I tried to start reading Shock Doctrine today and it’s… not a good book, to be very mild.

It’s clear that it’s a huge work of research and the intentions were good, but the book is incredibly US-centric (beginning the book with hurricane Katrina), and staunchly anti-communist.

It uses the libtalk of authoritarianism, and it’s staunchly anti-communist all over, even blaming the economic hardship on socialism (e.g. in the case of Poland). It glazes the pro-liberalism protestors in 1989 China, it glazes Polish union “Solidarity”, and even describes Gorbachev in positive light, despite several pages later explaining how the number of Russians under poverty went from 2mn in 1988 to 75mn less than a decade later.

The book even very briefly acknowledges the huge economic boom in China, but replicates (without sourcing) made-up figures about the numbers of deaths and arrests in and after the protests, and it leaves aside the hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens uplifted from poverty and the fact that the economic doctrine in China did NOT implode the economy (as it happened in most of the eastern block), and describes the Chinese population as terrorized by the repressive state, or replicates laughable figures of corruption in China from US-based NGOs, comparing Deng’s reforms to Pinochet.

So, yeah, why did anyone here recommend me this author? It’s infuriating!!