In her
current best-selling book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster
Capitalism,
journalist Naomi Klein takes aim at Chicago School Of Economics guru Milton
Friedman's notion that "only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces
real change." Around the globe, Klein finds examples of how the implementation
of what she's coined "the shock doctrine" is used to exploit a public reeling
from natural or man-made disasters to implement economic and social policies to
which they would never have otherwise submitted. "Disaster capitalism," as she
calls it, has cropped up in post-tsunami Sri Lanka, the occupation of Iraq, and
of course, our own backyard in the aftermath of September 11. On the eve of the
Beijing Olympics and the increasing noise of our Presidential campaign, Klein
sat down with The A.V. Club to discuss offshore oil drilling, the price of gas, Barack
Obama, Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and the shame of the Summer Games.
The A.V.
Club: Freedom, democracy, capitalism—do these three ideas share a false
relationship, that if you're critical of one you must be critical of all three?
Naomi
Klein: I think
there has been a deliberate sort of intellectual bundling exercise. A term like
capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different
kinds of market economies. Essentially, what we've been debating
over—certainly since the Great Depression—is what percentage of a
society should be left in the hands of a deregulated market system. And
absolutely there are people that are at the far other end of the spectrum that
want to communalize all property and abolish private property, but in general
the debate is not between capitalism and not capitalism, it's between what parts
of the economy are not suitable to being decided by the profit motive. And I
guess that comes from being Canadian, in a way, because we have more parts of
our society that we've made a social contract to say, "That's not a good place
to have the profit motive govern." Whereas in the United States, that idea is
kind of absent from the discussion. So even something like
firefighting—it seems hard for people make an argument that maybe the
profit motive isn't something we want in the firefighting sector, because you
don't want a market for fire.
If we think
about the big books of the right, like Milton Friedman's Capitalism And
Freedom, which in
its very title is bundling those two very ideas. Or Francis Fukuyama's The
End Of History, which was part of the very same
intellectual exercise, saying that the endpoint of mankind's ideological
evolution was free markets in the economic sphere and liberal democracy in the
political sphere. On the surface, that may sound self-evident, but it also
means you can't democratically decide to change what kind of economy you want.
You're really limiting the sphere of democracy. In the natural cycles of
capitalism, you have built-in crises and built-in catastrophes and new
industries and new innovations come out of that and new technology obliterates
an entire past industry and revolutionizes the way we live. That is the way
capitalism works. But what I mean by disaster capitalism is not those built-in
crises that come from technology, but rather a political strategy based on the
need for crisis to advance unpopular policies.
AVC:
Sometimes when discussing such broad exploitation of economies and individual
liberties, people can devolve into referring to an abstract "they." Is there a
big evil "they"?
NK: The book is an alternative history
of the triumph of a set of ideas. That this set of ideas has triumphed is
actually an incredibly uncontroversial thing to say. We call this
globalization, or the age of globalization. And it's been documented many
times, but differently. We do know that over the past 35 years there has been
an incredible sea change in the way the world economy functions. This has been
advanced through bureaucratic institutions like GATT and the World Trade
Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and that's why
it sort of goes, usually, by the friendlier name "globalization" or "free
trade." But, beneath those phrases are a set of policies that call on countries
to lower their trade barriers, to privatize industries that had been in the
public domain, and that require cuts to social spending. The fact that this
change has happened is not controversial. We know that there has been a
dramatic change. It has minted billionaires in every country where it has
triumphed. As soon as you privatize the entire economy in Argentina, Mexico, Russia—it
creates an oligarchic class. What we're all struggling with right now is the
legacy of these policies and the fact that it has opened up this dramatic
income gap between the winners of this economic model and the losers, the
people who have been excluded from it. That has been the disconnect of the Bush
years, of the Bush administration saying the economy has been doing well where
people are going, "Well, it really doesn't feel like it's doing well." The
answer is that it really was doing well for the Bush administration and their
friends.
I'm really
not advancing a "great man" theory of history, or some idea of a back-door
conspiracy, I just think this is the way history works. After the market crash
in 1929, the tide really did turn in favor of the middle class and workers. We
saw a period over 30 to 40 years where the middle class rose to unprecedented
levels in the United States, but not just in the United States, in any country
that adopted these types of policies. And it really did work, in terms of
creating class mobility. But it really did eat into profits and this stage that
we've been living in since Reagan is really about the people in the highest
income brackets saying, "We want our New Deal. We don't want to share so much." The basic demands
of this counterrevolution, or this revolt of the elites, have all been about
taking back those gains—breaking unions, being able to pay lower wages,
having the freedom to scour the world for the lowest wages—and it's
really been a liberation movement—the liberation of capital from all
constraints.
So, is that
a conspiracy? I don't see that as a conspiracy, I actually just think this is
the way the tides of history work. It swings in one direction; it swings in the
other direction. I don't think it's any more of a conspiracy than the New Deal
was a conspiracy. Interests do organize and launch movements and campaigns and
have tactics and win victories. It's worth looking at how they do it.
AVC: If
disaster capitalists seek to profit from natural disasters, wouldn't the next
logical step be to create the disaster instead of waiting around for one?
NK: One of the main ways in which I get
attacked is by being called a conspiracy theorist by the right and the other
main attack is actually from the conspiracy theorists who are really pissed at me for
not admitting that 9/11 was an inside job. Or from Marxists who feel that the
book is too Keynes-ian. So it's either rabidly anti-capitalist, or sell-out
Keynes-ian, or a conspiracy, or not recognizing the conspiracy. So, I'm trying
to find that sweet spot somewhere. [Laughs.] I'm not doing very well.
AVC: So,
in your view, you don't see any evidence that we've gotten to the point where
actual disasters are being created to advance these policies you describe in
your book?
NK: There are such clear examples of the
amazing speed in responding and exploiting disasters that were clearly not
created, like the breaking of the levees in New Orleans. Although, yeah, sure,
some people will tell you that they exploded. But, I don't think they did. What
I saw in Sri Lanka after the tsunami—which I think pretty much everyone
agrees was a natural disaster—four days after it hit, the government of
Sri Lanka proposed a water privatization bill. This was when the country was
still partially underwater. What I'm trying to argue is that this political
strategy is keenly understood by the elites. There have been many, many
incredibly boring papers published about it. I have taken the trouble to read
them. Please, just read the juicy parts! They're in the book! Because we need
to understand this as a strategy and when we understand this as a strategy, it
is much less effective as a strategy. In fact, the strategy can be flipped. In
terms of your question of how they would use another crisis, we can't rule
anything out. Certainly with McCain's advisors talking about how it would be a
good thing. But I'm also not sure they're right.
AVC:
That what would be a good thing? Invading Iran?
NK: Well, no. One of McCain's advisors
said if there was a terrorist attack… What did he say, it would be a great
thing, a good thing?
AVC: Oh,
yeah, that his campaign would benefit from another terrorist attack on American
soil.
NK: Yeah, so clearly there are people
who are making that calculation, even forgetting that they shouldn't say it out
loud. But one of the things I have found that's worth some optimism is that it
does seem a lot of the tactics don't work as well as they used to. Just in
terms of scaremongering on Iran. All kinds of trial balloons clearly have been
sent out to see whether the public would be willing to buy a similar build-up
directed at Iran that was directed at Iraq. There must be some kind of feedback
returning that says people actually aren't as ready to accept it. There is a
lot of diminishing return about scare tactics in general. They don't just keep
working over and over again. I think we are seeing some pretty effective
examples of applications of the shock doctrine, not with regards to a terrorist
attack, but the way in which the oil crisis is being handled.
AVC:
Arguably, we're currently experiencing a few crises—a housing crisis, an
energy crisis, a climate crisis. Are any of these being exploited in a way that
fits your model?
NK: Yeah, I think with offshore oil
drilling and opening up ANWAR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge], it's a
pretty classic example of this deliberate strategy. It's almost like McCain has
a moral responsibility now to sell these policies that would be unsellable with
oil at 40 dollars a barrel, just because he can. The fact that opening up ANWAR
or offshore oil drilling will have no impact on the price of oil is completely
beside the point. The point is you can sell it now and you couldn't sell it
then so you should sell it now.
I've heard
several people make that point, frustrated with McCain because although he's
said yes to offshore he hasn't yet caved on ANWAR. The opinion polls do support
the claim that this is working. A lot of this has to do with the Democrats not
having the guts to really go after the oil company profits with some
enthusiasm. I mean, I turned on Fox like three weeks ago and even O'Reilly was
talking about this. But this was before the talking points came down, saying,
"Okay, stop bashing the oil companies and actually give them everything they
want." But for a while, it was so populist to say, "Wait a minute. What do we
make of the fact that Exxon just reported another $9 billion in profits and I
can't pay for gas?" that even someone like O'Reilly felt he had to devote an
entire show to just bashing the oil company executives.
And then it
just changed. The fact that it has worked as well as it has, that people now
support this so-called solution, you even have those bumper stickers that say,
"Drill here. Drill now. Pay less," as if it's going to immediately impact the
price at the pump. The only way to actually win progressive victories in a
moment like this is to not be afraid to be populist. And that means going after
big business and corporate welfare quite aggressively. Frankly, I don't think
it's at all surprising that the Republicans are serving the interests of the
oil lobby. What's deeply disappointing is that while there's been admirable
resistance on this from the Democrats, in terms of pushback from [Nancy] Pelosi
on offshore oil drilling, they haven't caved yet. There isn't the kind of
ballsy, unapologetic, "We have to go after the fat cats" type of discourse that
would actually sell.
Obama's
reticence on this point is complicated and to some extent understandable, because
the discussion of race in America is such that it's one thing to be a black man
running for President, but to be an angry black man running for President is
potentially unwinnable. But it is a moment for anger. In the framing of his campaign there
was a brief window of dreamy hope. But the mood is not dreamy hope right now.
The mood is pissed off. [Laughs.] Lou Dobbs knows that, but unfortunately he
articulates it and then just says, "Get the Mexicans."
[pagebreak]
AVC: You
were on a Fox News show recently trying to talk about these issues and they
kept cutting you off, especially after you referred to President Bush as the
"extortionist-in-chief."
NK: On that Fox show, the thing that was
driving me crazy was, at one point I said, "I'd like to ask you guys a question."
And they were like, "And we have to go." But what I wanted to ask them was
whether they're advocating nationalizing ExxonMobil, because this whole idea
that we'll drill
and then we'll get
the oil is insane because we don't have a national oil company. Norway does, Mexico does,
Brazil does, Saudi Arabia does, Iraq does! Most countries with significant oil
reserves have an oil company. So if China does drill off the coast of
Cuba—which they're not doing—but if they did, they could actually
direct the oil back to the Chinese market because they have a national oil
company. But the U.S. Government has no power over Exxon to force them to not sell the oil that
they drill offshore to China. So the idea that somehow this is our oil is this weirdly nationalist
concept that has absolutely nothing to do with the economic policies they so
enthusiastically embrace.
AVC: There's been talk of taxing oil
company profits, which isn't a very popular notion with many Americans, even
those suffering at the gas pump. Punishing a company for being profitable in
many respects goes against the grain of what it is to be American. Do you think
people are eventually going to support the idea?
NK: I think it's a really easy sell,
especially if you're willing to link it to climate change and say that these
companies have left us with a massive cleanup bill. We have a climate crisis,
which most people understand, and that requires massive investments in
alternative infrastructure. Whether it's public transit, whether it's retrofitting
buildings, whether it's actually having the infrastructure for wind and solar
because the technology is there to harness the energy, but what's lacking is
the kind of public infrastructure that we have invested for electricity. So the
companies that are profiting so spectacularly from chaos and shortages around
the world should help pay for the mess that their industry created. People
understand that for tobacco and the tobacco companies have been taxed like
crazy to help clean up the health disaster that they created. I actually think
these are really populist positions, but you don't get to them by apologizing
your way into it. Plus, these infrastructure projects create a huge number of
jobs. I think these are abundantly sellable positions and I don't think people
are going to feel too sorry for the oil executives.
AVC: Can
a so-called environmental crisis be as easily exploited for profit as any other
kind of crisis? Can the notion that the planet is dying be turned around to
deprive individual rights even if it feels like a populist movement, to save
the planet?
NK: I think it's even more insidious
than that. We've already seen it with ethanol and it's turned into yet another
massive corporate subsidy that's driving up food prices around the world. The
World Bank says that about 70 percent of the increase in the price of food
globally is attributable to bio-fuels like ethanol. So, that's already
happened. I think there is a danger that an environmental crisis can be used in
precisely the same way as the terrorist threat can be used in terms of giving
up freedom. It's what people call green fascism. That's one of the reasons for
urgency, in terms of coming up with democratic responses. You can argue that
there really is a window before you're in such deep crisis, that the argument
of, "We need a strong leader who'll take decisive action and we need to give up
rights in order to give them that power" will carry the day. I don't think
we're in that window yet. We're in a window where, if there's some real
leadership there can be some visionary policies and there can be a
strengthening of the democratic process and a real embrace of a change in
direction. But I do think that if we wait too long, that threat is really quite
credible.
AVC: In
the book you talk about how the war on terror is the perfect way to sustain a
kind of open-ended shock, perpetuating policies of economic imbalance. Are we
locked into something we can't get out of?
NK: At the end of the book, I also give
some examples of countries where these types of tactics haven't worked. I was
in Argentina in early 2002, making a documentary film, and the country had just
gone through this total economic meltdown where people were locked out of their
bank accounts, there was a run on the bank, there was massive inflation, and
basically the country's economy completely imploded. There was this moment that
happened where the government declared a state of siege. It was the beginnings
of a coup. They told everyone to stay inside, they imposed a curfew, all of
that. It was crazy. But people rebelled against it in this incredible way. They
took to the streets, they overtook the President and he had to leave in a
helicopter. That's really where the research for this book began—talking
to people about why they responded in the way that they did. I just got the
same answers from everyone, generations across the board, people said, "When he
declared the state of siege, it reminded us of 1976." And you'd hear this from
teenagers who weren't alive in 1976, but it's because there's this narrative in
that country about how they had lost their democracy in the '70s, and how they
had been afraid and a state of siege had been declared and it turned into a
military dictatorship. So, in that one instant, no matter how afraid they were
and they were really afraid, they rebelled instead of acquiescing. It sounds
like V For Vendetta, but it was a pretty amazing experience being there.
Another
example is Spain with the Madrid bombings, where you had José María Aznar use
those terrorist attacks in a very George Bush-like manner, saying, "This is why
we're in Iraq." Plus, he blamed ETA [the Basque separatist group], so it made
no sense. Because if it was ETA, what did it have to do with Iraq? They were in
the middle of elections, and he used it in a very opportunistic way. It
completely backfired. They had huge demonstrations against fear and then they
voted out Aznar's party and voted in Zapatero who was promising to pull troops
out of Iraq. Of course, the way it was portrayed on Fox News was, like, "Those
European surrender monkeys! At the first sign of trouble, they cave!" What was
so interesting, reading the Spanish response, was the reason why people reacted
so negatively to Aznar is that he reminded them of Franco. So, once again it's
this issue of historical memory.
With the
U.S., in terms of why it is so incredibly easy to take advantage of a moment of
crisis is because this is such an amnesiac culture. More than being an amnesiac
culture, it's a culture that makes amnesia a point of pride—the idea that
you can reinvent yourself, that you have no history, that you have no past.
It's really a culture that's been at war with memory since its inception. It
sees memory as baggage. So, to be a little less optimistic here for a minute
[Laughs], I do think until historical memory, including the bad parts, is
something that's valued in the United States and amnesia is no longer
fetishized, these patterns will repeat. Because people without memory are
putty.
AVC: If
America spent a little more time remembering what we've let happen to
ourselves, we'd be more likely to recognize it the next time and resist it?
NK: One of the things that progressives
said about what happened in Spain is, "Well, that's Spain. They have a history
of fascism and we don't." It's a pretty amazing thing to say, actually, about
the history of the United States. It's not the same as European fascism, but
there's McCarthyism, there's the original founding of the country, there's
slavery. There's so many historical echoes. I mean, even the way in which Abu
Ghraib was discussed, a lot of the analysis would say, "What's really unique
about this is that they took pictures." In the African-American community,
people were writing, "Well, what about the snapshots people used to take of
lynchings and then turn them into postcards?" That war with
memory—particularly the refusal to look at the original genocide at the
founding of the country and slavery and the fact that it's seen as unpatriotic
to look at the difficult parts—I think is the biggest aid in the use of
shock again and again in the United States. It's why it makes Americans
particularly vulnerable to the use of these strategies.
AVC:
Will the Beijing Olympics be anything more than an elaborate, world-televised
advertisement for China's own socialist-capitalist experiment?
NK: One of the things that was really
interesting about the lead up to the Olympics is how quiet it was. In terms of
the marketing outside China, it was practically nonexistent. I was in China in March and
obviously the ramp-up was in full swing, with all of these American companies
that are sponsoring the Olympics, like Coke and GE, competing frantically with
their Chinese rivals. The strategy clearly is to fight for the Chinese market.
The struggle is really between Western brands and their Chinese rivals. The
Western brands have a lot of prestige in China, but there's such a strong
Chinese nationalism connected to the Olympics right now that there's a sense of
pride in supporting Chinese companies.
So the
Western companies are fighting frantically for their market share and whereas
they usually use the Olympics as a global marketing platform, I think there's a
clear strategy to actually play down their connection to the games outside of
China and just fight the internal market battle because the prize is so huge. I
think there's going be a kind of shame associated with the Games, even for a
company like NBC which has broadcast rights. They're in an awkward position.
They're owned by General Electric, which gets huge military contracts and huge
homeland security contracts. I don't think they're going to want to draw too
much attention to how enmeshed they are. Because GE is a sponsor of the games,
they've also sold surveillance equipment to the Beijing government to secure
the games and they have exclusive broadcast rights. It's an election year. I
don't think they're going to want to play that up too much.
AVC: Is
the upcoming U.S. Presidential election a false choice, or is there a
significant difference between the candidates and how they will affect our
country's future?
NK: I want Obama to win over McCain.
It's not that complicated for me. My concern about this political moment is the
extent to which the Obama campaign sucks up all the political oxygen on the
progressive end of the spectrum. I don't think there really is an anti-war
movement in the United States anymore. I think there is a pro-Obama movement.
There's this idea that elections are a moment when you really talk about
politics, but actually what they do is they defer politics and you're
constantly told, "We'll talk about that after the election. First, we have to
beat McCain!"
If it
weren't for these endless elections, I think there would be more of an
independent anti-war voice in the United States. I think there would be a more
independent economic justice movement responding to the housing crisis,
responding to high oil prices, because when you talk to the
organizations—whether it's trade unions, policy institutes, or even anti-war
organizations—about what's happening right now, they'll say, "You're absolutely
right. We have to do something about that as soon as we win the election."
There has to be a plan, a post-election plan, that's not naïve, that
understands Obama is under huge pressure from corporate interests to move to
the right and there has to be some sort of independent strategy with muscle
behind it that is pushing in the opposite direction. That planning can't begin
after the elections, that's too late. It has to begin now. We have been living
a 35-year war against the New Deal. It's worth remembering what conditions
brought about the New Deal in the first place. It was this really interesting
dialectic between a President who was intelligent and wanted to listen and a
really radical and independent base that scared him. That was the push and pull
that was going on and that is the push and pull where good things happen, where
real breakthroughs happen. Not when you just have super-fan cheerleaders going,
"We love you!"