Cameron's "Behavioural Insights Unit"

[Hen]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/11/post_1.html

[ed miliband]

People like Curtis fall down at the first hurdle because they eschew any notion of class except for some vague "ruling elite" thing.

I mean...


Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy... Like Mrs Thatcher, he believed that the people knew best. They expressed their desires and wants clearly through the market. And politics, he believed, should imitate this.To even suggest that Blair or Thatcher "believed that the people knew best" is mental, and misses a vital point -- both Thatcher and Blair took their notion of "The People" from the tabloid press. Blair in particular did not believe that "the people knew best" - I think he was and is really quite repulsed by "The People" - but the cover of The Sun was, in Blair's mind, exactly what "The People" wanted.

Really, I can't get over that sentence. What the fuck?

[Wanted Man]

Good stuff. What's funny is that when you read this blog post, you can already hear Curtis say it to a background of archival footage and Morricone music.

Very interesting article, in any case.


People like Curtis fall down at the first hurdle because they eschew any notion of class except for some vague "ruling elite" thing.

I mean...

To even suggest that Blair or Thatcher "believed that the people knew best" is mental, and misses a vital point -- both Thatcher and Blair took their notion of "The People" from the tabloid press. Blair in particular did not believe that "the people knew best" - I think he was and is really quite repulsed by "The People" - but the cover of The Sun was, in Blair's mind, exactly what "The People" wanted.

Really, I can't get over that sentence. What the fuck?

I don't think he's implying any agreement with that idea of "the people"...

[ed miliband]

I don't think he's implying any agreement with that idea of "the people"...

I think he's phrased that badly then.

To say "believed that the people knew best" is clearly untrue, whether Curtis agrees with that notion of "the people" or not; they claimed that they believed that, but they governed in a way that suggests quite the opposite.

Admittedly I don't like Curtis' work at all, and I find something horribly paternalistic about him.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Interesting article. Although I must say I'm more curious about the Behavioural Insights Unit. What are they up to?

[ed miliband]

And so I'm not just being negative, this is another article which covers vaguely similar grounds:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2011/01/hughes-government-british

and some more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge-unit-economic-behaviour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/david-cameron-nudge-unit

[Hen]

People like Curtis fall down at the first hurdle because they eschew any notion of class except for some vague "ruling elite" thing.

I mean...

To even suggest that Blair or Thatcher "believed that the people knew best" is mental, and misses a vital point -- both Thatcher and Blair took their notion of "The People" from the tabloid press. Blair in particular did not believe that "the people knew best" - I think he was and is really quite repulsed by "The People" - but the cover of The Sun was, in Blair's mind, exactly what "The People" wanted.

Really, I can't get over that sentence. What the fuck?

I don't think he is really trying to claim that Thatcher or Blair believed that the people knew best. I think this is Adam Curtis' running critique of western notions of freedom.

His documentaries 'The Century of the Self' and 'The Trap' illustrate his view that whilst politicians and the like have claimed to operate in the name of "public service", they have actually always acted in their own self-interest. The championing of the free market as a medium to express our needs and wants was actually a fallacy, because through creations such as The Behavioral Insights Unit and through the utilization of psychological theory, that our needs and wants could be manipulated. Their manipulation was legitimated because the masses were driven not by their minds, but by their spinal chords, that an "enlightened" rule was necessary to control the animal populace.

This is an extract from his documentary 'Century of The Self':

'Freud began to write about group behavior. About how easily the unconscious and aggressive forces in human beings could be triggered when they were in crowds. Freud believed he had underestimated the aggressive instincts in human beings. They were far more dangerous that he had previously thought.

The publication of Freud's works in America had an extraordinary effect on journalists and intellectuals in the 1920s. What fascinated and frightened them was the picture that Freud painted of the submerged dangerous forces lurking just under the surface of modern society - forces that could erupt easily to produce the frenzied mob which had the power to destroy even governments. It was this they believed had happened in Russia.

To many, this meant that one of the guiding principles of mass democracy was wrong; the belief that human beings could be trusted to make decisions on a rational basis. The leading political writer Walter Lippman argued that if human beings were in reality driven by unconscious, irrational forces, then it was necessary to re-think democracy. What was needed was a new elite who could manage what he called "the bewildered herd". This would be done through psychological techniques that would control the unconscious feelings of the masses...

...Edward Bernaise was fascinated by Lippman's arguments, and also saw a way to promote himself by using them. In the 1920s he began to write a series of books which argued that he had developed the very techniques that Lippman was calling for. By stimulating peoples inner desires and then sating them with consumer products, he was creating a new way to manage the irrational force of the masses. He called this - "The Engineering of Consent"'.

[ed miliband]

Have you seen the short documentary he did for Charlie Brooker's Newswipe? He starts off by talking about how the politician Roy Jenkins changed Britain by legalising homosexuality, abolishing the death penalty, etc. He then states that Jenkins did all this "because he was an elitist - he knew it was good for them" (the public). He then goes on this bizarre narrative about how Nixon, Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch all revolted against "elites", and how the public (or the people) are all now paranoid about "elites".

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I think he representation of Thatcher as somebody who fought against "elites" fits in nicely with the way he talks of Thatcher as somebody who believed "the people knew best", unless I'm missing something.

Curtis has said, I believe, that their will no longer be radical change because public opinion holds too much of a sway over what politicians now do, and again I think this fits in with that sentence nicely.

Another article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/nov/24/terrorism.world which backs up my point.

His politics seem to be atrocious.