So I have gone from reading the very real “Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the surreal “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. I’m only a few chapters into comrade Klein’s book but I’ve already got the gist of it and have been introduced to a raft of new terms and phrases such as ‘developmentalism’ and, wait for it, ‘non authoritarian communism’! The book is clearly well researched and includes lots of quotes and facts, but ultimately the arguments and conspiracies being weaved are only evident to the author herself and to the likeminded armchair pseudo-intellectuals and university arts students.

At this point I’d like to stress that the book was a Christmas gift and Klein didn’t get a cent from me. What troubles me is that this verbal diarrhoea has become an international best seller. You should see the glowing reviews on Amazon! The thing that struck me most (in the few initial chapters that I have read) was the non authoritarian communist Klein’s angry tone. Anger directed at the CIA (and by extension the US) and those ‘in the dungeons of University of Chicago economics faculty, constantly inventing new ways to torture the proletariat and peasants of the world’. Ok, I exaggerated the last part, but Klein does constantly refer to the ‘labs’, ‘dungeons’ and ‘shock treatments’ developed at the UC Economics Department. Frankly, I think some ‘shock treatment’ for Klein would not go amiss…