Politics
Of his general political outlook, Curtis has said:
People often accuse me of being a lefty. That’s complete rubbish. If you look at The Century of the Self, what I’m arguing is something very close to a neo-conservative position because I’m saying that, with the rise of individualism, you tend to get the corrosion of the other idea of social bonds and communal networks, because everyone is on their own. Well, that’s what the neo-conservatives argue, domestically...If you ask me what my politics are, I’m very much a creature of my time. I don’t really have any. I change my mind over different issues, but I am much more fond of a libertarian view. I have a more libertarian tendency...
Curtis has professed to believe in progress. To quote:
The thing that really depresses me is the failure of confidence among the liberal middle classes in the West to believe in the idea of progress. I think they’ve retreated into a dark, pessimistic apocalypticism, which I fight against. I believe in progress, and what I was trying to say in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace — it wasn’t really angry — is that the Congo represents to us how difficult it is to change the world. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying. Instead what we do is we use the Congo and its failures as a justification for that retreat into a pessimistic view that we’re just fixed creatures. Everyone’s bad. There’s nothing we can do. Let’s just stay at home and have tea. That’s what I want to attack. It’s not political, it’s just a belief that you can change the world for the better, and I think there’s a deep conservatism and reaction that’s emerging in our society at the moment, which is just hold everything steady and don’t try and change anything.
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