TMR 210 : HyperNormalisation (Antony Rotunno & Julian Charles) Part Two

Antony Rotunno joins us again for the second part of our wide-ranging conversation on the 2016 BBC documentary HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis. Borrowing the word "hypernormalisation" from a book by ex-Soviet citizen Alexei Yurchak, in whose writing it described an officially-encouraged delusional state of mind in the gradually-collapsing Soviet Union, Adam Curtis creatively applies the term to the West since the last quarter of the 20th Century; a time in which, he argues, both politicians and citizens have "retreated" from hard problems in favour of "fake" versions of reality, while the banking and technological elites have continued to fill the vacuum with their technocratic systems of "stability" and "control". While we remain unpersuaded by elements of Curtis's overall narrative and gently critical of his somewhat pretentious style, we nevertheless find the documentary rich with fascinating subjects, and share our own perspectives in a relaxed and fairly unstructured way. Note: If you haven't listened to part one of this conversation, please do so first, otherwise you may find it difficult to follow. Music courtesy of Dissident Prophet (https://dissidentprophet.bandcamp.com/) For show notes please visit http://themindrenewed.com