By
comparing the confluence of ideas about modifying behaviour using shock
therapy and other forms of sensory deprivation (which culminated in the
top-secret CIA project called MKULTRA
during the 1950s) alongside the metaphor of similar shock treatment
modifying national economics using the teachings of Milton Friedman and
the Chicago School of economics, The Shock Doctrine presents the
workings of global capitalism in this framework of how the United
States, along with other western countries, has exploited natural and
human-engineered disasters across the globe to push through reforms and
set-up other mechanisms that suit those in power and ‘shock’ other
countries into a certain wanted behaviour. Chronologically, some
historical examples are the using of Pinochet’s Chile, Argentina and its
junta, Yeltsin’s Russia, and the invasion of Iraq. A trumped-up villain
always provides distraction or rationalisation for the intervention of
the United States—for example, the threat of Marxism, the Falklands,
nuclear weapons, or terrorists—and further, is used by those in power as
more justification for the great shift of money and power from the many
into the hands of the few(er)
