Last night, as I watched George W. Bush ask the American people to urgently hand him $700 billion to respond to the present financial “crisis”, two things came to mind. The first was his 9/11 speech. The tone and words were very similar - grave crisis…..danger…unusual circumstances…urgent response required. The trusty old fear card was being played yet again. Shortly thereafter, something else came to mind – Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. By coincidence or synchronicity, I had been lent the book and had begun reading it just 2 days ago.

Klein quotes Milton Friedman, guru of the Free Market ideology, which has dominated Western politics and economics since embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 80s: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable”. The strategy is that when people are shocked, dazed and confused, that is the best time to implement sweeping free-market policies, which would be difficult to un-do later. Klein gives many examples including 9/11 and Iraq (where the words ‘shock and awe’ were actually used), Katrina (where the rebuilding of the school system was turned over to private ‘charter schools’), and Thatcher’s Falkland War which she used to crush the unions. Friedman’s first opportunity to test his ideas was in the mid-70s, when he acted as adviser to Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Hyper-inflation and Pinochet’s violent coup provided the shock, which was followed by a now familiar formula – tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, deregulation and cuts in social spending. To pacify his protesting subjects, Pinochet also used torture, with the most popular tool being actual electric shocks (sounds familiar? Abu Graib? “Rendering” to foreign countries?).

Friedman also advises a new administration to implement their free-trade ideas quickly to take advantage of their honeymoon period, “A new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity”. George W certainly did this, even before 9/11 - withdrawing from international treaties like Kyoto, nuclear disarmament, and the World Court. He also appointed laissez-fair heads (often former corporate lobbyists) to regulatory departments like the environment etc. In Canada, Stephen Harper has imitated Bush’s play book in many ways – he has pulled the country to the right (way beyond the opinion polls) by implementing sweeping changes, even though he does not have the moral mandate since he is the leader of a minority government… at least it is a minority thus far… he has just called a Canadian election to coincide with the American one, obviously hoping the ride any conservative wave.

As far back as the 80s, I sensed that something had radically changed with the Reagan-Thatcher era, and began to write about it. What I would not have guessed at that time, was that the drive to implement free-trade ideology was so deliberately (and ruthlessly) planned and executed, together with the placement of individuals in key positions throughout society (I have written in the past about the conservative control of the media)…almost like a military campaign!

Getting back to the present “financial crisis”, it is astonishingly brazen that those (Bush, Wall Street etc) who have long argued that the market should be free to correct itself, even if it means job losses and lay offs for the ordinary worker, should now be arguing that it is urgent and essential that the government step in and help corporations, including those which have helped create the crisis. It always the same free market solution – give more money to the rich. Note that there will be little control over Bush and his buddies once he has the money (remember Iraq?) and note how Bush is attempting to use scare tactics to rush the legislation through before adequate discussion and review. How many times do we have to fall victim to these same scare and fear tactics before we wake up and call for real change?