I already told some about the BBC 3-part series entitled The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, but after watching them I have to expound further on their greatness. The programme describes the rise of both radical Islamism and neoconservative thought in the 50's. Both derived tremendous power from the ashes of the failure of the liberal dream to substantially improve people's lives. Additionally, the leftism prevalent in the 60's and 70's and its attendent individual freedoms threatened to erode the bonds of modern society in the eyes of both groups. With the fall of traditional conservatism after Nixon and Kissinger left office, the stage was set for the neocons to usher in a new age. By demonizing the USSR, Reagan/Bush and their advisors successfully mobilized political fervor. The undercover support of freedom fighters in Afghanistan put neoconservatism in bed with Islamists, and both claimed the fall of the Soviet Union as their own victory (though Gorbechev's reforms and the already rotting Soviet infrastructure were the true reasons behind the fall). Without an "evil" enemy to defend against, both movements went into free fall. The neocons spent the next decade mobilizing the religious right (who had previously been told to stay away from the polls by their preachers) and fighting the nebulous moral enemy personified by Bill Clinton. The Islamists attempted to oust the "impure" members of society and their own movement and ended up self-destructing.
Then came 9/11. The neocons snapped into action and declared a new enemy of evil. Previously, Al Qaeda had been more or less invented out of whole cloth so that the US could prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the embassy bombings. This was necessary because bin Laden could only be linked to the crimes if it could be proved that he was the leader of some organization (think of RICO and the Mafia). That convenient definition of Al Qaeda was promulgated by the administration, who had no real proof that such a vast network existed. The show goes to much effort and into much detail in the third episode to show that such a network never existed (and indeed that bin Laden never used the term Al Qaeda until after the US did!) but that those in charge simply did not care because it fit their preconceived notions of good and evil. (BTW, this lack of concern for real facts was presaged by the five or six invented Clinton scandals that all amounted to nothing). Having a phantom enemy to hunt down, the US and UK pushed full tilt into designing ways to stop it. They adopted the precautionary principle (from 80's environmentalism, no less!) which states that if you believe an attack is possible, you must act in advance to stop it even without any evidence that such an attack is imminent or likely. You must stop people from attacking before you have proof that they will or have even thought of doing so. In this state of affairs, the person with the bleakest and most grim outlook on affairs carries the day because the worst situation you can imagine must be protected against. It also means you can never come to a point of success because the imagination can always fabricate new demons.
I'm not doing the program justice, even with this long diatribe. It is more thoughtful and makes a much stronger case, and it also has lots of archival footage from educational and propaganda films (including some Jam Handy films that I have seen). Really well done and simply fascinating. I recommend you hightail it to your nearest bittorrent client and get downloading, cause you're not gonna see it on TV over here and what does the BBC care anyway? 

posted by natedogg in Something at 07:57PM CST on Nov 14 [trackback] (8 comments total)