Chilean Shock Doctrine

The Chilean Coup Tragedy and the Shock Doctrine

When thinking about making economic changes, what do you think of? Is it things like natural disaster? Times of crisis? Manipulation? Violence? Changes for the better or worse? Some of these things may seem out of the ordinary. However, during the time of the Chilean coup in 1973 a few of these had happened either on its own or by force. General Augusto Pinochet forced a crisis in Chile in order for him to make societal changes. Whether crisis was forced or not these acts occurred for making changes to society, it fell under the policy of the shock doctrine or treatment. Once the shock doctrine was created it was seen in many other instances as well, many of which can be read in Naomi Klein’s

military illegally entered Chile in hopes of stopping socialism and communism rule. The reason behind entering Chile had been because U.S. President Richard Nixon did not want Salvador Allende to become in control of the country. Under Allende’s rule the U.S. companies could suffer since he was considered a socialist, which again was what Nixon did not want. Therefore, Nixon ordered “he acted as adviser to the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet (Klein 7). So did General Pinochet and the CIA illegally entering Chile trying to overthrow Allende even though he had already won the election. Pinochet was making orders of which seemed to be his own such as “tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation” (Klein 7). Following these acts, public schools were becoming transformed into charter schools. All of this was overwhelming for the citizens of Chile to handle at once: U.S military and CIA coup, charter schools and other societal changes made by Pinochet. This overwhelming state was soon pronounced causes shock in Chile. Pinochet was trying to shock the people because there was a need for economic transformation. It was used for transformation because the people would be vulnerable enough that it would be easy for the government to make the changes without worrying about any kind of uproar in society. So, Pinochet used this

This policy was founded by Milton Friedman, who first used it during the Chilean coup. Klein heard of this and chose to write a book about all of the instances referring to the shock doctrine. She did not agree with the use of violence, regarding the shock doctrine use in Chile, but overall agrees with the shock doctrine. Regarding the use of violence, Klein: also look at torture as a metaphor, a microcosm for the logic of what I'm calling "disaster capitalism” because disaster capitalism is a political strategy that is a concerted attempt to harness the dislocation after a large-scale shock or disaster, to harness and exploit the window of opportunity that opens up when whole societies go into a state of shock or are just simply reeling from some horrific experience that keeps them concentrated on day-to-day survival, and also keeps them fearful and generally more trustful than usual of their authority figures” (Cahn and Klein