The shock doctrine's populist twist

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The surrealism of the enforced populism seems to be hitting people just now. But we have known it to be a clear and present danger for a decade. The surrealism is caused by the sudden realisation that even though you consider yourself a free agent, a person with volition, you are as easily programmable as your outdated computer. Sometimes, we don't even know what is bothering us until we do something irretrievable and hand over the reset button to the programmers, who always represent the forces beyond our control.

While the previous century witnessed some of the worst crimes committed by humanity, the consistent shocks we endured in the first quarter of the new century do not have any parallels. Of course, no world war, holocaust, Bolshevik revolution or the fall of the Berlin Wall, but there is no dearth of regular jolts to the system. The century began with a Supreme Court bench deciding who should ascend the American throne. A conservative government took shape, which was soon transformed into a populist one due to the shock caused by 9/11. If today, the Bush and Cheney alumni shake their heads in disbelief and refuse to recognise populism in its current shape, they should know they invented it. Hypernationalism, weaponisation of fear and hate by Fox and friends, impulsive unilateralism and short-term fixes for the long-term problems all emerged out of the neo-con Pandora's box. But as the war machine turned to Iraq, it unhinged the entire region. This led to the Arab Spring which, apart from giving birth to many civil wars, caused a mass exodus of the displaced, creating a refugee crisis in the West and strengthening the xenophobic populism there.

In the previous decade, when all of this was petering down, there was talk of the great power rivalry replacing the global war on terror, and Huntington's ghost seemed to be dictating history from beyond, populism went for the kill. Suddenly, India and Europe normalised the far right. Then Brexit. And finally, Trump. In our neck of the woods, populism began its journey in 2011, started shocking the system in 2014 and briefly took over in 2018. All of this is due to the never-ending onslaught of shocks.

Perhaps at this stage, revisiting Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism will be prudent. This book seems more prophetic than Huntington's blood-soaked works. Borrowing the terminology from the world of psychiatry, she uses the example of shocks given to patients to create a blank slate in their minds. Similarly, she believes that the rise of disaster capitalism has created a shock doctrine to disorientate the masses and neutralise the opposition to certain transformations in the name of reform. These neoliberal reforms are informed by Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics and mark the end of social democracies in favour of a more robust free market capitalism. She then takes us to the world of examples. In Pinochet's Chile, the counter-revolutionary coup and the bloody suppression of dissent cleaned the slate and opened the doors for relentless restructuring and shrinking of the administrative state's involvement in the markets. The following example is of Russia, where rushed free-market reforms led to general inequity and the rise of oligarchs.

Another example is Argentina, where similar attempts by the military junta led to the destabilisation of the economy and widespread suffering. Then, Iraq, where the invasion led to the widespread looting of the national resources. She also mentions the cases of Poland and South Africa, where the states could not provide the necessary social justice due to the emphasis on free market capitalism. Given that a low-intensity war is constantly being waged on the welfare state, this has led to slum cities and the treatment of less fortunate citizens as human junk. With the rising shocks, she notices the rise of the disaster capitalism complex, a host of security firms, private armies, construction companies, private contractors and resource-hungry entrepreneurs that keep pushing for more crises to manage. Her conclusion is optimistic, as these are essentially short-term manipulations that will likely result in an eventual crash of these schemes and the rise of the citizenry.

Speaking of prophetic, a fictional example comes to mind. Max Tegmark's Life 3.0 is far from a book of fiction. But its first chapter tells a fictional story of an AI that transforms the fortunes of its inventors, who become instant billionaires. Then, this lot, with the help of the AI called "Prometheus", revolutionises the tech industry. After accomplishing that from behind shadows, they seek to remake societies worldwide by polarising them. They invest in the hard left and hard right media, diminishing the appeal of centrist politics and, through their shocks, force the states to cut regulations and bureaucracy. This way, their control of the world is complete.

While the scenario is said to be hypothetical in this story, you will agree that it resonates eerily with what has transpired in the past two decades. The rise in shocks corresponds fully with the rise of tech bros like Musk, Thiel, Bezos and Zuckerberg. If the recent American elections are any guide, we are heading towards a massive deregulation and dismantling of the administrative state endeavour around the world. These global oligarchs now decide how we behave and what happens to our lives. What goes around comes around.

But our story doesn't end here. The real transformation taking place is not the dismantling of the administrative state but the strengthening of the executive and the growing irrelevance of the other two pillars of the state – the judiciary and the legislature. In America and India, trifecta is now enjoyed by the right. Elsewhere too while the government that comes to power in the name of cutting bureaucracy, red tape and regulations, first tries to dismantle checks and balances. Business oligarchs are preparing to become political oligarchs. This should pose a threat to every politician from Putin, Trump and Modi, who were used as hammers to break down the doors of the administrative state. Two billionaires, Musk and Ramaswamy (one billion also makes you a billionaire), being appointed as the heads of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE after Musk's Dogecoin) is a seminal moment and will end with the further rise of the new political oligarchs. So effective is this manipulation that a majority of Americans who thought democracy was endangered ended up voting for Trump. It is the unshackling of the leviathan and the rise of politico-economic oligarchs.

Is there a silver lining? Who knows. If you want to borrow optimism from Klein the well-meaning opposition parties should prepare for the day when everything crashes. But I am not holding my breath. The rise of AI is just beginning.