n (2007:49) furthers that “every time a new crisis hit – even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free-market ideology – the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic engineering.” Klein continues to explain that “each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy” (49). For Klein, shocks, which come in the form of wars, financial crisis, coup d’état, terrorists attacks, and natural disasters, are taken advantage of by reform-minded technocrats, politicians and transnational capitalist forces to pursue neoliberal economic policies. Disaster capitalism thus relies upon a series of interrelating shocks: The initial shock is the disaster event. This leads to public shock, characterized by fear and disorientation. The third jolt is in the form of shock therapy and the pursuit of neoliberal policy reforms. Finally, as the public gathers its bearings, the state’s security apparatus maintains acquiescence to the new orthodoxy by utilizing actual shock techniques (McSherry 2002: 43; Klein 2007).

The first country subjected to Milton Friedman’s ‘economic shock treatment’ was Chile in 1973 (Ott 2012; Klein 2007). General Augusto Pinochet’s US. Government supported military coup which deposed Salvador Allende’s government was the initial shock. Economic policy under Pinochet was designed and implemented by the ‘Chicago Boys’ – Friedman and his disciples, who saw the opportunity to put into practice their (neoliberal) theories about market liberalisation, privatisation and state retrenchment (Ott 2012). The policies they recommended could only be implemented at the point of a gun (Klein 2010). This would be the pattern throughout Latin America in the 1970s: military rule (including systematic murder and torture) and neoliberal ‘shock therapy’ running side by side. General Augusto and the Chicago Boys disintegrated and his Chicago Boys did their best to dismantle Chile’s public sphere, auctioning off state enterprises and slashing financial and trade regulations (Klein 2010). Enormous wealth was created in this period but at a terrible cost: by the early 80s, Pinochet’s Friedman-prescribed policies had caused rapid de-industrialisation, a tenfold increase in unemployment and an explosion of distinctly unstable shantytowns. They also led to a crisis of corruption and debt so severe that, in 1982, Pinochet was forced to fire his key Chicago Boy advisers and nationalise several of the large deregulated financial institutions.

Conceptually, disaster capitalism relies upon a series of actions that take place after a disaster event. This includes (1) the displacement and disorientation of affected populations, (2) the prompt centralization of decision-making power: often via a state of emergency, (3) a call for immediate international aid and an appeal for long-term assistance from international financial institutions (IFIs), and (4) the relaxation or repeal of particular socio-economic regulations and the legislation of others (Klein 2005 and 2007). According to Klein (2007), shocks are not solely attributable to n