The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Written and directed by Adam Curtis
BBC
2005
Rating:


Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" failed to convert the Bush faithful because it was only really preaching to the choir. Scattershot and incredibly snarky, "Fahrenheit 9/11" ultimately only appealed to those who find footage of Paul Wolfowitz having his make-up done inherently funny.

Television journalist Adam Curtis rectifies matters with his documentary "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear." Originally a three-part series for the BBC, Curtis' film arrives here as a three-hour tour de force that challenges everything you thought you knew about the founding of neo-conservative America and radical Islam. These antagonizing powers rose in tandem according to Curtis' thesis, and both were given birth to by the perceived failure of liberalism.

Egyptian social theorist Sayyid Qutb paid a visit to Greeley, Colo., in 1949 to evaluate America's education program. What he found was a country whose citizens he believed to be narcissistic, depraved and materialistic as a result of too much freedom, and he returned to Egypt in the hopes of preventing such freedom from spreading to the Muslim world.

At about the same time, University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss was beginning to teach his students that unchecked liberal freedom would eventually destroy America from within. Strauss taught that a series of myths must be perpetuated in order to regain control of the country. According to Strauss' philosophy, religion would serve as a desirable opiate of the masses, and it was necessary to create an enemy that posed as an impending threat, whether it really existed or not. By battling that threat, America would assert itself as the champion of good, like the white-hat-ed sheriff in "Gunsmoke," but more importantly, it would give Americans something to fear.

Among Curtis' most damning footage is Strauss acolyte Donald Rumsfeld, serving as Ronald Reagan's defense secretary, putting Strauss' philosophy into action by claiming Russia possessed advanced weapons systems it intended to use against the U.S. Rumsfeld's eerily familiar evidence for these weapons: they must exist because they can't be found. Meanwhile the followers of the executed Qutb, including future Osama Bin Laden advisor Aiman Al-Zawahari, declare war on civilians who won't join their revolution, because if they won't join, they must be infected by American liberalism.

In the final hour of "The Power of Nightmares," Curtis makes his boldest assertions: Al-Qaeda doesn't really exist and "the apocalyptic vision of Al-Qaeda portrayed by politicians and the media over the past four years is both a distortion and exaggeration." Curtis' claims come from London Observer reporter Jason Burke and his book "Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam." Burke and Curtis contend that Bin Laden is the head of a small terrorism unit containing perhaps less than 100 members and that this unit never called itself "Al-Qaeda" until United States intelligence agencies gave it the name. Bin Laden was named the leader of a global terrorism organization only so he could be tried in absentia for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing according to existing conspiracy laws. Al-Qaeda has been so difficult to find in its alleged hiding place in Tora Bora because Al-Qaeda doesn't actually exist.

Curtis allows a cloud of dubiousness to hang over these claims by not providing stronger evidence for them and by ignoring the role of the Persian Gulf War, oil and Israel have played on the current political climate, not to mention that war-baiting fearmongering has been used in America at least since the Spanish-American War of 1898. The need for narrative cohesion — something Moore's films lack — results in these omissions and weakens Curtis' argument.

Yet "The Power of Nightmares" places radical Islam and neo-conversativism in a historical context previously unexamined. Curtis' discovery that the two groups are staggeringly similar in their methods is the most searing indictment in an era where the only real journalism is being done in documentaries.

Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/power.of.nightmares