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Sept. 28, 2007
The root of every evil
Writer Naomi Klein is an able shock doctor.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
There are many greedy, deceitful, evil people in the world, and
many tragic, disturbing and sad things happen. And the man behind
it all, according to author Naomi Klein, who is visiting British
Columbia next month, is University of Chicago economist, Nobel Prize
winner Milton Friedman, who passed away in 2006.
Klein awards Friedman all but deity status, even implying –
by beginning her most recent book with a quote from Genesis Chapter
6, when God flooded the Earth because it was corrupt and filled
with violence – that Friedman is a god, albeit an evil one.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism argues
that Friedman, with free-market economics, wanted to recreate the
world, start with a clean slate, as God did (with the exception
of saving Noah and his family and some animals). The difference,
as Klein's story goes, is that Friedman was destroying the lives
of good, peace-loving people. And, in Friedman's case, he could
only wait for most of the disasters – hurricanes, tsunamis
and the like – to strike, in order to rebuild (whereas God
can just snap His fingers). However, as Klein points out, Friedman
and his fellow Chicago School economists sometimes got lucky, being
able to influence foreign policy under the guise of trying to improve
others' lots in life.
Friedman's "pet theories," as Klein calls them, can be
summarized by what is called "classical liberalism," some
of the tenets of which date back centuries. Far from creating the
concept, Friedman merely believed in it and was persuasive enough
to influence policy-makers.
Classical liberal principles include individual liberty, private
property, freedom of the press, speech and expression, limited (not
no) government, the rule of law (not "unfettered capitalism"
– a phrase Klein likes to throw around), religious toleration,
free markets and free trade (i.e., the free movement of people and
goods, also known as laissez-faire), peace and harmony (non-interference
in the affairs of other nations and international arbitration to
solve disputes) and voluntary exchanges.
These principles are violated on a regular basis around the world,
even in supposedly free-market economies like Canada and the United
States, and the term "free market" has been incorrectly
used to justify immoral and horrific deeds. Communism and socialism,
the ideals of which may also sound good on paper to some people,
have also been brutally implemented in many instances and have been
used to justify immoral and horrific deeds. However, Klein is only
concerned with capitalism and mainly with capitalism that took place
after 1962, when Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom,
which "laid out what would become the global free-market rulebook
and, in the U.S., would form the economic agenda of the neo-conservative
movement."
In her view, the post-1962 capitalist is akin to a torturer (the
metaphor of the corporation being like a psychopath having been
taken already, by writer Joel Bakan). She chooses one specific torturer
to make the comparison – Dr. Ewen Cameron, who had "already
convinced himself that violent destruction of the minds of his patients
was the necessary first step on their journey to mental health"
when he got his first grant from the CIA in 1957 to conduct electroshock
and other mind-blanking experiments on patients. "Friedman's
mission," writes Klein, "like Cameron's, rested on a dream
of reaching back to a state of 'natural' health, when all was in
balance, before human interferences created distorting patterns.
Where Cameron dreamed of returning the human mind to that pristine
state, Friedman dreamed of de-patterning societies, of returning
them to a state of pure capitalism, cleansed of all interruptions
– government regulations, trade barriers and entrenched interests."
Klein then goes on to support this highly fanciful connection by
highlighting several world tragedies and explaining how – using
grains of truth and then piling on the BS – capitalism is to
blame for them all. By ignoring inconvenient facts, simplifying
complex issues to one piece of data or a few years in history and
by being a pretty competent shock doctor herself, Klein builds her
case against free-market ideology and its adherents.
The war in Iraq, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, Hurricane Katrina
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are among the topics in The
Shock Doctrine. When there is no war or natural disaster on
which to hang her theory, she holds up dictators like Argentina's
Juan Perón – a Nazi war criminal protector who severely
restricted civil liberties when he ruled his country at various
points between 1946 and 1974 – as the virtuous victims of Chicago
School economics.
There are many things wrong with Klein's analysis, but the most
egregious is that she only looks at a narrow slice of history in
each instance: never mind that – with intermittent efforts
at making the world a better place – humanity's been killing,
invading, pillaging, swindling, converting and otherwise trying
to conquer each other and the environment since we "arrived"
on the planet, so to speak. She also leaves much for the imagination
of the reader, not lying outright generally but rather implying
erroneous conclusions. Let's take the chapter on Israel as an example,
though there are others.
The gist of this section of the book is that Israel benefits from
and perpetuates the conflict with the Palestinians and the global
war on terror because it's profitable to do so. By 2003, Israel
was already well on its way to recovering from the dot-com crash
a few years earlier. By 2004, "the country had seemed to pull
off a miracle," notes Klein. Then she explains the "miracle":
"Much of this growth was due to Israel's savvy positioning
of itself as a kind of shopping mall for homeland security technologies."
She goes on to give some impressive figures: in 2006, Israel's exports
reached "a record $3.4 billion," making Israel one of
the Top 5 arms dealers in the world. "Its technology sector,
much of it linked to security, now makes up 60 per cent of all exports."
Klein was challenged on a similar statement she made in the Georgia
Straight (June 21) by Paul Michaels in the Canadian Jewish
News (July 5). Michaels interviewed Israel-based journalist
and author Jim Lederman (who writes for the British consultancy
Oxford Analytica) on the topic.
"With a 2006 GDP of $195 billion US," writes Michaels,
"according to the International Monetary Fund, the $3.4 billion
in military exports amounts to less than two per cent of Israel's
economy – not insignificant, but very far from a full and fair
explanation for Israel's economic growth, which has averaged five
per cent per year over the past three years."
Lederman and other analysts attribute Israel's growth to factors
such as immigration (which Klein states was a hindrance to the economy),
free-market reforms and government fiscal discipline (both of which,
Klein also states, without supporting evidence, made things worse)
and growth in such areas as banking and real estate.
"In fact, Lederman explained," to Michaels, "according
to a study on Israel's economy released in March by Tel-Aviv University
professor Manuel Trajtenberg, all of Israel's high-tech industries
taken together, including the defence- and security-related industries,
in addition to major companies like Intel, Comverse, Amdocs, Teva,
etc., provide employment for only seven per cent of the Israeli
workforce."
Klein's response to Michaels (CJN, Aug. 2) was that she had
done a lot of research for her book and that she did "not claim
that defence and homeland security make up the majority of Israel's
gross domestic product." She continues, "I do demonstrate
that they are some of the fastest-growing sectors in the Israeli
economy. Michaels attempts to refute this claim by citing fast growth
in the telecommunications and Internet sectors. He overlooks the
fact that, in Israel, security-related services account for large
portions of both these sectors. For instance, Verint, a subsidiary
of the high-tech giant Comverse, is a leader in the global homeland
security sector, supplying video surveillance products to the U.S.
Department of Defence and other government agencies." But the
CJN article mentioned Comverse and, in fact, Klein doesn't
offer data on any other sector of Israel's economy in her book,
so the claim that she "demonstrated" homeland security
was one of the "fastest-growing" sectors is not really
accurate.
Anyway, Klein pleads in her defence, "Rather than casually
dismissing the importance of this new economy, journalists should
be willing to closely examine how it is reshaping policy around
the world, including inside Israel."
Maybe this would be easier to do if she didn't feel the need to
exaggerate her claims and ignore relevant history and pertinent
information. In the case of Israel, the fact that it has been under
attack or the threat of attack since its inception in 1948, and
that the Jews living in the region had to defend themselves for
decades prior to that, may be a part of the reason why the country
has become so good at defence technologies. Even to raise this possibility
is beyond Klein to consider. This is especially ironic given her
accusation that, "All shock therapists are intent on the erasure
of memory." None more so than Klein.
Why does she approach issues in this manner? Why does she need to
vilify other human beings to make her point, which has some validity
in certain cases? These were just two of the questions the Jewish
Independent was going to ask Klein when it was offered an interview
with her a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, since that time,
Klein's schedule became too "frantic" for her to speak
with us, according to her publicist.
Perhaps Klein will be more open to questions from the audience when
she speaks at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, Oct.
4, 7:30 p.m., at John Oliver Secondary School, 530 East 41st Ave.
Tickets ($15/$13) can be purchased online at Ticketmaster or in
person at the Writers Festival box office, 1398 Cartwight St.
She will also be in Victoria, on Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., at Alix Goolden
Performance Hall, 907 Pandora Ave. Tickets are $10 – this includes
a $5 rebate on the cover price of The Shock Doctrine –
and can be purchased from Bolen Books, #111-1644 Hillside Ave.
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