I only got about ¼ into this. I don't like the shifty way Klein argues her points. I felt like I was being propagandized rather than educated.

Much of her main “shock doctrine” argument seems to be just sort of a tightly-woven set of linguistic parallels that are meant to suggest causation. Something like: Hitler had the autobahn built. The autobahn allowed drivers to finally race where they wanted to go. Hitler crafted what he thought of as the final solution to a race problem. So you see, highway systems are part and parcel of genocide.

You see, electroshock is a mostly-discredited method of treating mental illness that results in profound disorientation and amnesia. Electric shocks are also used to torture people in despotic regimes. People recommending against gradual economic reforms have used the metaphor of “shock treatment” to describe rapid, all-at-once changes. Ergo, these sorts of economists are like torturers trying to mess with our minds.

She also uses the term “free market” — the bête noire of her book — to cover just about any economic circumstance she doesn’t like, whether there’s anything free about it or not.

On the one hand, the free market villains swoop in after disasters to inflict their “three trademark demands — privatization, government deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending” and on the other hand, this more often than not gets illustrated with examples like the U.S. paying huge sums of money to such corporations as those who provide various contracting services in Iraq. You can call that bad, but don’t call it “privatization, government deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending.” And certainly don’t call it “free market” anything.