A Preview of : The Power of Nighmares (BBC)
by Dr. Azzam Tamimi

Adam Curtis BBC three-part series “The Power of Nightmares, the Rise of the Politics of Fear” promises to be one of the best documentaries on the roots and interconnections of ‘Islamic extremism’ and ‘neo-conservatism’ ever shown on British television. “Baby it’s cold outside” is the title of the first part, which will be shown on BBC2 at 21:00 (9 pm) on Wednesday 20 October. The one-hour long programme begins with a brief introduction, which will then be repeated at the start of each of the other two one-hour long programmes, that sums up the theme of the entire series: Having miserably failed to provide their peoples with the dreams they always promised, rulers, viewers are told, have turned to promising the ruled protection from incredible nightmares that in reality simply do not exist.

The story begins with the arrival in the United States of America in the late forties of the 20th century by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian educationist who had come to learn the American approach to education. Part One tells the story of Qutb’s disillusionment with liberal individualist America. Then it parallels that with telling the story of Leo Strauss who was equally disturbed by the corruption of the liberal system. Upon his return to Egypt, Qutb endeavours to protect his home country from the encroaching liberalism of the West while Strauss in the USA initiates a philosophical school that advocates the employment of powerful myths, namely religion and the role of the missionary state, in order to combat the corrupting influences of liberalism. Sayyid Qutb ends up in prison where he is severely tortured and then executed. After his death, he becomes the inspiration for a new breed of Islamists that see themselves right while everybody else is wrong. In the U.S., Strauss becomes the mentor and spiritual father of a new generation of thinkers knows as Straussians. The Islamist and Straussian schools give rise to two strands of radicalism: one Islamic led by Ayman Al-Zawahiri who claimed to be the rightful heir to Qutb, and one neoconservative led by the likes of Pearl and Wolfowitz, who take pride in bringing about a materialization of Strauss’s philosophy and who climb up the ladder of power in the USA in order to change the world. While the contrasts between the two sides are what people tend to emphasize, the similarities are no less striking even if not much attention is give to them. The alleged followers of Qutb and the loyal disciples of Strauss both claim to be the vanguards whose mission is to fight evil and rescue the world from its claws.

The second part, which will be shown on BBC2 at the same time on Wednesday 27 October, is entitled “The phantom victory.” It is the story of the ‘Jihad’ in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, a jihad that brought the two poles of radicalism together. What was seen by the Muslims as a noble cause and a religious duty in aid of their vanquished and oppressed brethren in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan was to the American establishment a golden opportunity to defeat and humiliate the rival superpower. The neoconservatives, who had joined the Reagan administration, pressed for unconditional and unlimited support for the jihad in Afghanistan. The documentary highlights the role played by Abdullah Azzam in mobilizing young Arab mujahidin while maintaining a moderate ideological stance. The role of the CIA in arming, training and funding the jihad is also documented. One of the people Azzam had influence on was Osama bin Laden who soon afterwards was attracted by a rival camp led by a late arrival in the front, the radical Zawahiri. The defeat of the Soviets and their retreat from Afghanistan was hailed by both the Islamists and the neoconservatives alike as a vindication of their respective ideologies though experts maintain that the communist superpower had been eroding and collapsing due to domestic factors that were only augmented by the war in Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the liberation of Afghanistan both Islamists and neoconservatives suffered setbacks. The coup against democracy in Algeria to strip FIS of its electoral win and the campaigns of persecution against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt both led to a surge in the use of violence by the likes of GIA in Algeria and Al-Jihad in Egypt. However, the violence backfired on the groups that resorted to it. Having lost the war against the Egyptian regime and the sympathy and support of many former followers, Zawahiri forged an alliance with Bin Laden and decided to go after the United States itself instead of its regional lackeys. The neoconservatives, on the other hand, were disarmed when George Bush senior settled for liberating Kuwait and refused to go after Saddam. With his failure to be re-elected as president their crusade was turned against President Clinton who embodied the evil they sought to destroy through attacks on his personality and integrity.

The third and last programme, which will be shown at the same time a week later, is entitled “The Shadows in the Cave.” It tells the story of the revival of both groups of radicals. Although recruited by George W. Bush upon his assumption of his presidential responsibilities, the neoconservatives could only secure the President’s support for their agenda after the attacks on 11 September. This time it is not the Soviet Union that is seen as the embodiment of evil nor President Clinton but the Islamic radicals who waged war on America. The enormity of the attack provided the neoconservatives with the power to deliberately exaggerate and sometimes entirely invent reports or claims about the dangers Islamic groups posed to the United States. Increasingly, and more convincingly than ever before, the United States was being portrayed as the power of good fighting the power of evil, which inevitably meant Islam and the Muslims. The truth, as the documentary shows, is that much of what the world has been told by the neoconservatives is totally false especially about the myth that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or the myth that Al-Qaeda was a global network of terrorist groups and ‘sleeping’ cells that could hit America and its allies at any time or the myth that Saddam and Al-Qaeda were in anyway linked. While the neoconservatives trumpeted the Islamic threat to justify the ‘war on terror’ radical Islamists found this to be self-serving since it brought them to the fore and put them under the spotlight. Even the so-called ‘dirty bomb’ was the figment of the imaginations of both radical trends. The politics of fear, or the claim that the ruling elite in Washington and London were protecting the masses from an imminent attack that was no more than a myth, was the best justification for the drive by the neoconservatives to implement their plan to change the world and re-formulate it according to their own ideology.

This three-part documentary is a must for anyone that wishes to understand better both phenomena of ‘Islamic radicalism’ and ‘neo-conservative radicalism’ and is the best piece of TV documentary ever prepared on the subject.