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.
You've phrased it extremely well. I only ever hear this dichotomy from people in already comfortable positions who assume their comfort is due to some inherent magnificence they possess. So they assume any other arrangement would diminish their personal comfort or dilute their clear greatness. Just look at what they really mean when they talk about individualism. It's always wrapped in up in some kind of personal expression, like what types of words they should be allowed to say or what type of media they consume, or it's about their rights to extract as much profit as possible.
Also, nearly every single person I've talked to who talks about this dichotomy and takes the side of the individual will also possess a belief that more than 99% of other humans are complete vacuum brained robots and that only a select few people have the capacity to truly live properly. The Ayn Rand acolytes are the extreme example, with those books Anthem and Fountainhead showcasing what I mean. The assumption in her awful terrible novels is that there are simply inherently superior people walking among us disgusting hogs and we despise them out of jealousy and wish to use our collectivism to drown out their talents because we're just spiteful and evil and have nothing of our own to offer.
Which is why I'm skeptical of their calls for individuality, since those very same people are usually quick to categorize large swaths of humanity as slack-jawed rubes. Solipsism.