http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/theories/naomi-klein-shock/Ignoring the heavy rain, hordes of people pushed their way, dripping, into the Bronson Centre on Monday night. The lineup was out the door by 6:10 for an event scheduled to start at 7pm, and the feeling was definitely one of rock star anticipation. As I spread my belongings out over three seats to save them for my friends, I couldn’t help but expect to see someone rush the stage.
Naomi Klein, an activist-journalist from Toronto, appeared full-force in the public consciousness in 2000 with the book, No Logo, and has effortlessly become the face of anti-corporate activism for our generation. As the crowd settled into their seats, shoulder-to-shoulder in the sold-out auditorium, Klein was introduced as “a precious author,” whose coming of age took place in the profoundly counter-revolutionary times of the 1980s. Before Klein had spoken for more than five minutes, it became clear to me that this woman’s talents were justly praised. She has a distinct ability to sort through complex issues and present them in a way that not only makes sense, but that applies to everyday life in the real world.
A Story
Klein began her talk with a story about getting into a car accident in the still-flooded streets of New Orleans in 2005— her car T-boned a Louisiana cop— and, with minor injuries, Klein was put in an ambulance and rushed off to get medical help. Along the way, she says, she was so distressed at the thought of being taken to a health clinic like the ones that she had seen earlier, that she was trying to bargain her way out of the ambulance. She awoke, however, in a big, empty, and utterly spotless private hospital, whose intern informed Klein that he was “glad” not to have been working the day Katrina hit, and to whom the thought had never occurred to go and volunteer his services after the disaster.
This sort of attitude is exemplary of what happens when we lose a sense of the universality of human rights, says Klein. This doctor just didn’t identify with the people he was treating. In today’s increasingly privatized world, the last frontier of human equality lies in disaster response. Everyone gets the same medics, the same firefighters. But even this, she says, is changing, as disaster capitalism gains ground.
Disaster Capitalism
In disaster capitalism, a concept which Klein examines in The Shock Doctrine, disasters become laboratories where methods of privatization and corporatization are tested and improved. A kind of franchise has sprung up, in which we see the same corporations moving in after every disaster— the same companies benefitted from both the war in Iraq and the devastation of hurricane Katrina, for example.
As a result, the universality of human rights, in which every life is considered of equal value, is becoming threatened. In Florida, a type of disaster insurance allows you to “turn your hurricane into a holiday” and fly away from the storm in a chartered plane, to spend your time on a beach somewhere where there isn’t a hurricane. In California, a company called A.I.G. Insurance offers a “concierge” level of protection, which means that in the event of a fire or other disaster, a team of private firefighters will be sent by A.I.G. to focus their efforts specifically on your home. Not the neighbours’. Just yours.
All of this, Klein points out, sounds eerily like the rich are being afforded the opportunity to buy their way out of disasters which used to concern us all. Climate change, which she refers to as “the most pressing emergency of our time,” used to be an equalizer. When disaster strikes, no one is any better off than anyone else. But if you can pay to take refuge from tropical storms, and even enjoy yourself in the process, then the situation loses the ring of “we’re all in it together.”
The Shock Doctrine
Corporations using disaster capitalism are using the “shock doctrine:” taking advantage of the moment of suspended animation that occurs after a disaster, when we are particularly vulnerable, says Klein. At this moment a gap opens up between what happened and our ability to explain what happened— between the event and the story. We are lost without our stories. This is when “disaster capitalism” becomes “democracy avoidance”— desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Policies that would seem utterly ridiculous at any other time can be implemented and then explained after the fact, with no chance for democratic debate.
In spite of the heaviness of her subject matter and her warnings to Canadians— “there are disasters on the horizon,” and we need to become “shock-resistant”— Klein kept us laughing and we left the auditorium feeling excited. If we are armed with information, says Klein, we have a much better chance at resisting shock and keeping our focus on human rights. Keeping us informed is exactly what she is here to do.
As a woman not so much younger than Klein, who, like her, has grown up in a world that still seems to consist of predominantly male role models, heroes and intellectuals, it is hard to suppress just a tiny bit of rock-star-style adoration for Naomi Klein. And for any of us, it is definitely impossible not to get excited about the work she is doing, and her drive to create a better society, in which every life is of equal value.
http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/theories/naomi-klein-shock/
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