#pandemic_shock_doctrine

“#Coronavirus_Capitalism” : Naomi Klein’s Case for Transformative Change Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Author, activist and journalist Naomi Klein says the coronavirus crisis, like earlier ones, could be a catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to most workers and small businesses. In 2007, Klein wrote “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Now she argues President Trump’s plan is a pandemic shock doctrine. In a new video for The Intercept, where she is a senior correspondent, Klein argues it’s vital for people to fight for the kind of transformative change that can not only curb the worst effects of the current crisis but also set society on a more just path.

AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend much of the hour looking at the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, what some are calling coronavirus capitalism. Soon we’ll be joined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, whose new book is People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. But first we begin with a new video by author and activist Naomi Klein, produced by The Intercept. In 2007, Klein wrote The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Now she argues Trump’s plan is a pandemic shock doctrine, but it’s not the only way forward. The video opens with this quote from economist Milton Friedman, who says, “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

NAOMI KLEIN: “Ideas that are lying around.” Friedman, one of history’s most extreme free market economists, was wrong about a whole lot, but he was right about that. In times of crisis, seemingly impossible ideas suddenly become possible. But whose ideas? Sensible, fair ones, designed to keep as many people as possible safe, secure and healthy? Or predatory ideas, designed to further enrich the already unimaginably wealthy while leaving the most vulnerable further exposed? The world economy is seizing up in the face of cascading shocks.

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS: COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: In the wake of the coronavirus crisis, stocks have stopped trading on Wall Street after a 7% drop.

KRISTINA PARTSINEVELOS: This is a historical day, the biggest drop we’ve seen since that crash in 1987.

ELAINE QUIJANO: The drop was spurred by a growing oil price war as the market was already weakened by coronavirus fears.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all.

NAOMI KLEIN: In the midst of this widespread panic, corporate lobbyists of all stripes are of course dusting off all the ideas they had lying around. Trump is pushing a suspension of the payroll tax, which could bankrupt Social Security, providing the excuse to cut it or privatize it completely — an idea that has been lying around for very long time.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: A worker, at his or her option, ought to be allowed to put some of their own money in a — you know, in a private savings account.

NAOMI KLEIN: Lying around on both sides of the aisle.

SEN. JOE BIDEN: When I argued if we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security, as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid.

NAOMI KLEIN: And then, there are the ideas being floated to bail out some of the wealthiest and most polluting sectors in our economy.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We are working very closely with the cruise line industry, likewise with the airline industry. They’re two great industries, and we’ll be helping them through this patch.

NAOMI KLEIN: Bailouts for fracking companies, not to mention cruise ships, airlines and hotels, handouts which Trump could benefit from personally. Which is a big problem because the virus isn’t the only crisis we face. There’s also climate disruption, and these industries that are getting rescued with our money are the ones driving it. Trump has also been meeting with the private health insurers.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re meeting with the top executives of the health insurance companies.

NAOMI KLEIN: The very ones who have made sure that so many Americans can’t afford the care they need. And what are the chances they don’t have their hands out? It seems like the whole pandemic is getting outsourced.

BRIAN CORNELL: Well, Mr. President, thank you for inviting us here today, along with our colleagues from Walmart and Walgreens and our partners at CVS. Normally you’d view us as competitors, but today we’re focused on a common competitor. And that’s defeating the spread of the coronavirus.

NAOMI KLEIN: The Fed’s first move was to pump $1.5 trillion into the financial markets, with more undoubtedly on the way. But if you’re a worker, especially a gig worker, there’s a very good chance you’re out of luck. If you do need to see a doctor for care, there’s a good chance no one’s going to help you pay if you aren’t covered. And if you want to heed the public health warnings to stay home from work, there’s also a chance that you won’t get paid. Of course, you still need to pay your rent and all of your debts — medical, student, credit card, mortgage. The results are predictable. Too many sick people have no choice but to go to work, which means more people contracting and spreading the virus. And without comprehensive bailouts for workers, we can expect more bankruptcies and more homelessness down the road.

Look, we know this script. In 2008, the last time we had a global financial meltdown, the same kinds of bad ideas for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts carried the day, and regular people around the world paid the price. And even that was entirely predictable. Thirteen years ago, I wrote a book called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, described a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments. After a shocking event — a war, coup, terrorist attack, market crash or natural disaster — they exploit the public’s disorientation, suspend democracy, push through radical free market policies that enrich the 1% at the expense of the poor and middle class.

But here is what my research has taught me. Shocks and crises don’t always go the shock doctrine path. In fact, it’s possible for crisis to catalyze a kind of evolutionary leap. Think of the 1930s, when the Great Depression led to the New Deal.

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

NAOMI KLEIN: In the United States and elsewhere, governments began to weave a social safety net, so that the next time there was a crash, there would be programs like Social Security to catch people.

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: The right of every family to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

NAOMI KLEIN: Look, we know what Trump’s plan is: a pandemic shock doctrine, featuring all the most dangerous ideas lying around, from privatizing Social Security to locking down borders to caging even more migrants. Hell, he might even try canceling elections. But the end of this story hasn’t been written yet. It is an election year. And social movements and insurgent politicians are already mobilized. And like in the 1930s, we have a whole bunch of other ideas lying around.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Do we believe that everybody should be entitled, as a right, to healthcare?

SANDERS SUPPORTERS: Yes!

DOMINIQUE WALKER: We will not stop organizing and fighting until all unhoused folks who want shelter have shelter.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Canceling student debt.

REP. RO KHANNA: It makes so much sense that if you’re sick, that you should not be penalized where you don’t have an income.

NAOMI KLEIN: Many of these ideas were dismissed as too radical just a week ago. Now they’re starting to seem like the only reasonable path to get out of this crisis and prevent future ones.

ELIZABETH COHEN: Now, here’s something that helps explain the difference between the testing situation in South Korea and the U.S. The South Korea, like European countries and Canada, has universal single-payer insurance. And that means that it’s easier to mobilize, and also people know what to do. There is pretty much one answer for how to get testing. The U.S. is a patchwork of countless different systems, and so you can’t say, “Here’s exactly the steps that every American should take in order to get tested.”

NAOMI KLEIN: And with Washington suddenly in the giant stimulus business, this is precisely the time for the stimulus that many of us have been talking about for years.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Today is the day that we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America.

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s called the Green New Deal. Instead of rescuing the dirty industries of the last century, we should be boosting the clean ones that will lead us into safety in the coming century. If there is one thing history teaches us, it’s that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve. The future will be determined by whoever is willing to fight harder for the ideas they have lying around.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s author and activist Naomi Klein of The Intercept. The video ends with Milton Friedman’s quote: “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Spanish pianist Alberto Gestoso, performing the Titanic theme song, “My Heart Will Go On,” for his quarantined neighbors in Barcelona. He was on his balcony. Spain has had more than 3,400 cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours. Now at least 17,000 people are infected, and that’s only what is known without widespread testing.

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What happens to freedom of movement during a pandemic ?

Restrictions are particularly problematic for those who need to move in order to find safety, but whose elementary freedom to move had been curtailed long before the Covid-19 outbreak.

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The severe consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic dominate headlines around the globe and have drawn the public’s attention unlike any other issue or event. All over the world, societies struggle to respond and adapt to rapidly changing scenarios and levels of threat. Emergency measures have come to disrupt everyday life, international travel has largely been suspended, and many state borders have been closed. State leaders liken the fight against the virus to engaging in warfare – although it is clear that the parallel is misleading and that those involved in the “war” are not soldiers but simply citizens. The situation is grim, and it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the obvious danger of infection, loss of life, the collapse of health services and the economy. Nonetheless, there is a need to stress that this phase of uncertainty entails also the risk of normalising ‘exceptional’ policies that restrict freedoms and rights in the name of crisis and public safety - and not only in the short term.

“Of all the specific liberties which may come into mind when we hear the word “freedom””, philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote, the “freedom of movement is historically the oldest and also the most elementary.” However, in times of a pandemic, human movements turn increasingly into a problem. The elementary freedom to move is said to be curtailed for the greater good, particularly for the elderly and others in high-risk groups. (Self-)confinement appears key – “inessential” movements and contact with others are to be avoided. In China, Italy and elsewhere, hard measures have been introduced and their violation can entail severe penalties. Movements from A to B need (state) authorisation and unsanctioned movements can be punished. There are good reasons for that, no doubt. Nevertheless, there is a need to take stock of the wider implications of our current predicament.

In this general picture, current restrictions on movement are problematic for people who do not have a home and for whom self-quarantine is hardly an option, for people with disability who remain without care, and for people, mostly women, whose home is not a safe haven but the site of insecurity and domestic abuse. Restrictions are also particularly problematic for those whose elementary freedom to move had been curtailed long before the Covid-19 outbreak but who need to move in order to find safety. Migrants embody in the harshest way the contradictions and tensions surrounding the freedom of movement and its denial today. It is not surprising that in the current climate, they tend to become one of the first targets of the most restrictive measures.
Migrant populations who moved, or still seek to move, across borders without authorisation in order to escape danger are subjected to confinement and deterrence measures that are legitimized by often spurious references to public safety and global health. Discriminatory practices that segregate in the name of safety turn those at risk into a risk. “We are fighting a two-front war”, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared, “one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus, there is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.” The danger of conflating the declared war on the pandemic with a war on migration is great, and the human costs are high. Restrictive border measures endanger the lives of vulnerable populations for whom movement is a means of survival.

About two weeks ago, it was documented that the Greek coastguard opened fire on migrants trying to escape via the Aegean Sea and the land border between Turkey and Greece. Some people died while many were injured in a hyperbolic deployment of border violence. The European reaction, as embodied in the person of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, was to refer to Greece as Europe’s “shield”. About a week ago, it was uncovered that a migrant boat with 49 people on board which had already reached a European search and rescue zone was returned to Libya through coordinated measures taken by the EU border agency Frontex, the Armed Forces of Malta, and Libyan authorities. In breach of international law and of the principle of non-refoulement, the people were returned to horrid migrant camps in Libya, a country still at war. With no NGO rescuers currently active in the Mediterranean due to the effects of the Coronavirus, more than 400 people were intercepted at sea and forcibly returned to Libya over the past weekend alone, over 2,500 this year.

Such drastic migration deterrence and containment measures endanger the lives of those ‘on the move’ and exacerbate the risk of spreading the virus. In Libyan camps, in conditions that German diplomats once referred to as “concentration-camp-like”, those imprisoned often have extremely weakened immune systems, often suffering from illnesses like tuberculosis. A Coronavirus outbreak here would be devastating. Doctors without Borders have called for the immediate evacuation of the hotspot camps on the Greek Islands, highlighting that the cramped and unhygienic conditions there would “provide the perfect storm for a COVID-19 outbreak”. This is a more general situation in detention camps for migrants throughout Europe and elsewhere, as it is in ‘regular’ prisons worldwide.

Together with the virus, a politics of fear spreads across the world and prompts ever-more restrictive measures. Besides the detrimental consequences of curtailing the freedom to move already experienced by the most vulnerable, the worry is that many of these measures will continue to undermine rights and freedoms even long after the pandemic has been halted. And yet, while, as Naomi Klein notes, “a pandemic shock doctrine” may allow for the enactment of “all the most dangerous ideas lying around, from privatizing Social Security to locking down borders to caging even more migrants”, we agree with her that “the end of this story hasn’t been written yet.”

The situation is volatile – how it ends depends also on us and how we collectively mobilize against the now rampant authoritarian tendencies. All around us, we see other reactions to the current predicament with new forms of solidarity emerging and creative ways of taking care of “the common”. The arguments are on our side. The pandemic shows that a global health crisis cannot be solved through nationalistic measures but only through international solidarity and cooperation – the virus does not respect borders.

Its devastating effects strengthen the call to universal health care and the value of care work, which continues to be disproportionately women’s work. The pandemic gives impetus to those who demand the right to shelter and affordable housing for all and provides ammunition to those who have long struggled against migrant detention camps and mass accommodations, as well as against migrant deportations. It exposes the ways that the predatory capitalist model, often portrayed as commonsensical and without alternatives, provides no answers to a global health crisis while socialist models do. It shows that resources can be mobilized if the political will exists and that ambitious policies such the Green New Deal are far from being ‘unrealistic’. And, the Coronavirus highlights how important the elementary freedom of movement continues to be.
The freedom of movement, of course, also means having the freedom not to move. And, at times, even having the freedom to self-confine. For many, often the most vulnerable and disenfranchised, this elementary freedom is not given. This means that even during a pandemic, we need to stand in solidarity with those who take this freedom to move, who can no longer remain in inhumane camps within Europe or at its external borders and who try to escape to find safety. Safety from war and persecution, safety from poverty and hunger, safety from the virus. In this period in which borders multiply, the struggle around the elementary freedom of movement will continue to be both a crucial stake and a tool in the fight against global injustice, even, or particularly, during a global health crisis.

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