Naomi Klein uses every opportunity to try and prove her ridiculous book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is true. Her far-left conspiracy book sounds more like the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic than anything else.
Her latest attempt to prove her theories is the current protests going on in New Orleans over the city council’s decision to bulldoze the housing projects. Naomi Klein claims that this is one part of the captitalist conspiracy she’s been warning about.
Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New Orleans to close down that city’s public housing projects, some of the only affordable units in the city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels.
The final showdown over New Orleans public housing is playing out in dramatic fashion right now. The conflict is a classic example of the “triple shock” formula at the core of the doctrine.
- First came the shock of the original disaster: the flood and the traumatic evacuation.
- Next came the “economic shock therapy”: using the window of opportunity opened up by the first shock to push through a rapid-fire attack on the city’s public services and spaces, most notably it’s homes, schools and hospitals.
-Now we see that as residents of New Orleans try to resist these attacks, they are being met with a third shock: the shock of the police baton and the Taser gun, used on the bodies of protestors outside New Orleans City Hall yesterday.
What I find amusing is how seriously the left takes this woman and her delusions. Her claim that the city is going to bulldoze the housing projects on the so called “valuable land” in order to make room for condos is complete fiction.
The majority of the housing projects are vacant and were in fact damaged in Hurricane Katrina. What wasn’t damaged in Katrina was a wreck to begin with. Those housing projects were a drug-filled cesspool of crime and misery and it’s much cheaper for the city to start over then try and repair them.
In Naomi Klein’s fantasy world the public housing is being bulldozed to make room for ritzy condos, but in the real world where the rest of us live, the city is in fact rebuilding better public housing right on the same spot. The city council voted unanimously in favor of tearing down the projects and rebuilding.
Arnie Fielkow, a council member at large, said the city is seizing the opportunity to remake itself as a place of prosperity, instead of violent crime, fractured schools and social inequities.
“The truth is, much of our beloved city was broken before Katrina,” Fielkow said. “Quite simply, our residents deserve better.”
I guess Naomi Klein thinks the poor people in New Orleans were living “ghetto fabulous,” but pretty much everyone else knows better. New Orleans has the opportunity to start over and rebuild into a great city with good housing, good schools, and low crime. What a shame.
-Chris Jones
