The Power of Nightmares, a documentary by Adam Curtis that originally aired 10/20/04 [Part One] – 10/27/04 [Part Two] on BBC2, can be viewed here. The film is being shown at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend in an edited, updated form. It appears the version available on ICH is the original.
The film US TV networks dare not show
His documentary took as its starting point the year 1949, when two men who would prove massively influential to the establishment of Islamic terror groups and to the neo-Conservative American tendency that now dominates Washington were both in the US. One was an Egyptian school inspector called Sayyid Qutb whose ideas would directly inspire those who flew the planes on the attacks of September 11. Qutb’s summer visit to Colorado revolted him so much – he could see nothing there but decadent materialism – that he went home thinking that modern liberal freedoms were eroding society’s bonds and that only a radical Islam could prevent its destruction. Meanwhile, in Chicago, an obscure political philosopher called Leo Strauss was developing a similar critique of western liberalism (though without the Islamic answer to individualism’s purported ills). He called on conservative politicians to invent national myths to hold society together and stop America in particular from collapsing into degraded individualism. It was from such Straussian reflections that the idea that the US’s national destiny was to tilt against seeming foreign evils – be they the Soviet bloc or, later, fundamentalist Islam – was born.
But the film is even more incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority – the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis’s film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way. “It has really touched a nerve with people who realise something is not quite right with the way terrorism has been reported.”
“It was from such Straussian reflections that the idea that the US’s national destiny was to tilt against seeming foreign evils – be they the Soviet bloc or, later, fundamentalist Islam – was born.”
Propaganda was fine-tuned according to developing stimulus, but not born.
It’s a great documentary series. I watched it here on the BBC. Apart from the great main theories it propounds, the one “little” thing that struck me most was the utter folly that is inherent in the torture of prisoners that has been going on in Iraq and Guantanemo. The whole Islamic militant tendency came about in the first place because that man Sayyid Qutb was tortured in prison in Egypt. That was what led him to violence.
The son-in-law of a workmate was amoungst the first reservists to be sent to Guantanamo. He was working as a prison guard for the state when called up and works as one for the feds since returning from Cuba. He told her the prisoners in Guantanamo were of no importance intelligence-wise, that they were broken people with missing legs and such, the stragglers who were unfortunate enough to be swept-up in order to populate the facility.
“Unfortunate” is my descriptive. This guy is a rabid supporter of Bush. When he was taken to task for being too violent with prisoners in Guantanamo there was a verbal show for onlookers, but in fact he was “promoted” to dealing with the prisoners most resistant to the methods employed there. So when he says the people we have incarcerated there are of no significant consequence in this so-called war on terror, it leads one to wonder what is the purpose of this facility beyond pissing off the Cubans or justifying yet another contract for Halliburton.
Fueling anti-Americanism, seems to me, to be another reason.