5,000 miles away in the Mexican jungle … He was Tiny Rowland and he too had been marginalised by the on-rush of the economy. Rowland believed that the Conservative Party had been corrupted by the boom. Both these men [Rowland and Goldsmith] wanted vengeance for their loss of power. And both now set out to destroy the Conservative Party. And they would be joined by a third vengeful tycoon who had been cast aside: Mohamed al-Fayed. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set IV: Twilight of the Dogs
Tiny Rowland was doing the same in Africa: he was taking over the old British-owned companies that had once dominated the empire. Rowland used ruthless methods to build a vast industrial empire; this included bribing the new rulers of independent Africa. They were methods that shocked the merchant banks in London. ibid.
The Conservatives’ boom had turned sour. It had led to inflation and industrial violence. And in November the Arab oil price rise pushed the market over the edge. It fell further than in the crash of 1929. The politicians now turned on the tycoons. When Rowland’s corrupt methods were revealed, Edward Heath publicly called him ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’. And Goldsmith was now seen as a greedy spiv who had torn British industry apart to make himself a fortune. ibid.
The bankers not the politicians would change Britain. ibid.
Rowland knew that he had been stopped because of his corrupt past. He was furious because to him it was the height of hypocrisy. Rowland knew that underneath the new shiny enterprise culture there was a growing mass of corruption, corruption on a far grander scale than anything he had indulged in. ibid.
Fayed paid MPs to defend him in Parliament … The lobbyists found it easy to buy MPs, not just because politicians were greedy but because increasingly they were disillusioned. They knew that power had shifted from parliament to the City of London. ibid.
Currency markets decided to take on the British government. They deliberately set out to force John Major to devalue and to leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism. It was to be a defining battle over who now really controlled Britain’s economy – the markets or the government. ibid.
‘There’s a divorce between the interests of major corporations and of society,’ ibid. James Goldsmith, television interview
1997: The Labour government gave away its power and the markets rewarded them. Money did not flee from London as it had done when previous Labour governments had been elected, and the boom continued. ibid.
The reality is that all these societies, not just America and Britain but China and Russia too, are exhausted, empty of any new ideas. All of them have corruption that has burrowed deep into their institutions. ibid.
Financial and political corruption on a huge scale … Those who ran many of America’s corporations were faking profits on an enormous scale … Despite the growing evidence of corruption, the Clinton administration portrayed the boom as something revolutionary. It was a genuine democracy of the market place in which everyone at all levels of society was benefiting. But this was completely untrue. Adam Curtis, The Trap II: The Lonely Robot, BBC 2007
The other part of Project Democracy was to use military force in secret operations to overthrow foreign regimes that stood in the way of freedom. The main target was the government of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were Marxist revolutionaries who had seized power in 1979; but since then they had held elections and had been democratically elected. The Reagan administration dismissed this though as a sham. And an operation was set up to enforce the right kind of democracy by overthrowing the Sandinistas if necessary. The man in charge was a leading Neo-Conservative Elliott Abrams. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free
The Americans started funding and training a counter-revolutionary army called the Contras. But there was enormous political opposition in the United States. And to get round it the leaders of Project Democracy set out to frighten the American public. An agency called The Office of Public Diplomacy was set up that disseminated what was called White Propaganda. It produced dossiers and fed stories to journalists that proved that Soviet fighter planes had arrived in Nicaragua to attack America. Another story from ‘intelligence sources’ said that the Soviets had given stockpiles of chemical weapons to the Sandinistas. President Reagan appeared on television with maps to show how quickly such a chemical attack could be launched on America itself. It was only a matter of time. ibid.
What was beginning to emerge was the problem of spreading freedom around the world. To do it those leading Project Democracy had turned not just to manipulation and violence but were beginning to undermine the ideals of democracy in America. The very thing they were trying to create abroad. It was the corruption of freedom that Isaiah Berlin had warned of. ibid.
A new elite was beginning to emerge who snapped up vast sections of Russian industry: they became known as the Oligarchs. ibid.
August 1998: Russia’s economy is out of control tonight and it’s causing an international financial crisis. Huge queues in Moscow. There’s a run on the banks. The Rouble’s lost nearly half its value. And prices are soaring. ibid. BBC News
Overnight, the Americans destroyed the civil structure of Iraqi society. But instead of trying to create new institutions ... the country would then be thrown open to international corporations who in return for investing, would take 100% of their profits out of the country untaxed. Only one of Saddam Hussein’s laws remained: the one that restricted trade unions. Out of this was supposed to come spontaneous order. What resulted was chaos. ibid.
What also resulted was corruption on a huge scale: more than $350 billion has been sent to Iraq for reconstruction. ibid.
The Americans began to turn to violence and torture to enforce their kind of freedom. ibid.
Positive liberty is driven by a vision that freedom is for something. The freedom to do or become something new. Out of which a better world would come. Negative liberty has no such vision. It isn’t for anything. At its heart it has no purpose other than to keep us free from unnecessary constraint or harm. And in using force to create a world based on negative liberty, the democratic revolutionaries have actually led millions people abroad into a world without purpose or meaning. This idea of freedom is still portrayed by many politicians and influential commentators as a universal absolute. They assume it is only a matter of time before it spreads throughout the world. But this may not be true. ibid.
The idea of freedom that we live with today is a narrow and limiting one; it was born out of a specific and dangerous time: the Cold War. It may have had meaning and purpose then as an alternative to communist tyranny but now has become a dangerous trap. Our government relies on a simplistic economic model of human beings that allows inequality to grow and offers nothing positive in the face of reactionary forces they have helped awake around the world. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were beginning to believe that their ideal of freedom was an absolute. And that this then justified lying and exaggerating in order to enforce that vision. The end justified the means. Although they portrayed the Contras as freedom fighters, it was well known that they used murder, assassination and torture. And also were allegedly using CIA-supplied planes to smuggle cocaine back into the United States. And to finance the Contras, the Neo-Conservatives were even prepared to deal with America’s enemy – the leaders of the Iranian revolution. In 1985 those running the Nicaragua operation held a series of secret meetings with Iranian leaders in Europe. They arranged to sell the Iranians American weapons; in return the Iranians would release American hostages held in Lebanon. Then the money from these sales would be used by those running Project Democracy to fund the Contras. The only problem was that this was completely illegal. And the President knew it. ibid.
What was beginning to emerge was the problem of spreading freedom around the world. To do it those leading Project Democracy had turned not just to manipulation and violence but were beginning to undermine the ideals of democracy in America. The very thing they were trying to create abroad. It was the corruption of freedom that Isaiah Berlin had warned of. ibid.
In 1989 across eastern Europe the people rose up to overthrow their communist leaders. It was a remarkable series of revolutions. All driven by the desire for freedom and the ending of tyranny. ibid.
A form of order and a new kind of democracy in which the market, not politics, gave people what they wanted. But things didn’t work out how the theory predicted. ibid.
Isaiah Berlin was wrong: not all attempts to change the world for the better lead to tyranny. ibid.
This is a film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon. Just like him we have all become paranoid weirdos. It’s the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better. Adam Curtis, Paranoia and Moral Panics, short film 2010
Once upon a time politicians believed the could change the world. ibid.
The journalist began to uncover the strangest thing: hey found corruption in the heart of the elites who ran their country. Politicians and civil servants took bribes. The security services assassinated people illegally. Policemen concocted evidence and sold drugs. And even senior doctors covered up terrible mistakes. And as the journalists exposed all this, they began to sound like – Richard Nixon. That there really were hidden conspiracies in the heart of the establishment. And then in an even odder twist the journalists found an unlikely ally – Mrs Thatcher … that secretly they were running things in their own interests. ibid.
The news and television programmes have ended up taking serious threats to society and exaggerating and distorting them. By doing this they have created a widespread mood of fear in society. And a suspicion of those who lead us. And in the process millions of us have become exactly like Richard Nixon – paranoid. ibid.