Adam Curtis’
The Trap
Part 3: We Will Force
You to Be Free
Monday, November 16
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

Part 3 looks at the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis explains how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one’s potential.

For example, the French revolutionaries wished to overthrow a monarchical system which they viewed as antithetical to freedom, but in so doing ended up with the Reign of Terror. Similarly, the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia, who sought to overthrow the old order and replace it with a society in which everyone was equal, ended up creating a totalitarian regime which used violence to achieve its ends.

Using violence, not simply as a means to achieve one’s goals, but also as an expression of freedom from Western bourgeois norms, was an idea developed by African revolutionary Frantz Fanon. He developed it from the Existentialist ideology of Jean-Paul Sartre, who argued that terrorism was a “terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others.”. These views were expressed, for example, in the revolutionary film The Battle of Algiers.

My Enemies Enemy
Thursday, May 21
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

My Enemy’s Enemy reveals an alternate history of the post-war world. This is a version of history where, in contrast to what we are all told, fascist ideology prevailed. The story of Klaus Barbie, Nazi torturer, American spy, tool of repressive right wing regimes, is symbolic of the real relationship that the “Western” governments had with fascism and makes us see the world as it is today - and the politicians that inhabit it - in a different way.

Congolese liberation leader and first Prime Minister Patrice Émery Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961, less than seven months after coming to power. He aspired to make Congo an independent nation but was rejected by the US for help before turning to the USSR, igniting his assassination.

What I find most disturbing about this is doc is the cold sociopathic attitude of his killers, even after all this time for reflection.

How many sociopathic agents are active today?