Author Naomi Klein: America is succumbing to fascism

By Nick Langewis and Mike Aivaz~Raw Story

Author Naomi Klein sits down with Bill Maher to discuss her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

The Shock Doctrine shares a sentiment that, while corporations are engineered to profit off of situations, planned or otherwise, the United States under President Bush has corporations opportunistically poised to collect taxpayer-funded payouts from disasters such as 9/11, Katrina and the Iraq occupation.

Calling it the “mission statement of the Bush administration,” Klein says that politicians are seeing themselves as facilitators between disasters and their friends in the private sector. Each time there’s a disaster, says Klein, politicians use the “shock” felt by the citizenry to “push through a further privatization agenda” with little opposition.

“In New Orleans,” continues Klein, “it’s the privatization of the school system, the public housing. After September 11th, it was the launching of a new economy in privatized homeland security, and in Iraq it’s the Blackwater economy–The worse things get in Iraq, the more privatized–and profitable–this war becomes.

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Video: The Shock Doctrine