In the past politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people had lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen increasingly as managers in public life … Politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares; they say that they will rescue us from terrible dangers that we cannot see and do not understand, and the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, a powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world, a threat that needs to be fought by a War on Terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. Adam Curtis: The Power of Nightmares I: Baby It’s Cold Outside, BBC 2004
Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. ibid.
What Qutb believed what he was seeing was a hidden and dangerous reality underneath the surface of ordinary American life … American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards; they were becoming isolated beings. ibid.
This group became known as the Neo-Conservatives. The Neo-Conservatives were idealists; their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed personal freedoms had unleashed. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were going to have to defeat one of the most powerful men in the world: Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State under President Nixon and he didn’t believe in a world of good and evil. What drove Kissinger was a ruthless pragmatic vision of power in the world. With America’s growing political and social chaos, Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles; instead, it should come to terms with countries like the Soviet Union to create a new kind of global interdependence, a world in which America would be safe. ibid.
But a world without fear was not what the Neo-Conservative wanted to pursue their purpose. And they now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. ibid.
They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerard Ford: one was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense, the other was Dick Cheney, the president’s Chief of Staff. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives were successful in creating a simplistic fiction: a vision of the Soviet Union as the centre of all evil in the world. ibid.
This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth [Leo] Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true but it was necessary. ibid.
Religion was being mobilised in America for a very different purpose. And those encouraging this were the Neo-Conservatives. Many Neo-Conservatives had become advisors to the political campaign of Ronald Reagan. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives believed that they had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny … in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was … the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network coordinated by Moscow to take ever the world. ibid.
Reagan agreed to give the Neo-Conservatives what they wanted … The country would now fight covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world. ibid.
They began to believe their own fiction … [they] were going to use force to change the world. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. And out of that triumph was going to come a central myth that still inspires them today. That through the aggressive use of American power they could transform the world and spread democracy. But in reality their victory was an illusion. They had conquered a phantom enemy … It was a decrepit system decaying from within. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives set out to reform America. And at the heart of their project was the political use of religion. Together with their long-term allies, the religious right, they began a campaign to bring moral and religious issues back into the center of conservative politics. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives religion was a myth … Strauss had taught that these myths were necessary to give ordinary people meaning and purpose and do ensure a stable society. ibid.
Out of this [Neo-Conservative] campaign a new and powerful moral agenda began to take over the Republican Party. It reached a dramatic climax with the Republican Convention in 1992 when the religious right seized control of the Party’s policy making machinery. George Bush became committed to run for President with policies that would ban abortion, gay rights and multiculturalism. ibid.
By the mid-’90s politics in Washington was dominated by one issue: the moral character of the President of the United States. Behind this were an extraordinary barrage of allegations against Clinton that were obsessing the media. These included stories of sexual harassment, stories that Clinton and his wife were involved in Whitewater, a corrupt property deal, stories they had murdered their close friend, Vince Foster, and stories that Clinton was involved in smuggling drugs from a small airstrip in Arkansas. ibid.
Finally, his [Starr’s] committee stumbled upon Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky which Clinton denied. ibid.
By 1997 Bin Laden & Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan where they had first met ten years before … The new jihad would be against America itself. ibid.
By 1998 all their attempts to transform America by creating a moral revolution had failed. Faced with the indifference of the people, the Neo-Conservatives had become marginalized in both domestic and foreign policy. But with the attacks that were about to hit America the Neo-Conservatives would at last find the evil enemy they had been searching for ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in their reaction to the attacks the Neo-Conservatives would transform the failing Islamist movement into what would appear to be the grand revolutionist cause that Zawahiri had always dreamed of. But much of it would exist only in people’s imaginations. It would be the next phantom enemy. ibid.
The American Neo-Conservatives and radical Islamism … the two groups come together to fight the Soviet Union In Afghanistan … Both failed in their revolutions. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares II: The Phantom Victory
The strange world of fantasy, deception, violence and fear in which we now live. ibid.
The Americans were setting out to defeat a mythological enemy. ibid.
American money and weapons now began to pour across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan. ibid.
Zawahiri and his small group settled in Peshawar … a military rejection of all American influence over the jihad, because America was the source of this corruption. ibid.
Then in 1987 the New Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev decided he was going to withdraw Russian troops from Afghanistan. Gorbachev was convinced that the whole Soviet system was facing collapse. He was determined to try and save it through political reform and this meant reversing the policies of his predecessors including the occupation of Afghanistan. ibid.
For the Neo-Conservatives the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. And out of that triumph was going to come a central myth that still inspires them today. That through the aggressive use of American power they could transform the world and spread democracy. But in reality their victory was an illusion. ibid.
Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from terrible dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism ... 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. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares III: The Shadows in the Cave
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 begun to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy. And as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realised the new power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. ibid.
Betty Ford’s admission began to have a dramatic effect. In its wake stories began to pour out [post Betty Ford] of people all across America who were also addicted to Valium. It seemed that there was a private hidden world of anxiety behind the public faces that affected millions of people. But Arthur Sackler who in the 1960s had promoted Valium as beneficial and non-addictive was unrepentant. And a company that he and his two brothers had started was about to develop a new drug: a synthetic form of opium called Oxycontin, and that was going to deal with the next wave of anxiety that would hit America. ibid.
The ultimate political goal at the heart of our age is the idea of individual freedom. In Britain our government has set out to create a revolution that will free individuals from old elites and bureaucracies. A new world where we are free to choose our lives not be trapped by class or income into predestined roles … ‘To liberate Britain from all the old class divisions, old structures, old prejudices [Blair] …’ Adam Curtis, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom: Fuck You Buddy, BBC 2007
It is a very strange kind of freedom. The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has led to the rise of a new and increasingly controlling system of management driven by targets and numbers. While governments committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas have actually presided over a rise in inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege. And abroad the attempt to create democracy has led not just to bloody mayhem but a rejection of the American-led campaign to bring freedom. ibid.
[Friedrich] Von Hayek had fled the Nazis and now taught at the University of Chicago: Hayek was convinced that the use of politics to plan society was far more dangerous than any problems produced by companies. ibid.