4 ms·

The thesis that I felt Curtis was pushing in recent works, and which I didn't particularly care for was: "Trump/Thatcher/Reagan/Brexit told a fictitious story t

The thesis that I felt Curtis was pushing in recent works, and which I didn't particularly care for was: "Trump/Thatcher/Reagan/Brexit told a fictitious story that people liked, because people like simple stories even if they're not true, and if we (people who think that Trump/Thatcher/Reagan/Brexit are net-negatives to society) want to improve the world, then we need to tell a similar story and stop pissing around with facts and reality." Which I feel is both giving too much credit to Trump etc. (who were all backed by big financial incentives, which covered up and normalized their insanities and inanities) and too little to modern political movements which have achieved incredible progress by doing boring, factual, useful work.

trabant00 4y ago
> political movements which have achieved incredible progress by doing boring, factual, useful work The work and the way you market yourself to be elected to do the work can be quite different. You can certainly be too verbose when describing what you are working on and lose the audience. Happened to me many times.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  In "All Watched Over" Curtis isn't just critiqueing the Reagan/Thatcher/Brexit themes; on my reading (I last watched it a couple of years ago), he is attacking Blair/Mandelson-style technocratic managerialism. I still can't work out what Curtis actually believes in. I suspect he's some kind of revolutionary. I suspect that part of the murkiness is strategic: that if he said what he meant, the BBC would stop commissioning his films.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    There's some interesting links between Curtis and the old Revolutionary Communist Party / Living Marxism crowd which has weirdly transformed itself into provocative right-wing libertarians of Spiked. https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 That whole group baffles/fascinates/frightens me: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked They'd actually make an amazing subject for an Adam Curtis style documentary.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Oh, interesting. There's a link (by "Noel Cass") from that twitter thread to an article by "Dan Hancox", who refers to him as "The omnipotent narrator". That's the opposite of his approach; he's very coy and elliptical. That article by Hancox is a tedious rant, by the way; don't bother. The ashes of the RCP have come to life in the contemporary Tory Party. I had no idea that Curtis had had connections to the RCP.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        An archive link for the original article that goes in depth, just in case you didn't find it. I noticed it's been removed from the wayback machine. https://archive.is/vNsfH https://archive.is/vNsfH

trabant00 4y ago

> political movements which have achieved incredible progress by doing boring, factual, useful work The work and the way you market yourself to be elected to do the work can be quite different. You can certainly be too verbose when describing what you are working on and lose the audience. Happened to me many times.

denton-scratch 4y ago
In "All Watched Over" Curtis isn't just critiqueing the Reagan/Thatcher/Brexit themes; on my reading (I last watched it a couple of years ago), he is attacking Blair/Mandelson-style technocratic managerialism. I still can't work out what Curtis actually believes in. I suspect he's some kind of revolutionary. I suspect that part of the murkiness is strategic: that if he said what he meant, the BBC would stop commissioning his films.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  There's some interesting links between Curtis and the old Revolutionary Communist Party / Living Marxism crowd which has weirdly transformed itself into provocative right-wing libertarians of Spiked. https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 https://twitter.com/cstross/status/417666074298318848 That whole group baffles/fascinates/frightens me: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked They'd actually make an amazing subject for an Adam Curtis style documentary.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Oh, interesting. There's a link (by "Noel Cass") from that twitter thread to an article by "Dan Hancox", who refers to him as "The omnipotent narrator". That's the opposite of his approach; he's very coy and elliptical. That article by Hancox is a tedious rant, by the way; don't bother. The ashes of the RCP have come to life in the contemporary Tory Party. I had no idea that Curtis had had connections to the RCP.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      An archive link for the original article that goes in depth, just in case you didn't find it. I noticed it's been removed from the wayback machine. https://archive.is/vNsfH https://archive.is/vNsfH