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The Power of Nightmares
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Did anybody watch this tonight? Was on BBC 2 at 9pm, it was truely amazing and revealing. It explained the roots of neo-conservatism and ISlamic fundamentalism and explained a lot of the history behind the forces that are now fekkin up our world.
It explained how these groups use fear to control society and where their ideals originated from.
There are still two more episodes in the series, watch them! They're on on Wednesday nights at 9pm on BBC 2, it's well worth it.
It explained how these groups use fear to control society and where their ideals originated from.
There are still two more episodes in the series, watch them! They're on on Wednesday nights at 9pm on BBC 2, it's well worth it.
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thats gonna be the reaction of most people who saw it im afraid to say, apathy will rise up and consume as all, the forces of darkness will gather in great numbers and we are awllllll gowwwnnnnaa Dahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! >SMACK!< stop it.
No seriously that was possibly the most intriqueing documentary i have ever seen, shed an entirely different light on US conservativism for me. Im even rewriting one of my essays to include Strauss, scary stuff and very worrying. Extremism is indeed a real and present threat.
The best being a press conferance by Rumfield when he was last Secretary of Defence talking about the USSR.
"We know they have weapons, we know they are building up their weapons, we know they are going against treaties..."
Sound familiar?
Can someone give me a bit more of a detailed breakdown of what the documentary covered and the main points etc? I'm hoping to catch the other two parts next week.
How they saw liberals as a problem and degrading society with individualism.
And starting the myth of America as being the only true Good place and that it was America's purpose to battle against Evil.
And that this battle would bring society together.
So, they made the threat from the USSR seem nastier and now the insinuation is that they are making up the terror threat.
There was also comparisons between Fundermentalist Islamic thinkers and hardline Neo-Cons. In that they use the same sorts of thinking and devices to control the society.
Yeah I couldn't believe that bit. The USSR had no weapons so Rumsfield got his mates in to 'find' them, then when they couldn't they just assumed "well if we can't find them they must be so hi-tech that they avoid detection", I mean really! This guy was telling a nation that the Communists were gonna kill them with no evidence at all, even overruling the experts in the CIA who knew the truth.
'The Power of Nightmares began as an investigation of something else, the rise of modern American conservatism. Curtis was interested in Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the university of Chicago in the 50s who rejected the liberalism of postwar America as amoral and who thought that the country could be rescued by a revived belief in America's unique role to battle evil in the world. Strauss's certainty and his emphasis on the use of grand myths as a higher form of political propaganda created a group of influential disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, now the US deputy defence secretary. They came to prominence by talking up the Russian threat during the cold war and have applied a similar strategy in the war on terror.
'As Curtis traced the rise of the "Straussians", he came to a conclusion that would form the basis for The Power of Nightmares. Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going). Although the Islamists and the Straussians have fallen out since then, as the attacks on America in 2001 graphically demonstrated, they are in another way, Curtis concludes, collaborating still: in sustaining the "fantasy" of the war on terror.'
Straussians should note that Tony Blair's youngest child, Leo, is actually named after the PM's father. No, really.