The Power of Nightmares  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 21:21, 12 February 2018

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear is a BBC television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It mainly consists of archive footage, with Curtis narrating. The series was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom in 2004. It has subsequently been aired in multiple countries and shown at various film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

The film compares the rise of the neoconservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, drawing comparisons between their origins, and remarking on similarities between the two groups. More controversially, it argues that radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organisation, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth, or noble lie, perpetuated by leaders of many countries—and particularly neoconservatives in the U.S.—in a renewed attempt to unite and inspire their people after the ultimate failure of utopian ideas.

The Power of Nightmares was praised by film critics in Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.

Synopsis

Part 1. "Baby It's Cold Outside"

The first part of the series explains the origins of Islamism and neoconservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thinking, visiting the U.S. to learn about its education system, then becoming disgusted at what he judged as the corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save his own society, it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He then becomes convinced that his vision can only be accomplished through use of an elite "vanguard" to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser's jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can be justifiably killed to remove their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences Ayman al-Zawahiri, the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981 in the hopes of starting their own revolution. However, the revolution does not materialise, and Zawahiri comes to believe that a majority of Muslims have been corrupted, not only by their western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by jahilliyah and thus may be legitimate targets of violence if they refuse to join his cause. They continued to believe that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace it with a 'pure' Islamist state.

At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson's "Great Society". They conclude that an emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of Johnson's plans. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the neoconservatives, came to power during the 1980s under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They alleged that the Soviet Union was not following the terms of a disarmament treaty between the two countries, and together with the outcomes of "Team B", they built a case using dubious evidence and methods to prove it to Ronald Reagan.

Part 2: "The Phantom Victory"

In the second episode, Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. When the Soviets eventually pull out and when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they are the primary architects of the "Evil Empire's" defeat. Curtis argues that the Soviets were on their last legs anyway, and were doomed to collapse without intervention.

The Islamists see it quite differently, and in their triumph believe that they had the power to create 'pure' Islamic states in Egypt and Algeria. Attempts to create perpetual Islamic states are blocked by force. The Islamists then try to create revolutions in Egypt and Algeria by the use of terrorism to scare the people into rising up. However, the people were terrified by the violence and the Algerian government uses their fear as a way to maintain power. In the end, the Islamists declare the entire populations of the countries as inherently contaminated by western values, and finally in Algeria turn on each other, each believing that other terrorist groups are not pure enough Muslims either.

In America, the Neo-Conservatives' aspirations to use the United States military power for further destruction of evil are thrown off track by the ascent of George H. W. Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992 election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power. The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative Christian allies, attempt to demonise Clinton throughout his presidency with various real and fabricated stories of corruption and immorality. To their disappointment, however, the American people do not turn against Clinton. The Islamist attempts at revolution end in massive bloodshed, leaving the Islamists without popular support. Zawahiri and bin Laden flee to the sufficiently safe Afghanistan and declare a new strategy; to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal a blow to its source: the United States.

Part 3: "The Shadows in the Cave"

The final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda. Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. However, the film argues that in order to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, US prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called "al-Qaeda". With the 11 September attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.

After the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend the war on "terror" to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of "preemption" against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat. Curtis also makes a specific attempt to allay fears of a dirty bomb attack, and concludes by reassuring viewers that politicians will eventually have to concede that some threats are exaggerated and others altogether devoid of reality. "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Contributors

• John Calvert, historian of Islamism
• Prof. Harvey Mansfield, Straussian philosopher, Harvard University
• Prof. Stanley Rosen, pupil of Leo Strauss, 1949
• Dr Azzam Tamimi, Institute of Islamic Political Thought
• General Fouad Allam, interrogator, Interior Ministry 1958–87
• Roxanne Euben, political scientist
• Irving Kristol, founder of neoconservative movement
• William Kristol, Chief of Staff to the Vice President 1988–92
• Prof. Stephen Holmes, political philosopher
• Henry Kissinger (interviewed 1975)
• Melvin Goodman, Head of Office, Soviet Affairs, CIA 1976–87
• Prof. Richard Pipes, adviser to President Reagan 1980–83
• Dr Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 1977–80
• Omar Azzam, cousin of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Egyptian al-Qaeda leader
• Dr Kamal Habib, founder member of Islamic Jihad
• Gilles Kepel, historian of Islamist Movement
• Paul Weyrich, religious activist; member of Republican Party
• Michael Ledeen, Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981–82
• Jack Wheeler, Adviser to the Reagan administration 1981–84
• Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense 1981–87; Chairman of Pentagon Defense Policy Board 2001–03
• Milton Bearden, CIA Field Officer, Afghanistan 1985–89
• Abdullah Anas, General Commander, Afghan Arabs, Northern Afghanistan 1984–89
• Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary, Soviet Communist Party (archive)
• Saif Al Banna, senior member of Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt (archive)
• Ali Haroun, Algerian Minister for Human Rights 1991–92 (archive)
• Essam el-Erian, senior member of Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt
• Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to President George Bush Snr (interviewed 1996)
• Michael Lind, journalist and former neoconservative
• David Brock, author, Blinded by the Right
• Judge Robert Bork, senior member, Federalist Society
• Joe Conason, writer, The Hunting of the President
• Jason Burke, author, Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror
• Sam Schmidt, defence lawyer at US Embassy Bombings trial
• Vincent Cannistraro, Head of Counter-terrorism, CIA 1988–90
• Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Prof. David Cole, law professor, Georgetown University
• Ron Hansen, reporter, The Detroit News
• William Swor, defence lawyer at Detroit Sleeper Cell trail
• John Molloy, defence lawyer at Lackawanna Cell trial
• Bill Durodié, Director, International Centre for Security Analysis, Kings College
• Dr John Prados, National Security Archive, Washington
• Dr Theodore Rockwell, nuclear scientist
• Lewis Z. Koch, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• David Johnston, Intelligence Specialist, New York Times

See also

• Bitter Lake
• The Century of the Self
• Culture of fear
• Adam Curtis
• The Living Dead
• The Mayfair Set
• Pandora's Box
• The Trap