the US administration. The CIA gave Suharto a list of leftists and t...

Despite $1 million in bribes from the CIA, Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile on a platform of nationalizing key mining and tel...

1976 Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil were all controlled by US-backed military governments implementing free market reforms. Argentina likewise ...

Klein gives the example of President Kissinger talking to the foreign minister under Argentina's dictatorship, eagerly suggesting Americ...

A surprising leap takes us to 1982 England, led by a Thatcher who had loudly admired Chile's economic reforms under Pinochet. Klein decl...

In Poland, by 1988, after 8 years of living in a police state, Lech Walesa finally gained power at the head of the Solidarity Party. A chari...

At almost the same time the ideology and practices perfected across these cases were put into words: the 1989 Washington Consensus, an agre...

And so, shortly thereafter, along these lines was created a brief financial crisis in Canada. Several intellectuals led by the Fraser Instit...

The focus on reducing inflation and privatising held through South Africa's change of government in 1994. The new government under Mande...

As the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin gained control of Russia and took on a team of US funded, Harvard-led Chicago Boys, newly label...

Furthering the subplot of Jeffrey Sachs, at a 1993 "transition and reform" meeting in Washington, Sachs surprised the gathered int...

What followed next was the fall of the Asian Tigers. After rapid growth and racing economies through the 90's, suddenly Indonesia, Thail...

Back in the command centre of free market ideology (as Klein paints the picture), the USA, there had throughout all these enforced reforms, ...

Klein moves along to the Age of Fear following September 11, 2001. The events of 9/11 were arguably somewhat enabled by cuts to the Airline ...

The Iraq war is a shining and sickening example of the shock doctrine-disaster capitalism-free market complex. With the start of the war pro...

Approximately 250,000 died as a result of the December 26th tsunami in Southeast Asia; national governments and private investors would quic...

In 2004 Louisiana had applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a hurricane contingency plan, and were denied. Subsequen...

Klein suggests that, increasingly, private interests and even the global economy have become dependent on disaster and war, as through recen...

Klein brings up the selfish and sad reality of ‘green zones’ and suggests that more and more areas are being contested by private interest a...