The Power of Nightmares

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The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC series of documentary films, written and produced by Adam Curtis.

This documentary argues that during the 20th Century politicians lost the power to inspire the masses, and that the optimistic visions and ideologies they had offered were perceived to have failed. The film asserts that politicians consequently sought a new role that would restore their power and authority. Curtis, who also narrates the series, declares in the film's introduction that “Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares”. To illustrate this Curtis compares the rise of the American neoconservatives and radical Islamists, believing that both are closely connected; that some popular beliefs about these groups are inaccurate; and that both movements have benefited from exaggerating the scale of the terrorist threat.

Contents

[edit] Distribution

The Power of Nightmares was first broadcast on BBC Two in three, one hour-long parts on consecutive Wednesday evenings in the autumn of 2004. The series was rebroadcast in late January 2005 on three consecutive nights, with the final part updated to reflect the Law Lords ruling from the previous December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial is illegal.

Although the series has not been shown on U.S. television, its three episodes were shown in succession on 26 February 2005 as part of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, USA. After the film, Curtis made a public appearance and led a discussion in which he expressed pessimism about an eventual American TV airing or DVD release. It has, however, played in some small independent theaters.

Curtis has also stated: "Something extraordinary has happened to American TV since September 11. A head of the leading networks who had better remain nameless said to me that there was no way they could show it. He said, 'Who are you to say this?' and then he added, 'We would get slaughtered if we put this out.' When I was in New York I took a DVD to the head of documentaries at HBO. I still haven't heard from him."

An edited two and a half hour version was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2005, with Pathé buying up distribution rights to exhibit this version in cinemas worldwide.

The Power of Nightmares was aired in Canada in April 2005 by CBC Newsworld, and on 16 July 2006 and 17 July 2006, the full three episodes of The Power of Nightmares aired again in Canada on the CBC Newsworld series, The Passionate Eye.

In Australia, the programme was to be screened on SBS commencing 12 July 2005 [1], however this screening of the series was cancelled. An e-mail response enquiring as to this cancellation was worded "SBS Management made the decision that in light of the recent London bombings it would not be appropriate to screen the series at this time." SBS rescheduled the series and it was screened over three nights commencing 6 December 2005 [2], and again over three weeks commencing 29 January 2007.

In Denmark it was shown by the national broadcasting coorporation, Danmarks Radio, on the channel DR2 in March 2007.

Part 1 was included on a bonus disc packaged with the second issue (Summer 2006) of the quarterly DVD magazine Wholphin, and Part 2 was similarly included with the third issue (Fall 2006).

The programme has been released for free and legal download on the Internet.

[edit] Documentary

The documentary consisted of three parts.

[edit] Part 1 - Baby It's Cold Outside

In the 1950s Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian civil servant turned revolutionary, and Leo Strauss, a Jewish-American professor of political philosophy who fled Nazi persecution, were both in America at the same time. Qutb came to see Western liberalism as corrosive to morality and to society. Qutb had been sent to the U.S. to learn about its public education system but was disgusted by what he saw of its society. They each argued that radical measures (in Strauss's case, deception along the lines of the Plato's Noble Lie, and in Qutb's case, the creation of an Islamic state) could be justified in an effort to restore shared moral values to society, and their arguments heavily influenced American neo-conservatism and radical Islamism, respectively. Senior American civil servants and politicians influenced by neo-conservatism came to see communism as an evil force against which the U.S. should be presented as a force for good. This propaganda included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's formation of Team B, which over-estimated Soviet military technology, and the William Casey-led CIA assertion that various terrorist organisations were backed by the Soviet Union. The CIA's internal analysts (that Team B was arguing against), held that most terrorist groups were independent, in part because the book that laid out the theory of Soviet control of all terrorism, The Terror Network - The Secret War of International Terrorism (ISBN 0425053407), was full of lies the CIA had knowingly released as Black Propaganda. Meanwhile, Qutb became influential in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and was then jailed after some of its members attempted to assassinate President Nasser.

This was first broadcast on Wednesday 20 October 2004. Its title is taken from a popular song which Qutb heard played at a church-organised dance for young people, which he saw as symptomatic of the immorality of American society.

Watch or download part one.

[edit] Part 2 - The Phantom Victory

In the 1980s the Islamist mujaheddin and the neo-conservative-influenced Reagan administration temporarily cooperated in fighting a common enemy, the Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. Although the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse, both groups came to believe that it was their actions in Afghanistan that had caused it to fall. However, other attempts by Islamists to incite popular revolution failed, and the neo-conservatives lost power in the U.S. as the presidency passed to George H. W. Bush and subsequently to Bill Clinton. Both groups, having failed to achieve lasting political influence, identified new targets to attack: the neoconservatives sought to demonise Clinton while the radical Islamists decided that those who had not aided their cause were legitimate targets for violence.

This was first broadcast on Wednesday 27 October 2004.

[edit] Part 3 - The Shadows in the Cave

In the late 1990s the Taliban set up military training camps in Afghanistan for Islamist fighters. Most were only interested in fighting in their home countries, but Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and follower of Sayyid Qutb, paid the Taliban to allow them to recruit volunteers for attacks on the U.S. from these camps. Prosecutors for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings believed bin Laden organised them and wanted to convict him in absentia by showing that he headed a criminal organisation. Jamal al-Fadl, a former associate of bin Laden, conveniently described just such an organisation to them, which the investigators called al-Qaeda. While bin Laden apparently aided the attacks he had no organisation through which he could command and control them; al-Fadl seems to have told investigators what they wanted to hear in return for money and witness protection. Similarly, while bin Laden provided funds and volunteers to carry out the September 11, 2001 attacks, they were actually planned by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Following this attack, the neo-conservatives were able to convince George W. Bush to begin a War on Terror and to paint al-Qaeda as an international network of terrorists. The war in Afghanistan removed bin Laden's main source of recruits, but the U.S. military and the Afghan Northern Alliance also captured and killed many people in the Taliban camps that had nothing to do with him. The story circulated that bin Laden and the core of al-Qaeda had retreated to an underground complex in Tora Bora, but an exhaustive search revealed no sign of this. Al-Qaeda could not be found because it never really existed; Islamist terrorists are connected only by ideology and not by an organisation that can be cut off at its root.

The arrests of various groups of suspected terrorists in the U.S. following the September 11 attacks failed to find any substantive evidence, but did show a lot of imagination on the part of investigators. Many of those arrested in Afghanistan were captured and turned over to U.S. forces by the Northern Alliance, who claimed that their captives were Al-Qaeda members. The U.S. forces had nothing but the word of the Northern Alliance to tie the prisoners to Al-Qaeda. In addition, the Northern Alliance had motives to lie about any given captive's ties to terrorist organizations, since they received a monetary reward for every "terrorist" they handed over to the U.S. and could do away with virtually anybody they wanted to by bringing him to the Americans and labeling him a "terrorist." Nevertheless, the Alliance's claims were taken at face value and the captives imprisoned indefinitely in such places as Guantanamo Bay. Similarly, in the U.K., arrests under new terrorism laws have resulted in only 3 convictions of Islamists, all for fundraising. Much of the media coverage of potential terrorist attacks is also highly speculative and sensational. For instance, a terrorist attack using a radiological weapon, referred to by the media as a dirty bomb, wouldn't kill many people from fallout because the radioactive material would be spread thinly by any explosion. However, the neo-conservatives had found they could use the threat of Islamist terrorism, and the claimed possibility of sponsorship by Iraq, as an enemy against which to unite the U.S., and other politicians such as Tony Blair claimed an important role in protecting their countries from attack. Politicians and counter-terrorist agents have decided that they must be proactive in imagining the worst possible attacks and in stopping those who seem likely to carry out attacks.

This was first broadcast on Wednesday 3 November 2004. Its title appears to refer to Plato's allegory of the cave and to the belief in the complex in Tora Bora.

[edit] Accolades

"The Power of Nightmares, a three-hour BBC documentary directed by Adam Curtis, is arguably the most important film about the "war on terrorism" since the events of September 11. It is more intellectually engaging, more historically probing and more provocative than any of its rivals, including Fahrenheit 9/11." The Nation.


[edit] Awards

  • BAFTA 2005, Best Factual Series or Strand "production team"
  • DGGB 2005, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television Documentary (Adam Curtis) - For episode "Baby It's Cold Outside".
  • RTS 2005, Best Documentary Series - General

[3]

[edit] Criticism and responses

Various attacks have been made on the programme, its author, the BBC and the arguments presented. Curtis has responded to some of the criticism. (Accessed 28 July 2006)

[edit] The programme is, or presents, a conspiracy theory

David Aaronovitch has suggested that the programme "is a conspiracy theory".

Curtis replies: "The use of fear in contemporary politics is not the result of a conspiracy, the politicians have stumbled on it. In a populist, consumerist age where they found their authority and legitimacy declining dramatically they have simply discovered in the 'war on terror' a way of restoring their authority by promising to protect us."

[edit] The programme neglects to analyse the impact of economic interests

Critics such as MediaLens, who believe that US government policy is shaped to a large extent by powerful business interests, point out that Curtis did not address this aspect.

Curtis accepts this criticism as "serious and important". However, "Both the neoconservatives and the Islamists have become powerful and influential and I chose to make a series of films that explained the roots of their ideas and how they were taken up, simplified and distorted. You want me to have made a different series [about] a perfectly good and very important subject - but different." [4]

Additionally, Curtis's latest series The Trap analyses the role of economic interests in politics.

[edit] The neoconservatives were misrepresented

Clive Davis in "The Power of Bad Television" at the National Review claims that the characterisation of neoconservatives' views in the programme is inaccurate. He has also suggested that the degree to which neoconservatives have been influenced by Leo Strauss is greatly exaggerated. Further he maintains that this programme suggests that "it is Strauss, not Osama bin Laden, who is the real evil genius."[citation needed]

[edit] Music

[edit] Not in order

  • The theme from the 1987 movie Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter
  • The repetitive piano section from Halloween in the haunted house.
  • Charles Ives - Symphony number two - 5th movement.
  • Putnam's Camp from Three Places in New England.
  • Excerpt from Central Park in the Dark
  • a piece by Ennio Morricone from the 1980 Gillo Pontecorvo film Ogro
  • Shostakovich - Lyric waltz from the Ballet Suite No 1
    • excerpt from The Young Lady and the Hooligan
  • Soundtrack to The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Paul Sawtell and Jerry Goldsmith
  • Excerpt from soundtrack to 1968 film Night of the Living Dead
  • Excerpt from Ennio Morricone soundtrack to 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing, track used is titled Humanity Part II. Appears at end of Part 2.
  • Ennio Morricone tracks repeatedly appear throughout all three episodes: Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion, The Infernal Trio, and Atto Di Dolore.[1]
  • Some incidental music from The IPCRESS File (1965)

[edit] Trivia

  • contains footage of American President Ronald Reagan speaking on March 10 1982 following the signing of the proclamation authorized by Joint Resolution No. 142. Res. 142 called for the commemoration of March 21st as 'Afghanistan Day'. Text appearing in documentary is bolded, in context the speech reads:

"Coincidentally, the day after Afghanistan Day, this country plans to launch the third Columbia space shuttle. Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man's finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man's highest aspirations for freedom. The fact that freedom is the strongest force in the world is daily demonstrated by the people of Afghan. Accordingly, I am dedicating on behalf of the American people the March 22nd launch of the Columbia to the people of Afghanistan." full text of speech

[edit] See also

[edit] Concepts discussed

[edit] Media

[edit] References

[edit] Books recommended by Adam Curtis to follow up watching the series

[edit] Islamism

[edit] The history of Neoconservatism

[edit] "The weirdness of the 1990s"

[edit] External links

[edit] Video

[edit] Reviews

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