Last May Johan Norberg wrote a devastating critique of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. (Watch him talk about it here.) In his paper, "The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics," he took her book apart:
The Shock Doctrine purports to be an exposé of the ruthless nature of free-market capitalism and its chief recent exponent, Milton Friedman. Klein argues that capitalism goes hand in hand with dictatorship and brutality and that dictators and other unscrupulous political figures take advantage of "shocks"—catastrophes real or manufactured—to consolidate their power and implement unpopular market reforms. ... Klein's analysis is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. Friedman's own words reveal him to be an advocate of peace, democracy, and individual rights. He argued that gradual economic reforms were often preferable to swift ones and that the public should be fully informed about them, the better to prepare themselves in advance. Further, Friedman condemned the Pinochet regime and opposed the war in Iraq. Klein's historical examples also fall apart under scrutiny. For example, Klein alleges that the Tiananmen Square crackdown was intended to crush opposition to pro-market reforms, when in fact it caused liberalization to stall for years. She also argues that Thatcher used the Falklands War as cover for her unpopular economic policies, when actually those economic policies and their results enjoyed strong public support. Klein's broader empirical claims fare no better. Surveys of political and economic freedom reveal that the less politically free regimes tend to resist market liberalization, while those states with greater political freedom tend to pursue economic freedom as well.
Now Naomi Klein has responded to Norberg's critique. (Though she can't bring herself to name him. No point in giving your critic free advertising, calculates the author of No Logo. Norberg muses, "I think it’s because it sounds more David-and-Goliath if she is not criticised by a young Swede, but by 'The Cato Institute.'") And Norberg has fired back with another refutation. This time, he finds,

Her response is selective, includes new mistakes, and backs away from some of the claims that she has made without acknowledging it. ...she also has nothing to say about the fact that all of her central claims are under attack

From describing Friedman--and Cato!--as neoconservatives, to slyly implying that Friedman supported land theft in Sri Lanka, to juggling statistics and years, Klein is once again revealed to be building a shocking indictment on a foundation of sand. For a book on globalization that makes sense, skip Naomi Klein and read Johan Norberg's In Defense of Global Capitalism.