Brexit and the Trump presidency happened against the flow of expected order, so they were chaotic events to the ruling elites (and their normie cheerleaders) in that sense. Mass immigration has chaotic effects for those of us much lower down the chain. I presume that he's listing political phenomena that are chaotic and uncontrolled, from some perspective, to anyone anywhere.
Watch enough Curtis and you can catch enough glimpses that he's a leftie, but he hasn't put out enough in the modern era to confirm a diagnosis of TDS or EU-Remainer seethe, yet. He certainly knows enough about the history of the British left-wing to know Corbyn's relationship to Brexit and also know that the left had anti-EU campaigners in the 70s, when the UK joined. Point being, I would be surprised if he had been dumb enough to be terribly taken by surprise by Brexit or Trump, so it's more likely he's being a universal narrator in that passage.
But like I say, until he puts out his own thorough take on Biden or the scamdemic years, it's hard to know if he's managed to keep his brain between his ears. His most recent 6 parter was in 2021 and it had hints of the perspective of a leftie in denial, rehashing many of his older takes and not saying a great deal new. Hypernormalisation was 2016. I find his older stuff like Century of the Self, The Trap, Pandora's Box and The Living Dead to be interesting regardless.
I also have a soft spot for The Mayfair Set. From Curtis' perspective, his account of British magnates trying to revive or hold on grimly to the last vestiges of British empire is condescending towards them, yet you can't help but feel that he sympathises more with them than with the growing force of international finace they were up against. In fact I only just learn that The Trap, Curtis' docu which in large part concerns neoliberalism, shares its exact title with James Goldsmith's book about neoliberalism - James Goldsmith being one of the magnates featured in Mayfair Set and dealt with less than sympathetically, at least on a casual viewing.
So it's fair to say that Curtis' views are nuanced, or at least they have been across the years. I actually just watched the opening of Ep1 of The Living Dead; the first 10 minutes are a dispassionate and unjudgmental recounting of the Nazis' view for rebuilding Germany with their policies, against the backdrop of the disorder the country had descended into. It also essentially lambasts Nuremberg as a show trial. The latter part of course can't help but mention national guilt and the holocaust, but in any case it's a million miles from the kind of genuflecting, performative virtue posturing you have to go through when mentioning nazi history in the mainsteam nowadays.
Brexit and the Trump presidency happened against the flow of expected order, so they were chaotic events to the ruling elites (and their normie cheerleaders) in that sense. Mass immigration has chaotic effects for those of us much lower down the chain. I presume that he's listing political phenomena that are chaotic and uncontrolled, from some perspective, to anyone anywhere.
Watch enough Curtis and you can catch enough glimpses that he's a leftie, but he hasn't put out enough in the modern era to confirm a diagnosis of TDS or EU-Remainer seethe, yet. He certainly knows enough about the history of the British left-wing to know Corbyn's relationship to Brexit and also know that the left had anti-EU campaigners in the 70s, when the UK joined. Point being, I would be surprised if he had been dumb enough to be terribly taken by surprise by Brexit or Trump, so it's more likely he's being a universal narrator in that passage.
But like I say, until he puts out his own thorough take on Biden or the scamdemic years, it's hard to know if he's managed to keep his brain between his ears. His most recent 6 parter was in 2021 and it had hints of the perspective of a leftie in denial, rehashing many of his older takes and not saying a great deal new. Hypernormalisation was 2016. I find his older stuff like Century of the Self, The Trap, Pandora's Box and The Living Dead to be interesting regardless.
I also have a soft spot for The Mayfair Set. From Curtis' perspective, his account of British magnates trying to revive or hold on grimly to the last vestiges of British empire is condescending towards them, yet you can't help but feel that he sympathises more with them than with the growing force of international finace they were up against. In fact I only just learn that The Trap, Curtis' docu which in large part concerns neoliberalism, shares its exact title with James Goldsmith's book about neoliberalism - James Goldsmith being one of the magnates featured in Mayfair Set and dealt with less than sympathetically, at least on a casual viewing.
So it's fair to say that Curtis' views are nuanced, or at least they have been across the years. I actually just watched the opening of Ep1 of The Living Dead; the first 10 minutes are a dispassionate and unjudgmental recounting of the Nazis' view for rebuilding Germany with their policies, against the backdrop of the disorder the country had descended into. It also essentially lambasts Nuremberg as a show trial. The latter part of course can't help but mention national guilt and the holocaust, but in any case it's a million miles from the kind of genuflecting, performative virtue posturing you have to go through when mentioning nazi history in the mainsteam nowadays.