Seminal moment in global politics

Chile’s early dalliance with neoliberalism also exposes how the latter requires extreme violence or ‘shocks’ — as Naomi Klein argues in The Shock Doctrine — to entrench itself. Klein traces how the massive  upheaval the privatisation policies of neoliberal Chile triggered were only implemented under a draconian regime that rested on mass killings and torture which served as the ‘shock’ that allowed Chilean society to become more complaisant towards these radical economic changes.