“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening, corporatism is strengthening, yet none of us have chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites continue down it quite happily.”
These are the ominous words in the opening of the trailer for the new documentary The Corporate Coup d’État, which features journalist Chris Hedges, philosopher John Ralston Saul, activists Maude Barlow and Naomi Klein and others.
Produced by White Pine Pictures and directed by Fred Peabody, this “investigative and persuasive documentary blends the insights of philosophers, writers and journalists with the experiences of citizens of the Rust Belt in the U.S. Midwest, where the steel industry once flourished, but where closures and outsourcing have left urban areas desolate and hopeless. It’s here that Donald Trump finds some of his most fervent supporters, as he’s not considered part of the hated Washington establishment.”
The documentary’s website states, “Decades ago, U.S. democracy began selling its soul to big corporations. Lobbyists and corporatism took control in Washington, gradually undermining the will of the people.”
Maude Barlow, who has written extensively about the impacts of corporatization says in the trailer, “Companies that were nation state based started to go multinational. Then they started to go transnational. The shifting began of manufacturing to the Global South where the wages were lower, where the environmental rules were either non-existent or not enforced.”
