Title:
- The Power of Nightmares
- The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Language: English
Year: 2004
Episode: 03
Cast:
- Adam Curtis
- John Calvert
- Harvey Mansfield
- Stanley Rosen
- Azzam Tamimi
- Faroud Allam
- Roxanne Euben
- Lyndon Johmson
- Irving Kristol
- William Kristol
- Stephen Holmes
- Henry Kissinger
- Richard Nixon
- Donald Rumsfeld
- Melvin Goodman
- Richard Pipes
- Anne Cahn
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- Omar Azzam
- Anwar Sadat
- Kamal Habib
- Azzam Tamimi
- Paul Weyrich
- Michael Ledeen
- Melvin Goodman
- Jack Wheeler
- Richard Perle
- Milton Bearden
- Abdullah Anas
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Vladimir Pozner
- Gilles Kepel
- Saif al Banna
- Ali Haroun
- Essam el Erian
- Brent Scowcroft
- Michael Lind
- William Weld
- Diane Blair
- Bob Matera
- David Brock
- Robert Bork
- Joe Conason
- Ayman Zawahiri
- Jason Burke
- Sam Schmidt
- Vincent Cannistraro
- Roger Lane
- Paul Wolfowitz
- David Cole
- Ron Hansen
- William Swor
- John Molloy
- Bill Durodie
- John Prados
- Theodore Rockwell
- Lewis Koch
- David Johnston
SYNOPSIS
The Power of Nightmares is a documentary composed of three parts: (1) Baby It's Cold Outside, (2) The Phantom Victory, and (3) The Shadows in the Cave.
In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They have different ways of achieving this, but that power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed, and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role that restores that power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, a powerful and and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world; a threat that needs to be fought by war on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits.
Baby It's Cold Outside
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American Neo-Conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists that were born out of the failing of the liberal dream to build a better world, and both have a very similar explanation for what caused that failure.
These two groups have changed the world but not in the way that either intended; together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.
The Phantom Victory
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American Neo-Conservatives and the radical Islamists. In this week's episode, the two groups come together to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. And both believe that they defeated the evil empire and so had the power to transform the world, and both failed in their revolutions.
In response, the Neo-Conservatives invent a new fantasy enemy, Bill Clinton, to try and regain their power while the Islamists descend into a desperate cycle of violence and terror to try and persuade the people to follow them. Out of all this comes the seeds of the strange world of fantasy, deception, violence and fear in which we now live.
The Shadows in the Cave
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American Neo-Conservatives and the radical Islamists. Last week's episode ended in the late 1990s, with both groups marginalized and out of power.
With the attacks on September 11th, the fates of both dramatically changed. The Islamists, after their moment of triumph, were virtually destroyed within months while the Neo-Conservatives took power in Washington.
But then, the Neo-Conservatives began to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy and as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realized the new power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. Those with the darkest nightmares became the most powerful.
REVIEW
The Power of Nightmares is an interesting documentary about how politicians used people's fears to gain power and authority.
The whole documentary series can be viewed online at ThoughtMaybe - The Power of Nightmares, with some information from its writer and producer Adam Curtis.
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The Power of Nightmares
