Friday, July 11, 2008

The Shock Doctrine.

Before I went to Utah in May I was able to see a short talk by Naomi Klein where she spoke about the shock and awe theory. The theory is that a government will use a natural disaster, a large scale attack or any other society destroying event to push bills and laws through parliament quickly, without any protest, under the pretense that it is for the greater good and that it will help to rebuild society.

Usually, people are so in shock about the event that has just happened that they don't really care so much and are prone to become sheep and follow the herd and their self-professed shepherd.

Now, this has been seen with such events as 11th September. I have a feeling I blogged about this the other day.

Anyway.

July Seventh was supposed to be, in my opinion, Tony Blair's shock that would unite his people. But being Britain, we didn't really listen too much. Large scale was not the way because our society is something we might not value as much as our individual social networks and lives. So, knife crime, deaths, the possibility that bad things happen to normal people that no one knows of, but they have friends. This is the angle the news has been taking recently.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7502569.stm

And it says in there that Gordon Brown will fix it. This week in the Metro there was an article about the increase in the number of stab vests being sold. People are panicking already, or at least we are told they are. Is there really more knifes and knivings or are the government and media just trying to get some bills through office that will greatly compromise our human rights? Like national identity cards.

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1 Comments:

At July 17, 2008 10:12 AM , Blogger Jonathan said...

Knife crime's down, apparently, according to the police today. In Glasgow, so the BBC reported the other day, there's been a massive drop in knife wounds at A&E. They still managed to leak this snippet out in a major segment on the 'epidemic'.

I don't think it's the politicians so much as the media - every year there's a trend. Flesh eating virus one year, pedophiles the next, then it was the Poles, MRSA, happy slapping...

The politicians just come along later and take advantage of it. If you don't you're seen as unresponsive.

Tragedy is, the more the media reports every stabbing the more likely it is that carrying a knife becomes glamorous.

 

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