In America in the 1960s was a man who was convinced that there was something frightening hidden under the surface of the new modern suburbs. Behind what looked like a confident individualism was rising up throughout America there were really hidden fears eating away at people from inside. There were feelings of anxiety, loneliness and emptiness, and he was convinced he could make a lot of money out of these feelings: he was called Arthur Sackler … Valium: he offered it to the doctors as an extraordinary new way to treat these inner anxieties, and he said it wasn’t dangerous or addictive. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head III: Money Changes Everything
They had discovered before anyone else the underlying weakness with the new individualism: that you were free but you were alone. ibid.
In the past there had been repeated sudden changes both heating and cooling of the world’s climate at speeds that no-one thought possible. ibid.
Richard Nixon came to power because he had harnessed a new force: he called it the silent majority … It was a fragile power-base … Nixon promised to represent the silent majority … his feelings of dread … suspicious and paranoid … He told his aides to start the enemies’ list. ibid.
Suddenly there was no fixed value for any currency anywhere in the world. There was immediate confusion … He [Nixon] went to China … a giant mysterious country that had been cut off from the world for decades. But he was going to bring it into the modern global system. ibid.
He [Nixon] had set up a conspiracy based in the White House. It was run by a group of ex-intelligence agents, and they already planned to bug, burgle, and blackmail Nixon’s opponents. ibid.
Solzhenitsyn: he was secretly writing a novel … faced by the failure of the revolutionary dream, it was now difficult to believe in anything. That maybe ideology itself was the problem … But in every case, he said, thousands and often millions were killed. Solzhenitsyn’s book contained a damning conclusion … The only way to escape from that horror was to stop trying to change the world. Instead the safest thing to believe in the future was to believe in nothing. ibid.
For 20 years the CIA had been planning assassinations and overthrowing leaders of foreign governments all around the world using poisons and specially made secret weapons. ibid.
Kerry Thornley had begun Operation Mindfuck: he and his friend Greg Hill had planted fake conspiracy theories in the press and in underground magazines alleging that the Illumanati was a secret organisation behind all the assassinations in America. Their aim was to make people see how absurd all such theories were … Stories about the Illuminati and a plot to create a New World Order began to get mixed up with revelations about brain-washing and secret mind control programs run by the CIA. ibid.
‘The plague of money. The disease of money. The plague of buying and selling that’s their handiwork. I hate this system … It’s Me, Eddie … People think they are free. But really they are becoming like simplified robots following the rules of money.’ ibid.
Betty Ford’s admission had a dramatic effect. In its wake stories began to pour out of people all across America who were also addicted to Valium. It seemed that there was a private hidden world of anxiety behind the public faces that affected millions of people. But Arthur Sackler who in the 1960s had promoted Valium as beneficial and non-addictive was unrepentant. And a company that he and his two brothers had started was about to develop a new drug: a synthetic form of opium called Oxycontin, and that was going to deal with the next wave of anxiety that would hit America. ibid.
Bill Clinton: He came to power promising to represent what he called the forgotten middle class. And very quickly, within weeks of entering the White House, Clinton agreed to give up on many of his promised reforms and to give power over to the financial world. He did this not through any cynical motive but because he knew that the old power base of mass politics had gone. No-one joined political parties any more. Organised labor was a vanishing force. Clinton might be in office but he no longer had the collective power of the people behind him. The power that in the past had allowed politicians to challenge the elites in society. And in the face of that, Clinton decided to give power instead to the new force that promised that it could create a wealthier and happier society – the bankers and the economists and the management experts who were now spreading and multiplying through the corridors of Washington. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head IV: But What if the People are Stupid?
Unlike Britain, America had emerged from the First World War as the most powerful country in the world. Its president Woodrow Wilson had a vision that America should now use that power to spread democracy all around the globe. Behind this was a belief in what was called American Exceptionalism – that the country was special … Instead, the American democracy went into a severe depression. ibid.
Out of this fear came an organisation called the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had first been formed after the American Civil War but now it reemerged. The Klan also believed in the idea of America’s Exceptionalism – but they took that myth and turned it into something violent and frightening. ibid.
A new drug was created: It was made by a company that had been founded by Arthur Sackler. In the 1970s Sackler had marketed the drug Valium to deal with the feelings of anxiety and loneliness in the sufferers. He had died in the 1980s but in the mid-’90s his company released a new drug called Oxycontin. It was a synthetic form of opium and it was sold as a painkiller … Oxycontin made them feel safe, in a bubble, protected from the anxieties and fears of the new post-industrial world … Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones *****
Ever since the Second World War the American Government had been using the CIA to manipulate and overthrow the governments of many other countries … The CIA rigged elections, destabilised governments through fake information, and organised violent coups in Italy, Greece, Syria, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Indonesia and Chile. In all, the United States ran covert operations to overthrow 66 foreign governments. In 26 cases they succeeded. ibid.
What the Chinese were doing was using their money to create a safe bubble wrapped around the United States that would stabilise the system and so keep China safe. But in the process the Chinese money would create the biggest consumer and property boom ever in history. And lead America into a protected dreamworld that was increasingly detached from the reality outside. ibid.
On the surface Tupac Shakur was part of the age of the individual. He believed deeply in the idea of self-expression. But he was also one of the few in the 1980s who still believed in the power of grand stories to move people and to inspire them to change the world. His mother Afeni had been a Black Panther and she still believed in the idea of revolution in America. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? *****
‘She always raised me to think I was the black prince of the revolution.’ ibid. Tupac
‘We’re not being taught to deal with the world as it is. We’re being to taught to deal with this fairyland which we’re not even living in any more.’ ibid. Tupac shool interview 19988
‘More kids are being handed Crack than are handed diplomas.’ ibid.
By the 1980s it was clear that the promises of the civil rights’ movement had not been kept in America. And the idealism of black politics fell away. And the communities divided into gangs then turned on each other. Then Crack swept through the black communities in America. And a fading Shakur finally gave up: she became addicted to Crack, and Tupac found himself alone. ibid.
Tupac Shakur set out to awaken the radicalism of the Panthers. And to do it he was going to use himself as the central character. ibid.
Maybe many people didn’t want to change. They were happy living in their own fairytale world of gangs and violence. ibid.
President Clinton had brought in tough new crime laws. Even though in reality crime was falling. Hundreds of thousands of young black men were now imprisoned with no hope of parole, even for minor offences. It seemed to show that President Clinton cared more about the fears of white middle-class voters than he did about the lives of young black men. ibid.
His [Tupac’s] message was simple: that suspicion was just another form of control. ibid.
Governments in Britain and America rescued the banks, but they then decided to transfer the debt that incurred away from the private sector to the public sector. And what was called austerity began. ibid.
All the major banks had been rigging interest rates, and many of them had been laundering money for organised crime, including the drug cartels of Mexico. ibid.
For Donald Trump, the paranoia allowed him to hide the fact that he was doing nothing to get rid of the corruption in America as he had promised. ibid.
Millions had become addicted to opioids and yet no-one in power had come to rescue them. But the liberals couldn’t face this because they too had idea how to solve those problems. ibid.
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.