Managed democracy: "The deliberate undermining of people's perception of the world, by creating confusion and contradiction ... undermining any opposition to existing power structures ... which leaves us feeling helpless and depressed and to which the only response is: 'Oh dear'."

Something a little different for New Year's Day...

You might have seen Charlie Brooker's choleric overview of the year:
Grumpy Charlie Brooker loves Christmas
BBC iPlayer - Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe

At its centre was a featurette from documentary maker Adam Curtis, which the Adam Smith Institute might have found wanting
Charlie Brooker and the shapeshifting lizards « Adam Smith Institute

... but, as with all of Curtis' work, it's provocative:



A short film by Adam Curtis screened during Charlie Brooker's review of 2014 on the BBC; shows the how deliberate undermining of people's perception of the world, by manipulating the media and civil society, creates confusion and contradiction, undermining any opposition to existing power structures. This strategy has allowed quantitative easing to go almost unnoticed and unchallenged, even though it is the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in recent documented history.

Nonlinear Warfare - A New System of Political Control (2014)
Charlie Brookers 2014 Wipe (Summary with Adam Curtis) - YouTube

Brooker has featured other provocative material over the years:
Doug Stanhope - Opinionated idiots (Charlie Brooker's Newswipe) - YouTube

But Curtis does hit a few nails on the head, including this short from a couple of years ago on Brooker's show, which covered similar territory to his latest piece on Newswipe:

Everyone knows that television news can be boring, that’s because it’s often about politics which can be very dull…But these days there’s another problem with watching the news. Night after night we are shown terrible things which we feel we can do nothing about. Images of civil wars, massacres and starving children which leave us feeling helpless and depressed and to which the only response is: “Oh dear.” There is a name for this. It’s called “oh-dearism” and this is the story of the rise of oh dearism in television news.

Adam Curtis - Oh Dearism - YouTube

Beyond the Newswipe studios, Curtis has an impressive body of work:
Adam Curtis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adam Curtis Documentaries
BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis Collection - YouTube

In fact, the most recent piece on Newswipe this week acted as a trailer for his new series:
BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - TRAILER TRASH

'Bitter Lake" will be on our screens as of 25th January and will look at "contemporary reality":
BBC - Adam Curtis: Bitter Lake - Media centre

Bitter Lake ... is described as about “why the narratives and explanations we are fed by the media and politicians have stopped making sense.”

Adam Curtis brings Bitter Lake to Rotterdam | News | Screen
Preview of Adam Curtis' new doc Trailer Trash on Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe : Tony Gosling ✈


The main character of his Newswipe piece and a figure of his upcoming series is the 'power behind the Putin throne' - who most of us have never heard of:
Vladislav Surkov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Russia Profile - BackGround People - SURKOV, Vladislav Yuryevich
http://eng.state.kremlin.ru/persons/2

This blog doesn't normally veer into this sort of territory, but the point Curtis is making is that the surreal confusion we are presented with in the Western media is not so different to the games being played by the Kremlin... skills in turn learnt from the Western worlds of PR and the scientific management of people and information.

To quote from an excellent article on Surkov in the London Review of Books, from 2011:

The next act of Russian history is about to begin: Putin and Medvedev will pop off-stage into the Moscow green room, switch costumes, and re-emerge to play each other’s roles. Putin as president, again, Medvedev as PM. 

It’s the apotheosis of what has become known as ‘managed democracy’, and the ultimate triumph of the show’s writer-director, Putin’s chief ideologue and grey cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, the ‘Kremlin demiurge’. Known also as the ‘puppetmaster who privatised the Russian political system’, Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era. 

Understand him and you understand not only contemporary Russia but a new type of power politics, a breed of authoritarianism far subtler than the 20th-century strains.
It’s a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it’s indefinable.

This fusion of despotism and postmodernism, in which no truth is certain, is reflected in the craze among the Russian elite for neuro-linguistic programming and Eriksonian hypnosis: types of subliminal manipulation based largely on confusing your opponent, first developed in the US in the 1960s.

Peter Pomerantsev · Putin’s Rasputin · LRB 20 October 2011

To finish with a piece from Curtis himself, which opens provocatively as expected - and finishes with Surkov the grand manipulator. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

THE YEARS OF STAGNATION AND THE POODLES OF POWER

Post categories: Back Stories

Adam Curtis | 14:59 UK time, Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Everybody is always remarking about how stuck our society feels these days. The music doesn't change, the political parties are all exactly the same, and films and TV dramas are almost always set in the past.

We are also stuck with an economic system that is not delivering the paradise that it once promised - but is instead creating chaos and hardship. Yet no-one can imagine a better alternative, so we remain static - paralysed by a terrible political and cultural claustrophobia.

I want to tell the story of another time and another place not so long ago that was also stifled by the absence of novelty and lacking a convincing vision of the future. It was in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and 1980s. At the time they called it "the years of stagnation".

There are of course vast differences between our present society and the Soviet Union of thirty years ago - for one thing they had practically no consumer goods whereas we are surrounded by them, and for another western capitalism was waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum. But there are also echoes of our present mood - a grand economic system that had once promised heaven on earth had become absurd and corrupted.

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: THE YEARS OF STAGNATION AND THE POODLES OF POWER

Now, it could be asked:

To what extent, in our stagnant system here in East Devon, is the political leadership of the District Council indulging in the "deliberate undermining of people's perception of the world", by creating "confusion and contradiction, undermining any opposition to existing power structures", which "leaves us feeling helpless and depressed and to which the only response is: “Oh dear.”"...?

But that would be an outrageous notion - even on New Year's Day:
Futures Forum: Probity, accountability and transparency
Futures Forum: Concerns about transparency and lobbying continue in East Devon: pt 4
Futures Forum: Lobbying: East Devon Business Forum
Futures Forum: Town Hall Secrecy Blamed for Decline in Local Democracy
Futures Forum: "Mounting risks for corruption in UK local government"
Futures Forum: "Over-representing parties through the voting system" ...some figures
Futures Forum: Fortfield Hotel ... to ... Sanditon apartments
Futures Forum: Transparency and process in East Devon... a summary
Futures Forum: Transparency and process in East Devon..................... continued: part three
Futures Forum: Independent politicians - independent voices
Futures Forum: Concerns for campaigning: Lobbying Bill rejected by Lords
Futures Forum: "The incidence of complaints in East Devon was 'way higher' than in other councils..."
Futures Forum: Concerns for campaigning: Lobbying Bill to become law
Futures Forum: "Independents, Independents, Independents."
Futures Forum: Who to blame when everything falls apart: the politics of planning decisions
Futures Forum: How to alienate your electorate and lose influence
Futures Forum: District Council meets to consider issue of Lobbying ... Weds 26th February
Futures Forum: Do you want to be a councillor? Advice evening 13th March .... .... .... but you must register by 28th February .... .... .... .... presented by the Parliamentary Outreach Service
Futures Forum: District Council meets to consider issue of Lobbying ..... ..... but ..... "What is lobbying?"
Futures Forum: Skypark: the current reality on site is not quite the same as computer-generated publicity...
Futures Forum: Payments and patronage in East Devon
Futures Forum: Fears of losses in accountability at local government level...
Futures Forum: The Local Government Ombudsman "cannot investigate something that affects all or most of the people in a council’s area."
Futures Forum: "What is lobbying?"... "Openness and transparency is vital."
Futures Forum: District Council to protest about 'planning bribes' ............. ............................ "Intimidating councils into allowing consent to build on inappropriate sites for fear of losing at appeal and then not receiving the New Homes Bonus."
Futures Forum: District Council meets to consider issue of Lobbying ... again ... Tues 8th April
Futures Forum: District Council: to vote on restricting public speaking at planning meetings: Weds 9th April
Futures Forum: District Council meets to consider issue of Lobbying ... reports
Futures Forum: Crony capitalism and lemon socialism in East Devon........ The costs of "substantial growth and expanding business"
Futures Forum: The uses and abuses of power: “The larger and more authoritarian the organization, the better the chance that its top decision-makers will be operating in purely imaginary worlds.”
Futures Forum: District Council: vote on restricting councillors speaking
Futures Forum: Open data: Transparency in local government
Futures Forum: Lobbying report postponed to October: the District Council, the planning code of conduct ..... and the East Devon Business Forum
Futures Forum: "A councillor has no business being a member of a Scrutiny Committee unless he or she is prepared to ask challenging questions."
Futures Forum: WARNING: Don't register to vote in East Devon!
Futures Forum: District Council: vote on restricting public speaking........ full council meeting Weds 23rd July
Futures Forum: District Council: vote on restricting public speaking......... the decision
Futures Forum: The 'sharing economy', 'resilience' and 'nudging': Evgeny Morozov on "The rise of data and the death of politics"
Futures Forum: Localism and the future of the 'Big Society'
Futures Forum: 'Nudging' under further scrutiny: the failures and successes of the Behavioural Insights Team
Futures Forum: District Council: vote on restricting public speaking......... further reports
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: FOI request goes to tribunal
Futures Forum: Karl Hess: Neighbourhood Power: The New Localism
Futures Forum: The East Devon Business Forum, housing numbers and greenfield sites
Futures Forum: The East Devon Business Forum and the Overview & Scrutiny Committee: meeting Thursday 11th September: questions to be asked
Futures Forum: The East Devon Business Forum and the Overview & Scrutiny Committee: meeting Thursday 11th September: further comment
Futures Forum: Development and transparency at East Devon: "The longer this matter is kept quiet the more we think there is to hide."
Futures Forum: District Council meets to consider issue of Lobbying ..... Tues 28th October
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: What exactly is 'consultation' in East Devon?
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: "There is a theory that when big companies splash out on new headquarters or other lavish items, their demise is waiting around the corner."
Futures Forum: "Claims for 'localism' are a fiction from a Tom Sharpe novel" - Growing disquiet across the West Country
Futures Forum: The lack of scrutiny at East Devon ................................ Council's Scrutiny Cttee meets Thursday 16th October
Futures Forum: Happy news coming out of Cranbrook... churnalism and the partnership between developers and politicians...
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: "Merely noting a report has no place in Scrutiny."
Futures Forum: "I can’t remember a time when there was so much dissatisfaction with local government."
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: Councillors "in the dark, as no-one within the EDDC hierarchy was telling them anything."
Futures Forum: Bringing official bodies into 'disrepute': the dangers of censoring what politicians don't want to hear in East Devon
Futures Forum: The Great Revolt, 38 Degrees ........ and Russell Brand on Radio 4's Start the Week
Futures Forum: Transparency and lobbying: District Council "agrees with the principle" of "declaring any contact with developers or campaign groups"
Futures Forum: "More Power to the South West - a BBC Spotlight Special" - give BBC Radio Devon a call...
Futures Forum: "Scrutiny committee set up to look at the East Devon Business Forum, which Mr Brown chaired, should now reconsider its scope."
Futures Forum: Freedom of Information Requests: Ex-Cllr Graham Brown, the East Devon Business Forum and the District Council's CEO's pre-emptive strike against the Business TAFF
Futures Forum: East Devon councils "should be held to account"
Futures Forum: The great S106 cash give-away
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part one....... "It was the intention to go to the Overview & Scrutiny Committee with a strong team representing the Forum and refute the allegations made."
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part two....... "It mostly represents a number of businesss that councillors and ex-councillors are involved in and those where councillors and ex-councillors own where land which was permitted to be changed from agricultural land to industrial land."
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part three....... "Members of the Business Forum often underestimated its influence on policy at EDDC; an example was for the need for more employment land in the District."
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part four....... "RESOLVED that the Chairman and Honorary Secretary be authorised to write to EDDC and express the Business Forum’s concern if it was found that the membership of the Task and Finish Forum contained members that they considered had preconceived ideas about the Business Forum and its operation."
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: and the longer-term demise of district councils... a summary of the issues so far...
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part five....... "It was not appropriate for the Scrutiny Committee to debate planning policy, because it wasn't independent."
Futures Forum: Scrutinising the scrutiny committee: Motion before the full District Council: Wednesday 17th December
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part five....... Scrutiny committee task force "to produce an in-depth report on the EDBF, to include all business engagement and its relationship with the council"
Futures Forum: A history of the East Devon Business Forum, part six....... "The local mafia": Conflicts of interest in East Devon
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: "People in Sidmouth simply do not trust the EDDC and their spurious calculations."
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: "We’re digging into the opportunities to release assets and invest in assets to increase revenue streams."
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: 'The EDDC Conservative group should have made the need to protect East Devon countryside and the need to deliver an adopted Local Plan its top priority. Instead it has put all its energy and a huge amount of financial resource into building itself new offices'
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: 'checks and balances': the SWAP
Futures Forum: Subsidies and social engineering: or why we build roads.
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