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> 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 d

> 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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

denton-scratch 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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