The Shock Doctrine

Film evenings begin with potluck refreshments & social hour at 6:30 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after the film.

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross

This shocking film is the Directors’ interpretation of Naomi Klein‘s ground-breaking book, The Shock Doctrine. The film focuses on Milton Friedman‘s philosophy of capitalism and shows how insidious it is. With the strategies of war, economic upheaval, and the overthrow of foreign governments, the U.S. molds the rest of the world in its image. And the rest of the world is beginning to look a lot like the predatory underhanded nations that the U.S. and Britain have become. The film argues that big corporations in search of new markets benefit when foreign governments import the neoliberal economic system, often as a result of pressure from the U.S., — and this often has catastrophic consequences for ordinary people. It contends that political leaders have turned to brutality and repression to crush protests against their ideologically inspired programmes of privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts. This film is based on Naomi Klein’s breakthrough historical research and four years of her on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones. It vividly shows how disaster capitalism — the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock — did not begin with September 11, 2001. The film traces the origins of disaster capitalism back fifty years to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman. He and his Chicago school of economics produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today, where lagging behind the times and being out of sync with ordinary people is de rigueur.

Wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

$5 donations are accepted