Adam Curtis - A Film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

Can it is "capitalism" that created the wealth for pinkos to steal, resdistribute, and make this "great society" that you fascists talk about. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, FDR needed to steal from somebody. Socialists sure as hell do not create anything (other than hot air).

[ericclaptonismygod31]

Pinkos. Because of economic socialism, Asia is rising and will eventually overtake the West. Thanks, commies! Where is Joe McCarthy when we need him? Fry up some pinkos.

[trun0jay]

Anybody know the music used from 1:17 to 1:27 ?, super creepy but I like it!

[MoonstompingMike1985]

@trun0jay the opening music to john carpenters the fog, Curtis is a big fan of carpenters music he has sampled many of the soundtracks from his films including assault on precinct 13, prince of darkness and the the thing

[trun0jay]

@MoonstompingMike1985 Thank you! :D

[thechaos44]

Wowsers, good old Roy Jenkins!

[ParokialManhekle2O1O]

What about it having more to do with something called 'The God Complex'? See the youtube TED channel; look for, Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex. Then dislike my comment, see if I care.

[DickCabezaLtd]

Curtis is right. Ron Paul wants to change things and he has met a wall of resistance. Democrats anyone?

[maskedavenger777]

Nixon was right. The elites are out to get us.

[duffeknol]

Nice use of Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts. Very fitting.

[r1c0ch3t211]

@duffeknol Curtis likes his NIN, his newest one (All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace) uses some too.

[anycon]

c'mon curtis, this is more parallelism, or 'one damn thing after another', than cause and effect. nixon's paranoia about elites led to journalistic paranoia about the paranoia of his elite led to the 'middle class' aping investigative journalists and hyping their expertise to sell it so we're all too frightened to permit elite-led reforms? just doesn't jibe with the recent history of the west. oligarchy and plutocracy are the problem: not the public's excess knowledge, elites' excess power.

[DumblyBrilliant]

So far, the central messafe of this film is, left wing social manipulation and Neo Marxism= Good. Right wing = Bad. So, let the homosexuals buggers your children because that makes society "better." Nice try Curtis. The paranoia is all yours. We are NOT all Nixons and we are NOT all Jenkins either. When pig flu arrived in Britain from America thousands of Journalists caught it and turned into Feminists. It missed the rest of the people so journalists have been spreading it ever since.

[jacksawild]

@DumblyBrilliant WTF are you babbling about?

[DumblyBrilliant]

I think politician flu might be next. There is a danger that it might combine with journalist flu and infect us all. You don't get the sniffles or a fever but you DO develop a terrible desire to lie, manipulate, steal tax payers money, exaggerate, mislead, do anything big business wants and impose more taxes.

[beeninsane]

Murdoch appeared and I reflexively took a swing at the monitor.

[jacksawild]

@beeninsane My dog vomited.

[margot980]

Just what is the why here of this video?

Paedophilia and obesity are media-fiction powered by elite members of the middle class??????

Loved Thatcher's lucky red suitcase thingy. Beastly politician, cute suitcase!

[jacksawild]

@margot980 The red box is a ministerial box for taking home departmental papers. There are also black boxes (for carrying on public trains), green boxes (civil servants), royal red boxes (for certain Royals) and black boxes with red stripes (old stripey for highest clearance only). They are not fashion statements.

[Esaelectronics]

hahaha

[Williamsfan]

I want my swine flu! C'mon! They told me I was going to get it and possibly die! I spent all this time preparing for death and now I'm perfectly healthy! What a gyp!

[faunflynn]

Yes Yes Yes !!! It's true ! I am now deranged !

I was once a nice rational and very reasonable guy but... alas...I'm now quite mad.

[bigstartv]

Great docu! You should enter our online film festival, you could win 50,000!

[wahzooo]

i think there are samples from the album "ghosts i-iv" by nin towards the end.

[Neotails8762]

@wahzooo Correct; Tracks 2 and 28.

On-topic though, great video.

[ithildhelma]

not to sound like a total nerd but, off-topic, there's a nine inch nails snippet from 1:26 to 1:31 and elsewhere

[ericclaptonismygod31]

Hitler was a National Socialist against capitalism and liberalism - the ultimate elitist! Socialism is a very dangerous creed.

[snipersam3]

@ericclaptonismygod31 hitler joined the national socialists, but he himself was a Fascist

[r1c0ch3t211]

@ericclaptonismygod31 yes there are clear parallels between roy jenkins who helped abolish the death penalty and removed laws against homosexuality and adolf fucking hitler

i think this is the single worst case of godwin's law i've ever seen

[snipersam3]

at 4:15 why is the dolls face boxed out?

[ericclaptonismygod31]

Socialists brought us Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.

Classical liberals brought us freedom from them. Jonathan should lay of the kool aid!

[snipersam3]

@ericclaptonismygod31 hitler wasn't a sociallist

[jacksawild]

@ericclaptonismygod31 In the last 50 years, the United States has promoted, financed and participated in over 200 incursions and 20 separate wars, killing over 10,000,000 people.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

@jacksawild Really? I thought the death count was closer to a billion people. Dick.

[jacksawild]

@ericclaptonismygod31 The numbers are in the public domain and they are conservative estimates. Your response is nothing but the ramblings of a mindless jingoist.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

@jacksawild Do not worry, mate. What for the Chinese to take over and you can blame everything on them. Count yourself one of the lucky ones to be able to sit on your ass and write about how shitty the world is.

[jacksawild]

@ericclaptonismygod31 Yeah, yeah.. the Chinese are the new evil. Just like the Russians were the old evil and then the drug dealers and then the criminals and then the "terrorists". It's all the forces of good vs evil isn't it? You live in a fucking movie. Media whore.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

@jacksawild Come visit Japan and I can beat some sence into you - little pinko asshole! Let me know when you arrive.

[jacksawild]

@ericclaptonismygod31 I don't know what "sence" is, except a retarded misspelling of "sense". And yes, I do have a little asshole because, unlike you, daddy didn't fuck me. Finally, Japan is a long way to go just to hear you scream like a bitch. Sorry, you're not John Wayne and this isn't a fucking Hollywood blockbuster. You wont be walking off into the sunset so you may as well just get on your back and earn your money the only way you know how, as a prostitute. Byeeeee.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

@jacksawild You little faggot. Go give handjobs for food stamps. If you want to donate your front teeth, get over here so I can smash you up. Communist retard!

[shahideurope]

@ericclaptonismygod31 nah you got bitch slapped.

[tinkafoo]

Leroy Jenkins?

[Snafuski]

Adam Curtis is brilliant. He points out some of the greater absurdities of our society. I am not sure that is what I would call socialist. Socialist the application of any number of political, social and economic theories to society. It's not inherently bad or good. Being critical is not being a socialist.

[ericclaptonismygod31]

I used to like Adam Curtis, but now I find he is just a silly socialist!

[JonathanBloggs]

@ericclaptonismygod31 Oh no! Those silly socialists who are responsible for EVERY POSITIVE CHANGE IN THE 20TH CENTURY, you know, stuff like votes for women, equal rights for blacks, gays, universal healthcare, minimum wage, anti child labor laws. Damn socialists always trying to change things for the better, those bastards!.

[snipersam3]

@JonathanBloggs you seem to know fuck all about socialism......it's not just about equality you know

[prede89]

I am not a crook!

[psychicwhoosh]

There is something very important here in this piece and I think it's mostly to do with living in an era where there's so much information to sort through and when a great deal of this information is sensationalized and hyperbolic (often designed that way in an effort to rise above the din) it becomes hard to discern truth from manipulation. Maybe it's even easier to spread conspiracy theories today because in the avalanche of data we stop looking for truth, only the confirmation of our biases.

[maniacafrodisiac]

The problem here is that with very limited information, we're made to sympathize, or even empathize with Nixon.. and while this bias may be embedded into it, the irony is that this is coming from BBC, and just makes you paranoid anyway. It's either us or them right?

It tries to make you assume things with very limited information, and honestly, who has enough info to really know what's going on anyway? I suppose leaving us with more questions is both good and bad this time.

Anyway, NIN FTW! =)

[JonathanBloggs]

@maniacafrodisiac I think it's more trying to point out that we're too paranoid for our own good and that anyone who tries to change things for the better gets accused of doing it for their own interest and destroyed.

[maniacafrodisiac]

@JonathanBloggs Yea I get that, but I just think that Nixon is a bit too ironic of an example.

[MegaStumbo]

Love this peice except for one small gripe. The Experts said lots of people die of BSe or bird flu, Well the VAST majority of scientists said no such thing, but the media gave the alarmists disproportionate airtime.

[LordZentei]

@ MegaStumbo:

The "experts" the video refers to are not scientists, but the self-appointed champions and enemies of the "elites".

[overhere2000]

love that quote "Basically I had my stomach stapled and i want antidepressants'

[plasticbarf]

I like Adam Curtis documentaries, because when I watch them I begin to think that everybody in the world is just as crazy as I am.

[Esaelectronics]

hahahaha

[guslingus]

I did not take drugs and bash my wife like Nixon DID

[heelez]

Nine Inch Nails!!!

sampled throughout...

[LURTSCH]

GHOSTS I-IV!!!

[heelez]

@LURTSCH

hell yeah!

[perpetualjon]

Apparently, there are many people who are sheep and believe everything they hear. I don't know, maybe I'm just living in an intellectually fortified pocket of exceptionalism, but I just don't know that many people that are that easily influenced by information that comes from the same source as Ren and Stimpy. When I look in the mirror, I do think I'm fat --not because the TV tells me, but because I am 5'5" and 240 lbs.

[Rant93]

@perpetualjon - thinking that you are immune to this kind of thought and manipulation is the best way to ensure that you are completely helpless to it. If this kind of manipulation didn't work, there wouldn't be multi-billion dollar industries built around exploiting it. And the reason it works is that just like you, everyone believes that they are immune to it.

[perpetualjon]

Ok, well let's see... I'd say I know about 400 people in my area and about 50 teenagers (yeah, it's a lot). Of my anecdotal sample I'm spoken with, there are no girls that are thin that thin of themselves as fat and long to look like the celebrities of MTV. Anyone who thinks they're fat actually IS. LOL, now the media machine is working against liberals. That's rich. They are just chasing the next sensational story for ratings. Nothing more fancy than that.

[choc113]

@Rant93 So true! I despair sometimes at trying to show people how led and brainwashed they are:(( arrogance is there downfall:( IMHO.

[plasticbarf]

this is one of the silliest posts I have ever read

[lllMURMURlll]

hmmmmm. not the best adam curtis work for sure.

[withnielandi]

Nixon an outsider? The BBC disinfomation machine at it again.

[EdgarTFriendly]

Not the worst six and a half minutes I have spent, and whilst I didnt completely agree, I saw many nuggets of wisdom too

[TallTorBlond]

Gee, who put this video out. The extreme left wingers who want the populace to go back to sleep. What a bunch of B.S. this whole video is. We do need to wake up. We do need to be paranoid. What is going on is your losing your liberties while you are watching American Idol. It's got to stop. Please read The Shock Doctrine and you will know everything you need to know about the world. It WILL make you cry.

[simeetg]

Curtis is right. Obama wants to change things and he has met a wall of resistance. Tea parties anyone?

[Renegen1]

Obama is anything but a reformer. Have you seen the health care bill or the financial reform bill? He's just a corporate whore like all the rest. You better see that there is a class war going on against the bottom 99% or you will continue to be exploited.

[AndroidPolitician]

@simeetg

Not really, Curtis is saying a politician could never do something against public opinion and (at least in his rhetoric) Obama is planning on doing things that are popular (infrastructure, green technology, immigration reform etc.).

[lynottlives]

@simeetg this is the very sad thing about democracy, poll show a substantial amount of people in the US believe their president is Islamic, a similar percentage of people are against healthcare reform etc...i think Curtis is right, we have become nixon, it's fucked everything up.

[divorcecake]

What he says about the media and their use of "experts" is true. Where has "swine flu" gone? Is it going to be "crow flu" this year? hmmmm

[vetromaster]

@divorcecake nah, let's see where the next flu is coming from

- beef (already had one)

- pork (already had one)

- chicken&duck (already had one)

- sheep (already had one, albeit a long time ago)

- dogs and cats....aha!. Here you are - I predict cat flu, or dog flu.

[caffeina]

This is disappointing. Stick to the stronger, more edifying Adam Curtis documentaries like The Century of the Self.

[Kowdog]

This is a horrible documentary. The mistrust for elitists and the prevalence of populism, at least in America, goes back Andrew Jackson and before. BBC amuses me sometimes.

[georgezimmer]

ONCE upon a time fairy babies grew candy on trees, then Elvis superfans bombed Hiroshima and entire panties factories went up in flames!!

[mitchellglaser]

This reporter is guilty of his own assertion, peddling alarmist claims about something that has been going on forever.

[randdom123]

Ummm, yes?