Pandora’s Box, subtitled A fable from the age of science, is a six part 1992 BBC documentary television series written and produced by Adam Curtis, which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism.
The episodes deal, in order, with communism in The Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.
Curtis’ later series The Century of the Self and The Trap had similar themes. The title sequence made extensive use of clips from the short film Design for Dreaming, as well as other similar archive footage.
Pandora’s Box – The Engineer’s Plot
This part chronicles how the revolutionaries who toppled the Tsar in 1917 attempted to industrialize and control the Soviet Union with rational scientific methods.
The bolsheviks wanted to transform the Soviet people into scientific beings. Aleksei Gastev used social engineering, and even a social engineering machine, to teach people to behave in a rational way.
There was an ongoing power struggle between bourgeoisie engineers and bolshevik politicians. Lenin is quoted as having said “The communists are not directing anything, they are being directed”. In late 1930 Stalin had 2000 engineers arrested, and eight of the most senior were accused and convicted in the Industrial Party show trial. Engineering schools were set up to train party faithfuls in only limited engineering knowledge to not threaten Stalin’s political powers.
America was seen as a model for the industrialization of the Soviet Union. The city Magnitogorsk was modelled on Gary, Indiana to be the perfectly planned industrial steel mill city. A former construction worker describes how they imagined a magnificent city with palaces, houses and parks, and how workers created a park with trees made of metal because trees wouldn’t grow on the steppe.
In the late 1930s Stalin arrested and purged more engineers, this time old bolsheviks. The beneficiaries of these purges were engineers who were faithful to Stalin, and were now put in charge throughout the Soviet industry, among them were Leonid Brezhnev, Alexey Kosygin and Nikita Khrushchev. They had only narrow specialist training, and were completely unquestioning of Stalin’s political aims. They set out to plan the Soviet Union as though it were a piece of engineering, with technical solutions to everything.
Gosplan, was the central organization where engineers worked with planned indicators, rational predictions of what they knew society needed. Vitalii Semyonovich Lelchuk, from the USSR Academy of Sciences, describe how everything was planned in absurdum; the KGB was told the quota of arrests to be made and the prisons to be used. The demand for coffins, novels and movies was all planned.
Planners discovered that what seemed like rational assessment could lead to odd outcomes. Trains travelled thousands of miles for no other reason than to fulfill a plan that measured success in tonnes carried per kilometer. Sofas and chandeliers were made larger and larger because the plan measured material used.
Stalins successor, Nikita Khrushchev, tried to reform the plan and among other things he insisted that planners must take the price of things into account. The head of the USSR State Committee for Organization and Methodology of Price Creation is shown with a tall stack of price logbooks declaring that “This shows quite clearly that the system is rational”.
Academician Victor Glushkov saw cybernetics as the solution to the issues with the complexity of the planning.
In the mid 60s Leonid Brezhnev and Alexey Kosygin took over from Khrushchev. They tried to use computerized economic planning to vitalize the failing economy. A group of three economists tell of how they assess demand using a nation-wide network of consumer correspondents, consumer panels and surveys, data which is then processed by computers. One of the ecominist explains: “The problem is industry responds very slowly to our scientific forecasts. For instance, we decided people wanted platform shoes. By the time the industry got around to increasing production they were out of fashion. Nowadays the Soviet consumer knows that if there is enough of a particular item in the shops it’s a sure sign it’s out of fashion.”
In the late 1960s there were years of economic stagnation, and in 1978 stagnation turned into economic crisis. By the mid-1970s the Soviet leadership gave up attempts to reform the plan and the industry degenerated into pointless, elaborate ritual. Quote the narrator: “What had begun as a grand moral attempt to build a rational society ended by creating a bizarre, bewildering existence for millions of Soviet people”.
Pandora’s Box – To The Brink of Eternity
This episode outlines how the US government attempted to use systems analysis and game theory to develop strategies to control the nuclear threat and nuclear arms race during the Cold War.
The focus is on the men of the on whom Dr Strangelove was allegedly based: Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter and John von Neumann. These were people who believed that the world could be controlled by the scientific manipulation of fear – mathematical analysts employed by the American RAND Corporation. In the end, their visions were the stuff of science fiction fantasy.
Features several interview segments with Sam Cohen outlining his experiences at RAND. He is the inventor of the neutron bomb and was with RAND 1947-1975.
Also features George Ball, the Under-Secretary of State in the Kennedy administration 1961-1966, and William Gorham[1], RAND Corporation Asst. Sec. Dept. Health, Education & Welfare 1956-68.
Also features interview with science fiction author Larry Niven[1], who was instrumental in the creating of the star wars policies of Ronald Reagan.
Also features Robert McNamara, Thomas Schelling, Edward Teller and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Similar material is also covered in the “Fuck You Buddy” part of Curtis’ later series, The Trap, but To The Brink of Eternity has the focus entirely on the nuclear and military aspects of Cold War strategy. John Nash is not mentioned and the psychological and economical aspects of game theory are not included.
Pandora’s Box – The League of Gentlemen
In the late 1970s, a group of economists managed to convince Margaret Thatcher and other British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora’s Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks – is their game finally up?
Pandora’s Box – Goodbye Mrs Ant
This part focuses on attitudes to nature and tells the story of the insecticide DDT, which was first seen as a savior to humankind in the 1940s, only to be claimed as a part of the destruction of the entire ecosystem in the late 60s. It also outlines how the sciences of entomology and ecology were transformed by political and economic pressures.
The episode appears to be named after the 1959 film Goodbye, Mrs. Ant.[2] Clips from the 1958 horror movie Earth vs. the Spider and the 1941 grasshopper cartoon Hoppity Goes to Town are also featured.
Insects were a huge problem in the United States and farmers saw whole crops destroyed by pests. Emerging in the 1940s DDT and other insecticides seemed to be the solution. As more insecticides were invented, the science of entomology changed focus from insect classification, to primarily testing new insecticides and exterminating insects rather than cataloging them. But the insecticides had side effects. As early as 1946-48 entomologists began to notice that other species of wildlife, particularly birds, were being harmed by the insecticides.
Chemical companies portrayed the battle against insects as a struggle for existence and their promotional films from the 1950s invoke Charles Darwin. Darwin biographer James Moore notes how the battlefield and life and death aspects of Darwin’s theories were emphasized to suit the Cold War years. Scientists believed that they were seizing power from evolution and redirecting it by controlling the environment.
In 1962 biologist Rachel Carson released the book Silent Spring, which was the first serious attack on pesticides and outlined their harmful side effects. It caused a public outcry but had no immediate effect on the use of pesticides. Entomologist Gordon Edwards retells how he made speeches critical of Carson’s book. He eats some DDT on camera to show how he’d demonstrate its safety during these talks.
The spraying of DDT in the growing suburbs brought the side effects to the attention of the wealthy and articulate middle classes. Victor Yannacone, a suburbanite and lawyer, helped found the Environmental Defense Fund with the aim to legally challenge the use of pesticides. They argued that the chemicals were becoming more poisonous as they spread, as evidenced by the disappearance of the Peregrine Falcon.
In 1968 they got a hearing on DDT in Madison, Wisconsin. It became headline news, with both sides claiming that everything America stood for was at stake. Biologist Thomas Jukes is shown singing a pro-DDT parody on America the Beautiful he sent to Time magazine at the time of the trial.[3] Hugh Iltis describes how in 1969 a scientist testified at the hearing about how DDT appears in breast milk and accumulate in the fat tissue of babies. This got massive media attention.
Where once chemicals were seen as good, now they were bad. In the late 60s ecology was a marginal science. But Yannacone used ecology as a scientific basis to challenge the DDT defenders’ idea of evolution. Similar to how the science of entomology had been changed in the 1950s, ecology was transformed by the social and political pressures of the early 70s. Ecologists became the guardians of the human relationship to nature.
James Moore describes how people try to get Darwin on the side of their view of nature. In The Origin of Species nature is seen as being at war, but also likened to a web of complex relations. Here Darwin gave people a basis for urging us not to take control of nature but cooperate with it. In popular imagination a scientific theory has a single fixed meaning, but in reality it becomes cultural property and is usable by different interested parties.
Twenty years later the story of DDT continues with a press conference announcing the stop of construction in a skyscraper due to a nesting Peregrine Falcon. Ornitologist David Berger criticizes the event for fostering the myth of the sensitivity of nature.
Joan Halifax[4] talks about ecology as a gift to human beings and all species, a moral lesson that gave rise to not utopia, but ecotopia.
Politics Professor Langdon Winner theorizes that social ideals are being read back to us as if they were lessons derived from science itself. The scientific notions of the 1950s, the ideas of endless possibilities for exploitations of nature, are now seen as ill-conceived. And the ideas of ecology today may in 30 or 40 years seem similarly ill-conceived.
The episode ends with a quote from Darwin about seeking divine providence in nature: “I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.”
Pandora’s Box – Black Power
A look at how Kwame Nkrumah, the leader Ghana from 1952 to 1966, set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an industrialized utopia. A scheme was drawn up together with Kaiser Aluminum, but as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn’t control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt.
Pandora’s Box – A is For Atom
An insight into the history of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl which changed views on the safety of this new technology.
This episode was named after a 1953 General Electric propaganda film explaining nuclear power and features artfully chosen footage from this film.[5]
Awards
The series was awarded a BAFTA in the category of “Best Factual Series” in 1993.
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.
The Power of Nightmares has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.
Contents
* 1 Synopsis
o 1.1 Part 1: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
o 1.2 Part 2: “The Phantom Victory”
o 1.3 Part 3: “The Shadows in the Cave”
* 2 Content
* 3 Airings and distribution
* 4 Reaction
o 4.1 Critical reaction
o 4.2 Political reaction
o 4.3 Comparisons to Fahrenheit 9/11
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links
Synopsis
Part 1: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the U.S. to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite “vanguard” to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser’s jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he inspires the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise, and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted by their western-inspired leaders and thus may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him.
At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson’s “Great Society”. They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy. These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in fear of the Soviet Union. The Neo-Conservatives allege the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries, and, with the investigation of “Team B”, they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods. President Reagan is convinced nonetheless.[1]
Part 2: “The Phantom Victory”
In the second episode, Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. When the Soviets eventually pull out and when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they are the primary architects of the “Evil Empire’s” defeat. Curtis argues that the Soviets were on their last legs anyway, and were doomed to collapse without intervention.
However, the Islamists see it quite differently, and in their triumph believe that they had the power to create ‘pure’ Islamic states in Egypt and Algeria. However, attempts to create perpetual Islamic states are blocked by force. The Islamists then try to create revolutions in Egypt and Algeria by the use of terrorism to scare the people into rising up. However, the people are terrified by the violence and the Algerian government uses their fear as a way to maintain power. In the end, the Islamists declare the entire populations of the countries as inherently contaminated by western values, and finally in Algeria turn on each other, each believing that other terrorist groups are not pure enough Muslims either.
In America, the Neo-Conservatives’ aspirations to use the United States military power for further destruction of evil are thrown off track by the ascent of George HW Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992 election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power. The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative Christian allies, attempt to demonise Clinton throughout his presidency with various real and fabricated stories of corruption and immorality. To their disappointment, however, the American people do not turn against Clinton. The Islamist attempts at revolution end in massive bloodshed, leaving the Islamists without popular support. Zawahiri and bin Laden flee to the sufficiently safe Afghanistan and declare a new strategy; to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal a blow to its source: the United States.[2]
Part 3: “The Shadows in the Cave”
The Neo-Conservatives use the September 11th attacks, with al-Fadl’s description of al-Qaeda,[citation needed] to launch the War on Terror.
The final episode addresses the actual rise of al-Qaeda. Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. The film instead argues that in order to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, US prosecutors had to prove he was the head of a criminal organisation responsible for the bombings. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called “al-Qaeda”. With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.
After the American invasion of Afghanistan fails to uproot the alleged terrorist network, the Neo-Conservatives focus inwards, searching unsuccessfully for terrorist sleeper cells in America. They then extend the war on “terror” to a war against general perceived evils with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The ideas and tactics also spread to the United Kingdom where Tony Blair uses the threat of terrorism to give him a new moral authority. The repercussions of the Neo-Conservative strategy are also explored with an investigation of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on the word of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance without actual investigation on the part of the United States military, and other forms of “preemption” against non-existent and unlikely threats made simply on the grounds that the parties involved could later become a threat. Curtis also makes a specific attempt to allay fears of a dirty bomb attack, and concludes by reassuring viewers that politicians will eventually have to concede that some threats are exaggerated and others altogether devoid of reality.[3]
Content
Adam Curtis originally intended to create a film about conflict within the conservative movement between the ideologies of Neo-Conservative “elitism” and more individualist libertarian factions. During his research into the conservative movement, however, Curtis first discovered what he saw as similarities in the origins of the Neo-Conservative and Islamist ideologies. The topic of the planned documentary shifted to these latter two ideologies while the libertarian element was eventually phased out.[4] Curtis first pitched the idea of a documentary on conservative ideology in 2003 and spent six months compiling the films.[5][6] The final recordings for the three parts were made on 10 October, 19 October and 1 November 2004.[7][8][9]
The film uses a montage of various stock footage from the BBC archives, often used for ironic or humorous effect, over which Curtis narrates.[4][5] Curtis has credited James Mossman as the inspiration for his montage technique, which he first employed for the 1992 series Pandora’s Box,[10] while his use of humour has been credited to his first work with television as a talent scout for That’s Life![5] He has also compared the entertainment format of his films to the American Fox News channel, claiming the network has been successful because of “[their viewers] really enjoying what they’re doing”.[4]
To help drive his points, Curtis includes interviews with various political and intellectual figures. In the first two films, former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency member Anne Cahn and former American Spectator writer David Brock accuse the Neo-Conservatives of knowingly using false evidence of wrongdoing in their campaigns against the Soviet Union and President Bill Clinton.[1][2] Jason Burke, author of Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, comments in The Shadows in the Cave on the failure to expose a massive terrorist network in Afghanistan.[3] Additional interviews with major figures are added to drive the film’s narrative. Neo-Conservatives William and Irving Kristol, Richard Pipes and Richard Perle all appear to chronicle the Neo-Conservative perspective of the film’s subject.[1][3] The history of Islamism is discussed by the Institute of Islamic Political Thought’s Azzam Tamimi, political scientist Roxanne Euben and Islamist Abdulla Anas.[1][2]
The film’s soundtrack includes at least two pieces from the films of John Carpenter, whom Curtis credited as inspiration for his soundtrack arrangement techniques,[10] as well as tracks from Brian Eno’s Another Green World. There is also music by composers Charles Ives and Ennio Morricone, while Curtis has credited the industrial band Skinny Puppy for the “best” samples in the films.[11]
Airings and distribution
The Power of Nightmares was first aired in three consecutive weeks on BBC 2 in 2004 in the United Kingdom, beginning with Baby it’s Cold Outside on 20 October, The Phantom Victory on 27 October and The Shadows in the Cave on 3 November, although the murder of Kenneth Bigley led the BBC to curtail their advertising prior to its airing.[7][8][9][12] It was rebroadcast, in January 2005, over three days, with the third film updated to take note of the Law Lords ruling from the previous December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was illegal.[13]
In May 2005, the film was screened in a 2½ hour edit at the Cannes Film Festival out of competition.[14] Pathé has purchased distribution rights for this cut of the film.[6]
As of 1 January 2008, the film has yet to be aired in the United States. Curtis has commented on this failure:
Something extraordinary has happened to American TV since September 11. A head of the leading networks who had better remain nameless said to me that there was no way they could show it. He said, ‘Who are you to say this?’ and then he added, ‘We would get slaughtered if we put this out.’ When I was in New York I took a DVD to the head of documentaries at HBO. I still haven’t heard from him.[6]
Although the series has not been shown on U.S. television, its three episodes were shown in succession, on 26 February 2005, as part of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, with a personal appearance by Curtis.[15][16] It has also been featured at the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival, with the latter awarding Curtis their Persistence of Vision Award.[17][18][19] The film was also screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and had a brief theatrical run in New York City during 2005.[20][21]
The films were first aired by CBC in Canada in April 2005, and again in July 2006.[22] The Australian channel SBS had originally scheduled to air the series in July 2005, but it was cancelled, reportedly in light of the London bombings of 7 July.[23][24] It was ultimately aired in December, followed by Peter Taylor’s The New Al-Qaeda under the billing of a counter-argument to Curtis.[25]
In April 2005, Curtis expressed interest in an official DVD release due to a significant demand by viewers, but noted that his usual montage technique created serious legal problems with getting such a release secured.[26] An unofficial DVD release was made in the quarterly DVD magazine Wholphin over a period of three issues.[27][28][29]
Reaction
Critical reaction
The Power of Nightmares received generally favourable reviews from critics.[30] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 86% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, with an average score of 8.1/10, based upon a sample of seven reviews.[31] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 78, based on six reviews.[30] Entertainment Weekly described the film as “a fluid cinematic essay, rooted in painstakingly assembled evidence, that heightens and cleanses your perceptions” while Variety called it “a superb, eye-opening and often absurdly funny deconstruction of the myths and realities of global terrorism”.[32][33] The San Francisco Chronicle had an equally enthusiastic view of the film and likened it to “a brilliant piece in the Atlantic Monthly that’s (thankfully) come to cinematic life”.[34] The New York Times had a more skeptical review, unimpressed by efforts to compare attacks on Bill Clinton by American conservatives with Islamist revolutionary activities and claiming “its understanding of politics, geo- and national, can seem curiously thin”.[21] In May 2005, Adam Curtis was quoted as saying that 94% of e-mails to the BBC in response to the film were supportive.[6]
The film was awarded a BAFTA in the category of “Best Factual Series” in 2005.[35] Additional awards were given by the Director’s Guild of Great Britain and the Royal Television Society.[36][37]
Political reaction
Progressive observers were particularly pleased with the film. Common Dreams had a highly positive response to the film and compared it to the “red pill” of the Matrix series, a comparison Curtis has apparently appreciated.[26][38] Commentary in the Village Voice was also mostly favorable, noting: “As partisan filmmaking it is often brilliant and sometimes hilarious – a superior version of Syriana.”[39] The Nation, while offering a detailed critique on the film’s content, said of the film itself “[it] is arguably the most important film about the ‘war on terrorism’ since the events of September 11″.[40]
Among conservative and neoconservative critics in the United States, The Power of Nightmares has been described as “conspiracy theory”, anti-American or both. David Asman of FoxNews.com said, “We wish we didn’t have to keep presenting examples of how the European media have become obsessively anti-American. But they keep pushing the barrier, now to the point of absurdity.”[41] His views were shared by commentator Clive Davis, concluding his commentary on the film for National Review with “British producers, hooked on Chomskyite visions of ‘Amerika’ as the fount of all evil, are clearly not interested in even beginning to dig for the truth”.[42] Other observers variously described the films as pushing a conspiracy theory. Davis and British commentator David Aaronovitch both explicitly labelled the film’s message as a conspiracy theory, with the latter saying of Curtis “his argument is as subtle as a house-brick”.[42][43] Attacks in this vein continued after the 7 July 2005 London bombings, with CBN referencing the film as a source for claims by the “British left” that “the U.S. War on Terror was a fraud” and the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council calling it “the loopiest, most extreme antiwar documentary series ever sponsored by the BBC”.[24][44] In The Shadows in the Cave, Curtis stressed that he did not discount the possibility of any terrorist activity taking place, but that the threat of terrorism had been greatly exaggerated.[3] He responded to accusations of creating a conspiracy theory that he believes that the alleged use of fear as a force in politics is not the result of a conspiracy but rather the subjects of the film “have stumbled on it”.[26]
Peter Bergen, writing for The Nation, offered a detailed critique of the film. Bergen wrote that even if al-Qaeda is not as organised as the Bush Administration stresses, it is still a very dangerous force due to the fanaticism of its followers and the resources available to bin Laden. On Curtis’s claim that al-Qaeda was a creation of neo-conservative politicians, Bergen said: “This is nonsense. There is substantial evidence that Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by bin Laden and a small group of like-minded militants, and that the group would mushroom into the secretive, disciplined organisation that implemented the 9/11 attacks.”[45] Bergen further claimed that Curtis’s arguments serve as a defence of Bush’s failure to capture bin Laden in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and his ignoring warnings of a terror attack prior to September 11.[46]
Additional issues have been raised over Curtis’s depiction of the Neo-Conservatives. Davis’s article in National Review showed his displeasure with Curtis’s depiction of Leo Strauss, claiming, “In Curtis’s world, it is Strauss, not Osama bin Laden, who is the real evil genius.”[42] Peter Bergen claimed the film exaggerated the influence of Strauss over Neo-Conservatism, crediting the political philosophy more to Albert Wohlstetter.[47] A 2005 review on Christopher Null’s Filmcritic.com took issue with The Phantom Victory ’s retelling of the attacks on Bill Clinton, crediting these more to the American Religious Right than the “bookish university types” of the Neo-Conservative movement.[48]
Daniel Pipes, a conservative American political commentator and son of Richard Pipes who was interviewed in the film, wrote that the film dismisses the threat posed by Communism to the United States as, in Pipes words, “only a scattering of countries that had harmless Communist parties, who could in no way threaten America.” Pipes noted that the film adopts this conclusion without mentioning the Comintern, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs or Igor Gouzenko.[49]
There are also allegations of omissions in the history described by the film. The absence of discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was noticed by observers.[21][39] Davis claimed that Leo Strauss’s ideas had been formed by his experiences in Germany during the Weimar Republic and alleged the film’s failure to mention this was motivated by a wish to display Strauss as concerned with American suburban culture, like Qutb.[42]
Media Lens criticised the film for failing to explore the role of big business in the situation it described.[50]
Comparisons to Fahrenheit 9/11
After its release, The Power of Nightmares received multiple comparisons to Fahrenheit 9/11, American film-maker Michael Moore’s 2004 critique on the first four years of George W. Bush’s presidency of the United States. The Village Voice directly named The Power of Nightmares as “the most widely discussed docu agitprop since Fahrenheit 9/11″.[39] The Nation and Variety both gave comments ranking Curtis’s film superior to Fahrenheit and other political documentaries in various fields; the former cited Curtis’s work being more “intellectually engaging” and “historically probing” while the latter cited “balance, broad-mindedness and sense of historical perspective”.[33][40] Moore’s work has also been used as a point of comparison by conservative critics of Curtis.[42]
Curtis has attempted to distinguish his work from Moore’s film, dismissing him as “a political agitprop film-maker”.[6]
See also
* The Trap
* The Century of the Self
* Culture of fear
* Part 1 official page
* Part 2 official page
* Part 3 official page
* Summary of argument
* Power of Nightmares re-awakened – Questions from BBC viewers answered by Curtis
* Power of Nightmares background – Further reading suggested by Curtis
* Interview with Adam Curtis at Cinema Scope
* Interview with Adam Curtis at GreenCine
* “Adam Curtis talks with Errol Morris”
* George Mason University; “Stop the Straussians Before They Lie Again”
* The Power of Nightmares at the Internet Movie Database
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