I thought that it was mostly Ayn Rand / Austrian economists who used those terms so it’s odd to hear Adam Curtis make that an explicit part of his analysis.
I thought that it was mostly Ayn Rand / Austrian economists who used those terms so it’s odd to hear Adam Curtis make that an explicit part of his analysis.
I'm on episode 3 of the new Adam Curtis series, it's provocative and he really does stress individualism vs collectivism. Fair enough. What seems missing from his analysis is class. He seems to be saying all revolutions fail because human nature is to be swayed by emotion not rationality. But there are class issues where the wealthy are manipulating emotions via mass media to keep the proletariat fighting each other instead of working towards a collective.
He does give a nod to the coal towns, I wish he'd spend more time on how organizing has fixed things.
Definitely. For someone who is fascinated with power, he seems to make a point of ignoring class and the power dynamics it creates.
MediaLens highlighted something similar when they interacted with him after The Century of the Self was released, and they critiqued what they felt was an over-emphasis on Freud and Bernays role:
https://www.medialens.org/2002/the-bbcs-the-century-of-the-self-sp-89086145/