The Shock Doctrine

A state of shock ...

It's not just what happens to us when something bad happens.

It's what happens to us when we lose our narrative...

When whe lose our history, when we become disoriented.

What keeps us oriented, and alert, and out of shock...

Is our history.

So, period of crisis, like the one we are in

is a very good time to think about history

to think about continuities, to think about roots.

It's a good time to place ourselves

in the longer human story of struggle.

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

Based on Naomi Klein's Book

Subtitulado para Subdivx por Damian 667

y Astroboy7 translated by NoOne

Our story begins on June 1st of 1951

when representatives of western intelligence agencies

secretly met with academics, at Montreal's Ritz-Carlton hotel.

This meeting contributed to military funded research

into the effects of sensory deprivation at McGill university.

Sensory deprivation really is a way of producing extreme monotony.

Causes loss of critical capacity

thinking is less clear

and the subjects complain that they can't even daydream.

And when you have colege students that can't daydream. You are ahead the bad way.

I began to think while we were doing our experiments, that it's possible that

something that involves physical disconfort, or even pain

might be more tolerable than simply the deprivation conditions that we studied.

Hebb decided to stop work on the research.

I had no idea when I suggested that

what a vicious weapon, potentialy vicious weapon this could be.

But the experiments at McGill continued

on the hands of the ambitious head of psichyatry Dr. Ewan Cameron.

What he did was much more than what we had done.

We did our work strictly with the understanding that the subject could get up

at any point he whish to, and some did.

Cameron's patients were not so lucky.

The Allan Memorial Institute where he worked

began to resemble a macabre prison

where Cameron performed bizarre experiments on his psichyatric patients.

Cameron wanted to depatern? or wipe clean his patients minds

so he could rebuild them from a blank slate.

Janine Huard whas a young mother of four

suffering from post natal depression.

I used to shiver when they told me about

"You are gona get a shock treatment tomorrow".

I used to shiver. I was so scared of it.

I would wake up in another room

all mixed up and sad

it used to make me very sad after.

You're just like a zombie walking arround.

Cameron combined shock therapy with sleep therapy.

and the repeated playing of taped messages.

Says:
"Janine, Janine...

you're running away from your responsability."

"You don't want to take care of your husband and children."

All the time the same thing.

It sounds like you were being interrogated.

Yes, interrogation, but, for what purpose?

It wasn't long before CIA put Cameron's research into practice.

Many of these techniques appear in the agencies KUBARK

"counterintelligence interrogation manual".

These words are from the manual:

It's a fundamental hypothesis of this handbook

that this thecniques are, in essence, methods of producing a regression of the personality.

There is an interval, which may be extremely brief

of suspended animation

a kind of psychological shock or paralysis.

Experiencied interrogators recognises the fact when it appears.i/

and know that at this moment the "source" is far more open to suggestion

far likelier to comply than he was just before he experienced the shock.

El otro Dr. Shock.

At the same time as Dr. Ewen Cameron was conducting his experiments in Montreal

an exponent of another kind of shock was working not so far away.

Milton Friedman was teaching economics at the university of Chicago.

He believed economic shock therapy could encourage society

to accept a purer form of deregulated capitalism.

In october 2008

in midst of the biggest finantial crisis since 1929

Naomi Klein went to the University of Chicago

to talk about Milton Friedman.

When Milton Friedman turned 90

Bush white house held a birthday party for him.

And everyone made speeches, including Geoerge Bush.

But there was a really good speech that was given by Donald Rumsfeld.

My favourite quote on that speech, from Rumsfeld

is this. He said: "Milton is the embodyment of the truth

that ideas have consecuences".

What I want to argue here is that

the economic chaos that we're seeing right now on Wall Street

and on "Main Street", and on Washington

stands for many factors, of course, but among them

are the ideas of Milton Friedman.

Wall Street crash of 1929 led to the depression of the 30's

central to Friedmans thesis, was his oposition to the New Deal

announced by president Rooesvelt in his innaugural speech.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.

This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously

let me assert my firm belief

that the only thing we have to fear

is fear itself

Influenced by the economist John Maynard Keynes

Roosevelt started a program of public employment

to get people back to work.

Today recession is a fadding memory.

Millions of man and women have found employment

and with it confidence and hope.

It was'nt that simple. The depression lasted until World War II

But after the war, the Marshall plan spred Keyneses model

of government regulation and intervention to Europe.

His principles were wiedly accepted.

But not in the Economics Department of the Universtity of Chicago.

Milton Friedman, from this university, waged a war against the "New Deal".

Friedman was member of a group called the Mount Pellerin Society,

led by the austrian economist Friederich von Hayek.

They believed that if governments stopped providing services,

and stopped regulating markets,

economy would correct itself.

In the 50's they where seen as kranks

But the las 30 years

their ideas had become but dominant economic doctrine.

The thesis of the "Shock doctrine" is

that we've been sold a fairy tale

about how this radical policies have swept the world.

That they haven't swept the globe on the backs of freedom and democracy

but they have needed shock, they have needed crisis, they have needed states of emergency.

Milton Friedman understood the utility of crisis.

Only a crisis, actual or percieved, produces real change.

When that crisis occurs

the actions that are taken, depends on the ideas that are laying around.

La Primera Prueba:. Chile

It was in Chile, that Friedman's disciples first learned

how to exploit a large scale shock or crisis.

University of Chile

Usually, the official story tellers of neoliberalism, the official publicists

don't even mention Chile.

They start the story with Thatcher and Reagan, because it's much more flattering that way.

In the 50's and 60's

Chile's progressive developmental policies were a beacon in the region.

Government invested in health, education and industry.

American corporations were worried their investments would suffer.

In response, the US state department

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