The Power of Nightmares

2004
The Power of Nightmares

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Baby It's Cold Outside Oct 20, 2004

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. The first part of the series explains the origins of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism.

EP2 The Phantom Victory Oct 27, 2004

Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. They are successful in repulsing the Soviet armies and, when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they were the primary architect of the "Evil Empire's" defeat and thus have the power to carry out their revolutions in their homelands. Curtis instead argues that the Soviets were on their last legs and were doomed to collapse without intervention.

EP3 The Shadows in the Cave Nov 03, 2004

Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. The film instead shows the United States government wanting to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, and needing to prove him to be the head of a criminal organisation to do so. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called "al-Qaeda". With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.
8.7| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 20 October 2004 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm
Synopsis

Examines how politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society.

... View More
Stream Online

The movie is currently not available onine

Director

Producted By

Trailers & Images

Reviews

jzappa Having come of age during the War on Terror and the Bush Doctrine, it has become particularly easy for me to grow detached from political voices and accept as true that left and right views have forever been at odds. Only toward the end of high school and into college did I begin to penetrate that ideological lather and see such bewildering things that had been happening all around me since I grew my first pube. There have been so many questions that I began to believe are unanswerable. How does the Bush Administration sleep at night? How do they sustain their morale? In what world do they think they're living? Most significantly, what drives them to intractably push forth on the things they did in those eight whirlwind years?The Power of Nightmares is a documentary with connotations and conclusions that are very far-reaching and extremely edgy. Most Conservatives, even the more understanding ones, could not, I imagine, even meet this film halfway. Regardless of my being on the polar opposite side of the political fence to them, why is it that I can believe such a bizarre history of what has spawned the people who've recklessly left us in chaos? Because it is the only piece yet from any medium that has answered all of those aforementioned questions. Even if the film were not true, had not gathered interviews with insiders and highly educated experts, had not compiled three hours of stock footage, it is all I've found that gets the heart of one's inquiring mind.Its three one-hour parts are composed chiefly of a montage of archive footage with the director, British TV journalist Adam Curtis's, narration, contrasting the augmentation of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, confronting comparisons with their inceptions and examining congruity between the two. Even more contented, it asserts that the menace of radical Islamism as a monumental, calculatedly systemized legion of annihilation, expressly in the embodiment of al-Qaeda, is an embellishment carried out by politicians in many countries, principally American Neo- Conservatives, in an effort to unify and urge their people following the collapse of earlier, more abstract nationalist ideas.The Power of Nightmares is a flowing cinematic dissertation, embedded in strenuously amassed affirmation, data and testimony, that magnifies and clarifies one's understanding and knowledge. It's a lofty, eye-opening and sometimes hilariously bizarre exposition of deep-seated contradictions by delving beneath the complacence of its surface meanings, subverting the inventions and actualities of global terrorism.It is refreshing to read these inscrutable people and finally come closer to understanding them. Death anxiety, lack of willingness to tolerate liabilities to more than one interpretation, a shortage of ready acceptance of experiences, impatience with conjecture, a pressing urge for the bottom line and discretionary structure, and the regard of any shrinkage of status or self-regard as an imminent danger all reinforce the intensity of one's all-around political conservatism. From the beginning with Leo Strauss and Sayyid Qutb, both becoming repulsed by what they saw as a debasement of morals and values in western society as a result of individualism, we see a mentality that has dispersed and grown both in the East and the West that tends to invoke bounds to personal freedoms, that's more vindictive toward criminals, and holds more traditionalistic religious doctrines. Neoconservatives are trying to forge an American empire, perhaps as follower of the British Empire, its ambition being to secure a dominant military and economic position of the United States. As imperialism is to a great extent seen as objectionable by the American public, one comes to understand why neoconservatives do not ever express their ideas or aspirations frankly.
eandubh I've seen the three BBC episondes as they are available online - in rather poor quality versions, that is. And I know that the film maker condensed it into a theater-length movie, and received acclaim at Cannes over it. He proclaimed that he didn't want the "Michael Moore treatment" - too bad! A little showmanship might have brought the film to the United States, where it has been basically excluded, censored, omitted and overlooked. That more accessible movie-style version is NOT being shown in the US, nor is it, apparently, available on DVD - which of course is a shame, since the film exposes much of the thinking behind the US' current maniacal drive to empire. Not only has the documentary never been aired on American TV - the film seems to have been very thoroughly and effectively suppressed - something to think about the next time you use the phrase "free country."
totalkhanage A wonderful piece of television. Thoughtful, focused and not afraid to lay bare a few truths with a well executed calm authority. It is such a shame that the pathetic US media is too scared to show such an informative and surprisingly informal piece of work. The government must have no way of fighting back against such candid and well researched material. I can not recommend this series enough for all Americans and fear not, even through it consists of considerably dark material there is a surprisingly optimistic ending and prediction of the future. Hopefully mankind still has enough decency and common value to stop dictators and unjust leaders from destroying the common good.
Benoît A. Racine (benoit-3) I have already seen two of the three episodes of this excellent BBC documentary which the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is showing in three parts on its CBC Newsworld channel. I will see the third one tonight.I can understand why it has never been shown in the States and why it probably never will. These three small TV hours contain way too much brutal truth for any American to endure with any degree of comfort. The parallels between the devious agendas of the American Neo-Conservatives and the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are uncanny: same logic, same malevolent means, same reliance on fear instead of reason.I can't understand, though, how Michael Moore' s sentimental and illogical hogwash documentaries get such a large release when a film like this one, which involves much more hard work and intelligence never gets to be shown where it could do the most good: in America.