The shock doctrine - Naomi Klein

We are a society of shock addicts. Wars are waged with 'Shock and Awe.' Countries are remade with 'shock therapy.' Prisoners' bodies are subjected to 'capture shock' and electroshock. In Blank is Beautiful, Klein argues that shock is both our culture's dominant metaphor for radical change and has become our economy's primary means of creating wealth. She calls this process 'disaster capitalism.'

The modern market is addicted to the kind of rapid economic growth that only cataclysmic events can provide: wars, natural disasters, regime collapses and economic meltdowns. Klein shows that after countries and cities are hit by these catastrophic events, they are invariably hit once again, this time with 'shock therapy,' a process of rapid-fire auctioning off of the state.

What connects all these uses of shock, Klein argues, is a profoundly dangerous idea: that in order to change a place, or a mind, it must first be wiped clean, blanked. Based on breakthrough reporting from shock zones around the world, this is a frontal attack on the idea that 'free markets' and democracy are interlinked. Blank is Beautiful builds the case that modern capitalism, through its addiction to shock, reveals itself as not just anti-democratic, but anti-human.