Disaster Capitalism

In the 19 months following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ public schools had been replaced with privately run charter schools paid for with public vouchers. The union contracts of teachers were canceled. In her book entitled, Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein details the “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events,” thus her term “disaster capitalism.” She sees a pattern in how the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to bomb Iraq. She might have added the attempt to create an impression of a crisis of the Social Security system to replace it with a private alternative, and the weak economy to promote extension of tax cuts for the rich. These people can no longer be called “conservatives,” they are radicals.