The need for nightmares

TV Review: The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of The Politics of Fear, BBC Two, 3 part series

On Wednesdsay night, the last part of a short documentary, The Power of Nightmares [1], was aired by BBC Two. The documentary aimed to show viewers that with the loss of confidence in the ideologies of the 20th-century, and with politicians unable to provide 'visions for the future' to their people, they have resorted to using and exaggerating fear to manipulate public opinion, primarily in the US and UK. This fear, it was claimed, is maintained by constant reference to some evil and dark Other, which today takes the shape of 'International Terrorism', a wholly fictitious creation, sustained by the rhetoric of the politician and the sensationalism of the media. Curtis maintained throughout the whole series that people with the 'darkest nightmares have now become the most powerful'.

In order to set the stage for this final message, Adam Curtis, the documentary producer (who also narrates his own script), provided his viewers with an historical survey of the 'neo-conservatives' in the United States, and 'radical Islamists', especially two prominent Egyptians, Sayyid Qutb [2] and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 'neo-conservative' movement (if we can call it that) emerges from the intellectuals who lay claim to the ideas of Leo Strauss, an American historian of political philosophy. Strauss, it was claimed, criticised liberal America for breaking the bonds that hold society together by destroying and trivialising important myths. Strauss believed that the restoration of these myths would restore America's greatness. And the two myths that were central to this were religion to hold society together, and the role of America in the world to eradicate evil. The neo-conservatives, some of them students of Strauss, took these ideas on board with vigour, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of Lyndon Jonhson's 'Great Society'.

The documentary contrasts this with the rise and fall of Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian. Qutb, who after a visit to America around the same as Strauss was forming his ideas, is shocked to find that people place their own selfish desires before everything else, where bonds that hold society together are gradually worn away. The idea being portrayed here is that the same liberalism Strauss criticised, Qutb also found disturbing. Qutb realised that this same 'disease' was infecting Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere. What was needed was the rise of a pure vanguard, that would usher in the Islamic state to protect Muslim societies from such evils.

Curtis, whose job is not to provide a detailed account of Strauss' philosophy, nevertheless does lead people to believe that there is more than a passing similarity between the ideas of Sayyid Qutb and the American. But this would be false. 'Philosophically', Qutb and Strauss did not share the same views: Qutb can be regarded as an 'existentialist' [3] of some form, whereas Strauss seems to be more concerned with estoeric/extoeric readings of philosophy, and by criticising the modern approach to reason wanted to recreate the elitist status of philosophers. [4] I do not know Strauss' political beliefs (apart from his label as a conservative), but the need to believe in myths is hardly the preserve of conservatives or religious people: liberal mythology is important to oil ideas about progress, science, rationality and human rights. [5]

The successes and failures of the 'radical Islamists' and the 'neo-conservatives' are recorded throughout the first two parts of the documentary. Wanting to overcome the détente between the US and the USSR (whose demonisation they regarded as central to their good-evil division of the world), neo-conservative characters in and around the administration began charging the Soviet Union with secretly developing powerful weapons. Supporters of this thinking within the administration, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, began publically attacking the USSR for ignoring their obligations (cut to a scene of Rumsfeld declaring, "they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates"... sounds familiar doesn't it?). Interestingly here Henry Kissinger (described as a "ruthless pragmatist"), a man widely reviled, is protrayed in a somewhat better light -- it was Kissinger who wanted the US to draw closer to the USSR to secure a more stable world.

Team B was set up by more hawkish individuals to prove this conclusion and was headed by a certain Richard Pipes. This inquiry team poured through every single fact they could get hold of, but were unable to prove anything. The CIA stated that the Soviet Union was in turmoil, and would be in no position to threaten America or its interests. Team B accused the CIA of being interested in merely counting weapons and not being imaginative enough. It was only Team B that could go beyond the deception of the USSR and see that they actually had powerful weapons, even though proof of them did not exist (this all seems horribly familiar).

It was also here that the 'Religious Right' is first mobilised in support of the neo-conservatives vision of a revival of a moral American society. Millions of Evangelicals flocked out to support Reagan. One preacher is seen declaring that, "I’m sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals, and the perverts, and the liberals, and the leftists, and the Communists coming out of the closet! It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet, out of the churches, and change America! We must do it!" Once in power, neo-conservatives, who were awarded prominent positions within the administration, set about trying to show Reagan the threat they believed was posed by the USSR. This they did by insisting that the Soviets ran a worldwide terrorist network, and that the small local affairs, such as the IRA, the PLO etc. were simply fronts for this terror network. The CIA laughed off such a claim. One memorable part of the series is the admission by a former CIA agent that these charges against the Soviet Union, that it was funding a worldwide terrorist network, were wholly the creation of the CIA themselves -- black propoganda. Even more bizarrely, the head of the CIA under Reagan, William Casey, refused to believe his own staff even when they told him that the proofs being used were all their own work. Casey simply dismissed his own Head of Soviet Affairs, and preferred to believe people like Michael Leeden who were pushing this theory strongly. From here American foreign policy was changed to push back the Soviet Union (rather than simply contain their influence). And they did this by support the Afghans against the Soviet invaders.

But this victory is a false one according to Curtis. The Soviets were an ailing force, crumbling from within. They were never as powerful and omnipotent as the neo-conservatives had made out. In the early nineties, during the "culture wars", the extreme religious wing of the Republican Party took over the public agenda. This brought to and end Bush Senior's reign, and more significantly, neo-conservative influence in the White house. The Clinton years were ushered in.

Al-Zawahiri and his associates had already failed in the early 1980s to enflame the Muslim masses to the extent that they would rise up aganist their corrupt rulers. The assassination of Sadat, the Egyptian autocrat, failed to create the revolution they were seeking, even after Khomeini had shown this was possible in Iran. In Afghanistan, during the Soviet war, they clashed with moderate 'Islamists' who wanted to create "pure" Islamic societies within their own homelands using the political process and democracy.

After the use of the ballot box failed in the mid-1990s, notabley in Algeria, al-Zawahiri moved to the extreme theological position of declaring the masses to be corrupted disbelievers and heretics who had been infected by materialism, and to be fought using terror until they submitted to their grand vision of Islam as a total and impregnable political system. A core tenant of Sunni political theory, as propounded by the classical Muslim jurists, was political quietism: revolutionary ideas would have been abhorrent to them, and this is why Qutb had even charged leading Muslim scholars of being complicit in crimes by the state. This, however, is nothing new in Muslim history: the early Muslim community had to fend off similar extremism from Kharijism. Algeria was used as an example of this modern day Kharijism -- just like their historical counterparts, these modern groups began killing not only everyone they regarded as disbelievers (the Algerian population at large), but eventually themselves. The psychosis these groups labour under manifests itself in their neurotic behaviour. A former associate of al-Zawahiri, and co-founder of the Egyptain Islamic Jihad, admits there was a level of self-righetousness among self-proclaimed 'defenders of Islam' such that they could never admit to being wrong. And self-righteousness always corrupts. All the generals running Algeria had to do was infiltrate these groups, use this ideology to their advantage, magnify the situation, and use the fear to stay in power. And this they did.

The neo-conservatives, meanwhile, were busy smearing their new 'enemy', Bill Clinton, in an attempt to return to the centres of government. The Lewinsky Affair is painted as a 'neo-conservative' attempt to dump Clinton out of power, using moral language in public to attack Clinton's immorality, while pursuing a dirty tricks campaign in secret. There is even an admission of this by David Brock. To what extent this is true, I cannot say.

The failures of the Islamist movements in the 1990s, brought them back together with the neo-conservatives at the turn of the century, though this time at loggerheds; this is examined in the third part of the documentary. With Bush regaining power in 2000, leading 'neo-conservatives' came back into the corridors of power. But they had to wait till post-September 11, to have any effect on a President who had shown little interest in the outside world (cue, some footage of a pre-2001 Bush scoffing at the idea of America investing resources into other nations and 'telling them how to live'). It is now that the neo-conservatives once again had the chance to pursue their idea of the good America fighting evil all over the world.

This evil takes the shape of network al-Qa'ida (lots of clips of Rumsfeld and Bush talking about 'evil networks') and bin Laden, and the countless sleeper cells all over the globe, and more fighteningly, in the US, of terrorists set to use all kinds of cruel weapons on an unsuspecting public. Bin laden and his cohorts are shown to be living in a well-built, fortified set of caves in Afghanistan. His tentacles reach out to well-trained individuals hiding in sleeper cells (where's Sam Fisher when you need him?). All of a sudden talk of dirty bombs and chemical weapons were en vogue. Newspapers and television wheeled out story after story, expert after expert, on the terrorism. These sleeper cells were broken. From Portland to Buffalo, from London to Manchester, terrorists were arrested and thrown in jail. These successes were lauded by the media and governments. Politicians, once again feeling a sense of importance stepped up to challange the nightmare of terrorism. Civil liberties were pressured as we were told that 'liberty' must make way for 'freedom' in order to preserve 'our way of life'. People could now be detained without proof of any crime, as long as it was felt a terrorist outrage had been stopped. [6] Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh Prison were created. The politician was now once again providing visions; but these visions were darker, more sinister and it needed the politician to save us from these nightmares.

This, contends Curtis, was all a distortion of reality. The reality, when considered in sobriety, was much different. The caves turned out to be small dusty holes on caves across Afghanistan, with nothing more than a few hand weapons. The legions of henchman around bin Laden turned out to be rural Afghans who had fought a foreign invader -- most of his 'network' was destroyed in the American attack on Afghanistan, and many found themselves locked up in Guantanamo. His network was nothing more than a name the Americans had dreamt up. The men arrested in the sleeper cells turned out be guilty of doodling on scrap books, taping their holiday to Disney Land, or staying a hostel where an Australian backpacker had left his tourist map. An expert on weapons revealed that the dirty bomb would, if effectively managed, not kill a single person. And, of course, the media was never there to report when a person suspected of terrorism was released of all such charges.

Some critics have pointed that terrorism and the threat from terrorists is real and not imagined. Madrid and Bali can be quoted as horrific examples. This is very true. But then they would have missed the whole point of Curtis' documentary: that politicians maniuplate and exaggerate this fear in order to give themselves a more imporant role, and that the more hype attached to the threat, the more politicians can do as they wish. Afterall, Curtis admits that there might well be a terrorist attack, and that people do indeed wish to perform terrorist outrages. Britons know all about this: they lived through the threat from the IRA. What he points out is the idea of mass-networks (al-Qa'ida), working in synch with each other with terrorists around the world (in sleeper cells), all subservient to an evil leader (bin Laden) is a myth, an old tactic used during the Reagan era with relation to the Soviet Union. This is sustained by the rhetoric of the politician and the media frenzy that follows any announcement related 'terrorism'. He does not, at any stage declare tha the actions of terrorists are "justified" in anyway. If anything he shows the extremist nature of Muslim zealots, and how the vast majority of Muslims have not responded to their calls.

And this use of fear is not limited to politicians in the US or the UK. Now anyone who wishs to carry out a terrorist attack need simply declare themselves to be al-Qa'ida or an affiliate of the 'group' in order to create as much fear as possible. In essence, Curtis is telling is that ideas are also powerful weapons; the idea of fear, the power of nightmares, being the biggest of the lot.

Does Curtis exaggerate? Yes, I believe so. It isn't explicit, but he does suggest that everything in American politics in the last 25 years is due to the neo-conservatives. This is a little far-fetched and can be interpreted as a 'conspiracy'. People called 'neo-conservatives' have differences amongst themselves. Some endorse social liberalism, which is abhorred by the Christian Right in the USA. There is certainly no single 'movement' working in tandem, and this is what Curtis' constant use of the word implies. But he is telling us a story, as most documentaries do, and so we the viewer need to be discerning and pick apart the documentary at the holes and question the 'facts'. Those with grand political ideals and aspirations -- which certain people labelled 'neo-conserative' and 'Islamists' do indeed have -- will always use any situation to their advantage; this we have learnt from the 20th-century. Further, it should be noted that it was the Carter administration that first dreamt up the idea of using 'Islam' as a banner under which the Soviets should be fought. If the 'neocons' used this tactic then this was modern politics at play; nothing more conspiritorial than that.

A comment at the end of the third episode from a defence analyst was illuminating. A culture of fear, he said, had been created where people who believe in anything are labelled 'fundamentalists'. This seems true of the reaction among European (liberal) newspapers in the wake of Bush's re-election.

That this is a well-made documentary, no doubt. As a work of art, this is film-making at its finest. The smugness of a Michael Moore, as one TV critic put it, is non-existent in this film. He cleverly shows how the ideas he is exposing repeat themselves over and over again. Contemporary issues relating to that war find themselves seeping in at every scene, like the figment of destructive weapons (the ones that really, really do exist, but we just can't find them). He weaves 'background' footage together seamlessly, each shot or clip his attempt to magnify the claims in the mind of the viewer. There are 1970s Egyptian commercials (Qutb's fear of Westernisation). American shows like Perry Mason (the clever philosopher hiding the "real" truth). Shots from the classic terrorist training camp (hooded men running onwards, ever onwards, like soulless automatons). WASPs with bad makeup from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The jerky camera movements of footage from Sadat's assasination. Clips depicting genies being released from the bottle from 1950s Hollywood movies (terrorism). Every so often, scenes from Strauss' favourite television show, Gunsmoke, pop up once in a while to highlight the need for the public's simple understanding of good and evil. In the background the somtimes chilling, sometimes silly, music simply highlights what Curtis wants you the viewer to think and feel. People have agendas he is telling us -- but then so does he.

But as for new information? Regardless of the odd gem (the CIA admissions, the open admissions by Leeden and Pipes), I think we've seen this all before, if never in such a coherent narrative.

Notes
[1] See the following links for a synopsis of each part: Part I: "Baby It's Cold Outside"; Part II: "The Phantom Victory"; Part III: "The Shadows in the Cave". Transcripts of the first two episodes can be found at Stilt: Part I (1, 2); Part II (1, 2).

[2] For more on Qutb's writings, see his own works: al-Adalah Alijtima’iyyah Fil-Islam, 1949; Fi Thilalil-Quran, 1979; Ma'alim fi'l Tariq, 1980. Translations of his all three works are available in English. For a reader in Qutb try Ibahim Abu Rabi, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World,  New York: State Univ of New York Press, 1996, especially chapters 4-6.

[3] For an informative discussion on Qutb's philosophy, see  Laith Al-Saud, "Understanding Sayyid Qutb's Philosophy as Illuminationist and Existentialist", Journal of Islamic Philosophy, <"http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/journal/is-01/qutb1.doc">.

[4] I came across Strauss in a book review discussing the ressurection of multiple narratives beyond modernism in The Muslim Book Review, and admist a discussion on the problems underlining human rights discourse in the provocative The End of Human Rights. The following link is dedicated to Strauss' philosophical ideas.

[5] See Margret Canovan, "On Being Economical with the Truth: Some Liberal Reflections", Political Studies, Vol. 38, 1990; and Talal Asad, Formation of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, especially chapter 1, where he discusses Canovan as well other ideas about liberalism and myth.

[6] An almost throw away comment made was that this sort of 'pre-emptive' action -- acting before there was any evidence available -- was first used by enviromentalists, who stated that if we did not act before we had any solid evidence of global warming, it would be too late once this evidence did arise.