Today on The Lockdown I briefly introduce a video by the brilliant Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein.
In 2007 Klein released “The Shock Doctrine” in which she revealed the process whereby financial elites and right wing governments use moments of crisis ,such as natural disasters, to spread the politics and economics of selfishness that we know as Neoliberalism in order to increase their wealth and power..
A few days ago she released a video on The Intercept website in which she talks about how the Disaster Capitalism of Coronavirus would see the same flow of public money go to giant corporations and banks ,just as saw during the 2008 financial crash.
We need to recognise this script as one we have seen before and be ready with our own new script that puts people before profits.
Although her” Coronavirus Capitalism – And How To Beat It ” message is only 8 minutes long and about half of it deals talks about the situation in the USA today. However it is well worth sticking with it because she talks about solutions – like the Green New Deal that would work in our own country.
Stay strong, keep safe, be kind.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
” In 2007 Klein released “The Shock Doctrine” in which she revealed the process whereby financial elites and right wing governments use moments of crisis ,such as natural disasters, to spread the politics and economics of selfishness that we know as Neoliberalism in order to increase their wealth and power ”
That was the exact approach of Key and his thugs like Brownlee after the first Christchurch quake.
Then 22-02-11 happened with all its destruction and Key and the other parasites were filmed walking around the damage with Key not concerned about the casualties but how much money he and his friends would make out of the whole disaster.
What eventuated after February with the awarding of contracts too the usual suspects and the treatment of Christchurch people being thrown too the wolves was reprehensible.
I am pessimistic of a new dawn being ushered in after this fades from the collective memory and it will fade as we return too our neoliberal lives and the elites who will insanely profit as they always do without any safeguards.
The banks and insurance gangsters have already started with their ” we really only care about you ” emails and letters.
No matter the impact on the long suffering wage slave the Neoliberals will prevail as they always have.
History tells us that.
The problem with John Key and Jonothan Colman’s health policies is they kept on rolling DHB debt into the forward estimates where they hid everything else they couldn’t cut from spending. The problem with that is that it’s a hope that some time down the road the economy would be growing 3% per year to pay for the extra layovers and we know for at least the next year or two the economy won’t be growing by that much it will be shrinking and we will be lucky if we can turn it around unless the government can create as many jobs as corona is destroying. The private sector couldn’t possibly invest into a shrinking economy so that just leaves it up to the government to be the employer of last resort. That’s what the Ministry of Works used to do to employee kiwis and we need something like that again.
“How do we stop financial elites seizing this moment of crisis to extend their wealth and power?”
Call me old fashioned if you must but don’t we politely ask our politicians to stop them for us?
If our politicians don’t curb those mentally unwell who must obcessivly collect the money of others to do God only knows what with then our politicians are not working for us, they’re working for Them.
Therefore, our politicians are no longer needed nor wanted. Again therefore, out they go on their fat arses.
If they don’t go and the elite squad of money fetishists start dictating their terms and conditions to us via our once-were politicians then we’ve just been elevated up to an entirely different level.
I think that’s known as autocratic fascism.
FYI.
Autocratic : adjective
relating to a ruler who has absolute power: the constitutional reforms threatened his autocratic power.
• taking no account of other people’s wishes or opinions; domineering: a man with a reputation for an autocratic management style.
Fascism:
noun [mass noun]
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
• (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices: this is yet another example of health fascism in action.
Given our politics of the last few decades, I’d say the financial elites are flat fucking out doing their utmost to wring as much of a financial advantage out of us and our increasingly intimate relationship to covid-19 as they can.
This, will be a windfall for them. They won’t be able to believe their luck. As people get sick and die there will be new millionaires rising out of the ashes.
If our politicians don’t listen to us, the people?
Isn’t what we must then do called striking? And if that doesn’t work? I think that’s called violent revolution?
There’s then this dilemma. The polite well monied gentry will always blame the common person for them being hung from the gallows. What the polite well monied gentry never understands is that they hoist themselves by their own pitard. They can never entertain the thought of themselves being the authors of their own demise because that’d fuck up their entire ethos. How then would they be able to justify their brainless greed?
Ethos:
noun
The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations: a challenge to the ethos of the 1960s.
Everything I’ve been done thunking about of recent sends me back to a socialist democracy with compulsory voting. One day every three years for an hour and you get a paid day off to be a part of an extraordinary thing.
Or? We’re fucked.
History tells us a lot of things but the right wing tell us what they will do.
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/
Explore
Comments are closed.