Adam Curtis asserts that the strategy of creating confusing and contradictory political and media narratives, used to “undermine people’s perception of the world,” is the newest power structure emerging in our time. It’s a non-linear presentation of facts which make it so difficult for any ordinary person to even grasp the significance of anything.
Unfortunately, the more people read mainstream news and the more information they digest, the more confused they become, breeding a sort of enlightened mass ignorance.
“In the face of this people retreat from journalism and politics. They turn away into their own worlds, and the stories they and their friends tell each other,” writes Curtis.
Choice topics he covers in this small clip: Ongoing war in Afghanistan, the situation in Ukraine, arresting BBC disk jockeys for sex crimes which happened decades ago, ignoring big criminals who rigged financial mechanisms (i.e. LIBOR), being for and then against Bachar al-Assad in Syria and then bombing ISIS, his enemies, only to empower him.
And then the big one: central banks printing billions without end and without criticism, shifting billions of dollars into the hands of bankers, devaluing currencies and all the while, governments pretend to slash budgets and practice “austerity”.
“But the dark heart of this shape-shifting world is quantitative easing.”
The full-length documentary on this topic, called Bitter Lake, will be out on 25. January.
It will cover Afghanistan more than I’ve given mention here, but it’s worth reviewing. Curtis’ idea is that Afghanistan is the pinnacle allegory of our time: politicians and the media all created their own clean narratives about what was going on there, but they all turned out to be wrong.
There was too much contradictory information about soldiers, terrorists, factions, poppy fields, deployments, bombings, women’s rights, humanitarianism, and more. Countries from across the globe created their own stories on why Afghanistan was important and slowly everyone forgot why troops are even there.