No Future feat. Adam Curtis | Chapo Trap House | Episode 65 FULL 

It is easier to imagine an end of the world than an end to capitalism. This is the true legacy of Thatcher and Reagan.

Adam Curtis, 2016: "We live in The Zone now" 2020: (coronavirus opens a door to The Zone Within The Zone)

This movie flipped my Qanon uncle into a chapo devotee its that good

At 22:41 the guest says, "I mean, I think I don't know enough about occupy wall street." Instant respect. If you don't know, it's always better to just say you don't know.

I'm a huge fan of Adam Curtis, and recently a fan of Chapo Trap House, so I am really excited to find this.

Please bring Adam Curtis back on for 2020!

I really enjoyed this interview. I have watched many of Adam Curtis's documentaries and like his take on what has been happening to the world during my life. At 64 I am a dying breed who perhaps enjoyed a more innocent world.

Peter Daou has had some excellent character development since then.

It all aged like wine

Easily one of the best Chapo episodes so far.

I started tearing up at Adam's last answer...

I've listened to this interview 10 times already. This is the crux of it.

The Power of Nightmares is probably my favourite documentary of all time. Just brilliantly put together, incredible use of music. The part which effectively links 9/11 to the song Baby It's Cold Outside is incredible.

Really great episode, and I think this is the perfect introduction to any of Adam Curtis documentary.

Hypernormalisation was a key documentary for our times as was The Trap and The Mayfair Set and All Watched Over by Loving Machines - all essential viewing.

Jesus I wish I had even 1% of Curtis' eloquence. Absolutely a visionary

Love the use of Burial as a direct reference to Mark Fisher's "Ghosts of my Life"

God Adam Curtis is a fucking treasure. I was all up in Occupy Oakland, and while everyone meant well, this critique is spot on.

Wow, this is brutal. I feel like this is going to be a weekly listen for me, from now on.

love when adam makes the chapo crew snicker/laugh with his dry wit, major jouissance moment

Probably Chapo's finest episode, definitely their best interview. Interested (and interesting) guest, good questions, great pace.

More than 2.5 years later...you boys had no idea how prophetic you were.

44:51 - 50:04. When I heard this part it just stunned my brain. Everything after this part feels almost irrelevant. The music helps in building a mood perhaps, but the what he is describing is something akin to abandoning standard life to join a mass religious movement. That's it, that's what it will take. I don't know how. Also at the end the woman speaking in the loudspeaker from Escape from New York is Jamie Lee Curtis. So there's that.

Snake Plissken is now a regular contributor to Fox & Friends

Great intro the interview!

fuck this aged horrifyingly well

This is really excellent guys!

just steady zoning 2020

"Forgive" swells in background.

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'

Fantastic work. One of the most lively interviews I've found of Adam Curtis Great stuff!

Adam Curtis is a treasure. He has the keys to the BBC archives and the vision to use them.

Chapo is *the* only historically relevant media around atm...

Adams last answer was spot on, the vital dissident revolutionary energies exist on the dissident right today.

When he says at the end that there's nothing in the liberal imagination bigger than the individual that people will surrender themselves to...wonder what he'll make of anti-racism and woke-ism. Loved "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" but it doesn't quite run all the way through the current moment to capture that set of ideas. Looking forward to a newer film from Curtis that can contextualize this a bit more.

i I Love he always uses "distant lights" by Burial in his films, the perfect audio analog to his oeuvre

Adam Curtis stuff requires an intermission and a post viewership support group.

Escape from New York and Stalker incredible films by the way.

Awesome.

Oh man Adam Curtis was spot on about the internet becoming a bizarre swamp of crazy people

The outro music is Thelonious monk's cover of "These Foolish Things"

what is the song when Adam monologues?

So affected by this interview, especially Curtis' closing remarks around 44:00, that I made a transcript of his final analysis to fully digest what he said. A partial transcript and summary: Interviewer asks Adam Curtis: What would it look like to imagine a different world? And how will we know that change is happening? Curtis: Change comes through a BIG IDEA, a vision of the FUTURE, a premise, an idea. A vision which connects with the fearfulness in the back of people's minds and offers a release from fear. But liberals and radicals are suspicious of big ideas. (because - look what happened the last few times millions of people got swept up in a big idea, i.e., Communism & Nazism). The last Big Idea was [the Neoliberalism] of Thatcher and Reagan. (Earlier in the interview Curtis describes a crisis of belief among liberals and radicals who do not have a guiding, motivating belief system, and the absence of a belief makes them vulnerable to fear and a default belief in “managerial technocracy” and a “utilitarian rational mode of thinking” influenced by Silicon Valley (i.e., a belief that algorithms, information, technology, and efficient management will create a better world / solve all of our problems). Political change is scary because it can change things where nothing is secure. The big, difficult ? = Do you/we really want change? Or do you just want to make small tweaks /tinker with things and carry on living in the world as it is? If we do want change, many liberals and radicals may find themselves in an uncertain world. because real change would really change things. A major concern = Many people feel they have nothing to lose - and those people are being led by the Right. Curtis suggest that we need A PATH OR VISION OF THE FUTURE. It is scary, but also thrilling - and it requires engaging with the giant forces of power that run the world at the moment. The Key: In confronting those powers, you might lose a lot. You may have to surrender yourself and some of your identity to a bigger idea. But you /we will gain in the bigger sense, because bigger changes will happen. We will know change is here when see people from the liberal middle classes making big sacrifices. But nothing like this exists in the liberal imagination at the moment. Take home message: Liberals & radicals needs to get to work developing a Big Idea / Vision for the future.

As an American, big ideas are great but I'd like to just have healthcare. Doesn't seem radical to me.

Interesting listening to this a second time. When I think about technology and how technology has been used to improve the power of capitalism in the modern age I think about the interview with Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr. In the HR world at the moment they do a very deep dive of your social media and internet usage. I can imagine a future where this is more prevalent. Where algorithms hoover up comments on youtube videos, deem your use to the system and carefully keep money and positions of power away from Chapo Wonks.

His films are really interesting but I wish he would go more in-depth on how political power receded and corporate and financial power replaced it

I joined up on Patreon specifically to be able to get this episode. why the heck is it not available on Patreon? 5$ a month level.

There isn't just 1 zone. Theres a couple in the book if i remember we're just viewing it from Red Schuhearts perspective, but im sure theres mention of other places when you follow the other guy in the mid-book.

The Zone is a post a GM product from after 1991

I loved hyper-normalization and his other films. I think Curtis‘s observation of Occupy and the fantasy of flat hierarchy is an important point. But it misses the mark as far as the last election. One of the defining issues that the left needs to contend with is identity politics. It was astounding for me to see Clinton appropriate identity politics and accuse Sander‘s and supporters as sexist or misogynistic. And the idea that we should vote for Clinton because she was a woman. More recently the same strategy has been applied to Corbyn he was accused of antisemiticism. And Chomsky called out the accusations as an insult to Holocaust victims. The film ignored Obama’s Clinton’s involvement in Libya and Honduras which for me and others quickly made me realize how corrupt the Obama administration was and Assange affirming it. The neoliberal bubble burst during Clinton’s campaign. But Gadaffi and President Zelaya were key figures. Gadaffi was eccentric but also was relatively peaceful as dictators go organizing a state that gave a great deal of human rights to women and the population as a whole. On the local level there was direct democracy and there was some distribution corruption. Gadaffi was also revered by many African Americans. With Zelaya Clinton organized a coup to oust him. He was left wing and democratically elected. After the coup hundreds of left activists were murdered LGBT, environmentalists, union, and indigenous activists. Libya had some ideas of libertarian socialism with Gaddafi as an eccentric intellectual figure head. I am not claiming it was ideal but it was actually a vision for the world. Zelaya who was already left wing, became even more left wing after he was kidnapped and could not return to Honduras. He represented the government that was not allowed to be. There was a deep betrayal in the actions of Clinton and Obama and a revelation as to what their true allegiances actual were. The were not advocating for social progress in the least. They only pretended to be. Obama was so convincing that he fooled Gadaffi into thinking he was a progressive exception to USA presidents. Obama was an exception only when it came to social liberalism. He actually made it a point met with all ethnic groups. He went out of his way to invite lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual activists. A friend of mine a black bisexual activist called the White House and they said to her, „We were actually looking for a bisexual person to come to the White House. So they invited her. This social liberalism was comforting, at least Obama acknowledges our existence. But it was also incredibly one dimensional. When Clinton adopted the same strategy she was immediately revealed to be a fact and inauthentic. A good example was her recognizing Ronald Reagan as a hero who responded to the AIDS crisis and supported gay men. There was an immediate outrage from the gay community who put fourth well known facts that the gay movement protested Reagan for most of his term to respond, and that Reagan refused to even recognize that the gay population was a legitimate group of people. And Clinton ran on fake feminism as well. A sort of corporate feminism that had very little relevance to the majority of women other than those with an elite liberal academic pedigree the identity politics of Harvard. The point is that neoliberalism has thoroughly colonized group identities. The same group identities that were the engines of black, feminists, and LGBT that brought progressive of politics has now been turned on its head and subverted. And when a progressive points this phenomenon out we are accused of being right wing conservative because the conservatives have been pointing this out for decades and capitalizing on the fact.

31:40 Reminds me of Cat's Cradle. "What does a Bokononist say before he commits suicide? 'I am now going to destroy the entire universe'."

Early Will had a tiny lil' boy voice

The Zone is reused by Pynchon in Gravity as Rainbow. Its the reason people find it so hard to read.

A Future where We All Care

What is the opening clip from

In the future, I would love to see Tony Blair in gaol

Health care for all shouldn't be considered a "Big Idea." That's kind of the problem.

I haven't heard Curtis talk about the Sanders and Corbyn movements as actual visions for the left... Anyone else?

29:43 no future

1:04:14, "you now have the option to terminate and be cremated on the premises," what movie/etc. is this from?

Interesting. George Monbiot is onto the same idea about developing an alternative vision, positive system of beliefs...

You have to jack in

What's the outro music under Adam's interview?

william gibson is canadian

godzilla was about the bombs

Did I just stroke out real quick or did a Journey song sneak in for just a split second?

Thought of gopniks squatting using Apple Newtons overthrowing the election LAWL!

Interview starts 7.30min

he needs to come back on

Many on the left responded to the Venus project vision but have no idea of how they get from here to there. A much more pragmatic political vision has been offered by Chomsky anarcho-syndicalism or libertarian socialism. And recently Richard Woolf‘s advocacy for cooperatives which could become the hubs of libertarian socialism. Sander‘s vision is really Social democracy which has been well tried and tested. But for the most part keeps most of the power in place as it does in Germany or Sweden or Denmark. We should remember that the EU and NATO are completely invested in petroleum currency. The EU slightly less so than the United States. What cooperative libertarian socialism would look like is creating alternatives to corporate power. It would mean creating an alternative to the banking system so you don‘t invest in a corporate bank you invest in a cooperative bank so you can get non-usury loans and real interest on savings. It would be different from corporate health insurance or Medicare4All. It would be cooperative health insurance where people cooperatively own shares of an insurance company and the actual insurance is the dividend. Organizations like this would in fact appeal to both the popular left and right. Many on the right would hate it at first because of the word “cooperative”. But when you remind them that it is independent of government and an alternative to corporate power and you are part owner if you invest, i think it would shift their thinking. It would in fact diversify as well, there might for example be an alternative anti-abortion cooperative health insurance rather than a liberal one. We should be afraid, because on the practical level I think that the attempt to create a conservative alternative would loose. But what all of such institutions would ultimately do is create a real alternative to corporate power and government power. You could make cooperative schools, cooperative urban or rural farms, cooperative technology industries etc. Because the real issue is that common people have very little real power and representation. As an economic alternative this is one a the few things I can think of that would create a real shift. But I think an underlying secular humanist liberal (real old school libertarian) social philosophy would need to be a part of that vision so that the dystopian manifestations are less possible. Now imagine these institutions competing with corporations. The advantages of corporations would be walk street market trading. The advantages of the cooperative would be that it would likely be more stable and definitely more community based. So when a recession does happen a bank cooperative can buy up property in the same way corporations did last time. But the cooperatives would transform those investments into community based projects rather than just holding onto investments and rigging Wall Street to inflate the value.

and it is(n't) coming............

Looking back, I'm Seeing how limited Adam Curtis is in his thinking about how people can be manipulated. He really sells that s*** short

the world of SOMA are you sure thats Rite

What’s up with the random ass big of Dont Stop Believing right in the middle?

but without anyone realizing, dark forces were beginning to be unleashed....

Liminal Times

Juggalows would be a stay against Nazis if it wasn't for the whippets.

power now is tied up in data and algorithms. how the fuck do we reorganise that?

Interesting interview. Ok, but what's the point in showcasing how negativistic and pessimistic have we become? It would be more revolutionary to show the way out of the 'Zone'. It is very upsetting that pessimism has become the new paradigm (in cultural and artistic context too). People have somehow wrongly taken to program themselves to fetishize gloom and doom, though evidence shows quite opposite (did you know that only 10 percent of all catastrophes we imagine actually take place?). We need to have an optimistic worldview in order to bring the change about. There is no point in weeping over how bad things are. The problem with these complainers is that they do nothing to change the situation, only spreading their gloomy views and infecting others. As for me, Adam's document is to no purpose (other than to reinforce our already-so-much-fucked-up belief that everything is fucked up and there is no hope).

So, the right sequence seems to be: Dream >> Vision >> People >> Power >> Change. What is your dream?

SIIIIIICK

"us liberals", lol i wonder how you can still refer to yourself as a liberal after you do that critical of analysis of our world

the crypto market is like the zone

The only breach-able door out of the zone is Bitcoin

Platypus 1917 is better

Adam Curtis is such a squanch

Does this guy not sound exactly like Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin)?

Is there anyone with intelligence on this show or is it always like this? >sanders oh god.