Fear whether real or imagined is used since the dawn of time for manipulation. Fear breeds revenge, hate, prejudice, arrogance, envy, greed and uncovers worst of all instincts. It is so easy to manipulate and exploit this human emotion.

I saw an excellent documentary last week, I would say maybe the best alternative docu in a long time. It is called The Power of Nightmares, directed by Adam Curtis and produced by the BBC. The basic idea of this documentary is that the war on terror on larger scale is an illusion fueled by the neo-conservatives and islamists. Adam Curtis tells the story over a period of almost half of 20th century, covering the activities and the history of both groups. He introduces the neo-cons as strongly influenced by the ideas of Leo Strauss, which believed that liberal societies need simple and powerful myths to inspire and unite the people.

Documentary starts with showing how the former Soviet Union threat was exaggerated by the US government. I agree that the threat was indeed exaggerated, but I need to say that it's not easy to difference between proper and misleading intelligence information. Everyone is a general after the battle, eh?

At the same time, the islamists are trying to resist what they see as a culture of selfishness and individualism that will eventually tear their society apart, called "freedom" by Americans. They see it as major "infection" spreading from the west.

Next part shows how the US and islamists are collaborating to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union falls apart because it has rotted out from within, each group imagines that they defeated the evil red empire. In both cases, Curtis demonstrates how the enemy was exaggerated up to make it appear to be much more dangerous than it was in reality. The director shows a good evidence here via a lot of interviews.

After viewing the documentary, and seeing the radical islamists and neo-cons speak for themselves, it's a bit hard for me to call it biased or liberal propaganda. For both groups studied, the presented evidence don't make them look very good.

It is well produced, soundtrack is also great with creating of a tragicomical atmosphere. However nothing is as simplistic as this documentary tries to describe, it is also a little bit naive to think that neo-cons beliefs are idealistic as they are portrayed, also the neo-cons didn't come to power as a result of 9/11. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were already in the Defense Department long before 9/11. How could it be that a three hour documentary did not mention anything about greed or over-powered corporations and their influence over governments? I also think that majority of Americans want America to remain No.1 sole global super-power, but hey this is normal human behaving. We want to be No.1 and also what do you think what would China or Russia do with the same power as the US has? It's now probably the best option for the west to have the US acting as the global police.

It's a shame that the BBC is spreading the fear and hype too, yes I know that at least in less blockbuster manner than CBS or CNN. Frankly, I don't think this will change soon. Yeah the media is business and fear sells and unfortunately we're consuming it daily. We will probably never know the truth, because we don't have enough information, but what seems to me as certain is that we demand fresh news everyday and it's quite easy to inform us about death, disasters or just blindly fuel our fear with terrorism threat. Unfortunately they just show us what majority wants to see.

There is an extremely funny TV interview with Donald Rumsfeld in the docu where he is explaining how sophisticated and complex are the caves where terrorists are creating their plans to dominate the world. That was really hilarious!

Believe me you need to see this.

Download the documentary:
You can download it via bittorrent here or directly part1 part2 part3. Keep in mind that the files are quite big and if you're not able to play them try to download the XviD codec. Contact me if you have problems with downloading.

Links:
Power of Nightmares re-awakened
The making of the terror myth
The film US TV networks dare not show
The Power of Nightmares @ Wikipedia
Neoconservatism @ Wikipedia
Islamism @ Wikipedia