The Power of Nightmares: Is Al Qaeda real?

The Bush II era has given birth to a series of remarkable political documentaries -- works which collectively tell a story that later generations, if any, may scarcely believe. Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke may be the single finest documentary I've ever seen -- an elegiac and accusatory chronicle of all (or nearly all) of the controversies to arise from the Katrina disaster. Other films recount other horrors: Outfoxed, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Fahrenheit 911, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre, An Inconvenient Truth, and 911: Press for Truth.

(Soon, I hope to speak at greater length about the last-mentioned film. To those who have asked what my own views on 911 are, all I can say is: Get that video.)

Special attention should go to Adam Curtis' extraordinary BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares, which aired in 2004 but is only now having an impact in America. You can download part one, part two and part three. (See the technical note at the end of this post.)

Although at least one neocon apologist has accused Curtis of peddling a "conspiracy theory" (conservative shorthand for "I don't like this thing"), those in the market for another 911 conspiracy fix will have to look elsewhere. Similarly, those seeking a polemical work within the standard left/right framework may emerge confused. Witty and visually stunning, Power of Nightmares is one of those complex works destined to be misunderstood by both admirers and detractors.

Just as Fahrenheit 911 hammered into the public consciousness the tableau of Bush grooving with the goat, The Power Of Nightmares resurrects one extraordinary visual: Donald Rumsfeld on a cable news program displaying an “official” artist's depiction of Osama Bin Laden's elaborate underground lair – a massive complex straight out of the final reels of You Only Live Twice. It was all pure fantasy, pure disinformation, pure lie. What astonishes me is not so much that we bought the lie, but that -- as time progressed -- we all forgot that we had bought it and that Rumsfeld had sold it. The rush of events gave us too many new lies to dissect.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Much like Alan Bullock's dual biography Hitler and Stalin, Adam Curtis' documentary tells parallel stories in order to underscore the resemblance between two opposing forces: The violent form of Salafism which sprang from the teachings of Sayed Qutb and the equally-violent neoconservatism which sprang from the teachings of Leo Strauss. You can get an idea of Curtis' Olympian overview of history from this interview conducted by the learned international film critic Robert Koehler. Curtis:

I think the really interesting political battles and discussions of our time are not between left and right, they are within the right. Between, say, neo-conservatives’ elitism and Ayn Rand libertarians who believe in maximum individual freedom.

And:

[KOEHLER]: Did you ask Kristol if his movement, now that it’s in power, has now encountered its own Vietnam and Watergate all at once?

CURTIS: You can’t ask Kristol this question because he doesn’t see himself as part of the inside group. He really sees himself as a revolutionary. I think it’s a really good question about that lot: Have they become corrupted by the very forces that they set out to get rid of? And does that then corrupt their decision-making? If you talk to neo-conservatives, they still believe that theirs is an awesome revolutionary force that may well bring democracy to the world. And that there may be stumbles along the way, as in Iraq; Trotsky would say that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. It’s very interesting to consider that their writings used to argue that the liberal project failed because it had unintended consequences and opposite results. I think the same criticism can be levelled at the neo-conservatives.

[KOEHLER]: When evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or links between Al Qaeda and Saddam doesn’t exist, it’s fascinating to see somebody like Richard Perle insist that they do.

CURTIS: You can hear it in my voice when Perle sticks to his claim of an Al Qaeda/Saddam link, and I ask, “Really?” I didn’t expect him to do that. From my sense sitting with him in that room, he really does believe it...

Curtis counterbalances the rise of the Straussians with the rise of Qutbism. Sayed Qutb, as I've noted in previous posts, was a young Egyptian literary figure – in Curtis' words, "an educated man who had read Marx, Nietzsche, and Sartre" -- who spent 1949 in America studying at Colorado State Teachers College in Greely, Colorado. Shy, unattractive, and alienated from Truman-era American culture, Qutb (whose Hitler mustache must not have won him many friends) was invited by some unknown pitying soul to a church social. There, he had his samsara experience. The lights dimmed as couples engaged in a slow dance to a recording of Baby, It's Cold Outside. All very innocent by today's standards, but Qutb -- no doubt infuriated with himself for becoming aroused by what he saw as brazen American womanhood -- suddenly decided that he had had enough of the modern world. In his view, consumerism and individualism reduced life to the mere satisfaction of animal desire; he thus embraced religious fundamentalism and declared holy war on secular culture.

Back home, his writings sparked a growing Islamic backlash to Western influences in the Middle East, a conflict Curtis illustrates with rare footage demonstrating both the cultural changes within Nasser's Egypt and the brutal crackdown on Qutb's followers. Although Sayed Qutb was eventually executed, his revolt against history influenced all later jihadists, including Zawahiri and Bin Laden.

In a work filled with interesting ideas, Curtis makes several novel arguments which some will find infuriating. I may not agree with all (or even most) of his views, yet I very much enjoyed chewing on these concepts.

1. Al Qaeda does not exist. Islamic extremism does exist, but the neocons have hyperbolized the Bin Laden network, just as "Team B" had deliberately exaggerated Soviet military capabilities in the 1970s. From the Curtis/Koehler interview:

As far as we know, Osama bin Laden did not use the term “Al Qaeda” to identify his group before September 11. The main issue is whether there’s the organized network that most of our politicians and journalists have been stating exists. What I’m saying in this film is that our politicians and journalists are fighting the last war. They’re giving us a picture of the Soviet Union in the Cold War that misses the reality of radical Islamism. If you look at radical Islamist history, its great moments come in 1979 with Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, and then in 1989, with what they perceived as the defeat of the USSR . The story of the 90s is of a movement that’s stopped politically, and then when it turns to armed uprising with the hope that the masses will rise up, they don’t. If you talk to Islamists and read their writing—Zawahiri’s writings are very articulate—they believe that they had failed. There’s this massive debate within the movement, with most saying that they should keep on trying in places like Uzbekistan , and try to Islamize the Palestinian conflict. It’s only a small part of it, around bin Laden, which argues you must kill the head of the snake. Many of Zawahiri’s own group left him because of this. The more you look into it, the more it becomes a disorganized mess. It’s very illuminating when you see the movement as one that failed to persuade the masses. If you talk to anyone who’s done proper research in Afghanistan , they’ll tell you that the camps there were very diffuse and disorganized. I also looked for evidence of “sleeper cells,” and although you can find evidence of horrible, nasty individuals, and groups who want to carry out techniques of mass terror, there’s no evidence of a coherent organized network with a man sitting in an Afghani cave stroking a cat and sending out his orders.

Curtis argues that the key events, ignored by ethnocentric Americans, occurred in Algeria, where the military foiled a Jihadist win at the ballot box. The Qutbists, robbed of victory in that nation, soon lost all influence and fell to otiose sniping at each other. According to Nightmares, 9/11 was not the roar of an Islamic resurgence but the final, mad gesture of a movement in collapse.

2. Neoconservatism and radical Islam have similar origins and goals. Both movements have declared war against individualism and liberal democracy. Both movements require a hierarchy of slavish followers led by an unelected elite. Both rely on religion as a tool to control the masses, although (at least in the case of the Straussians) the call to faith is entirely disingenuous. Both argue that life gains all meaning from violent struggle -- note, for example, Michael Ledeen's oft-stated belief that war is man's natural state.

Struggle-for-the-sake-of struggle was also a key component of Hitler's war against modernity. I disagree with Curtis' contention that the twin subjects of his film represent something essentially different from the great ideological struggles which marked the first three quarters of the 20th century. Qutbism and neoconservativism may not, in a technical sense, be fascist movements, but they rose out of the same dark and fearful loam where Nazi ideology germinated.

Though I may disagree on a number of points, I applaud Curtis for emphasizing a new concept: The key struggle of the Bush/Bin Laden era is not left-vs.-right but individualism-vs.-collectivism. On the collectivist side, we have Qutbism, Neoconservatism, Fascism and Stalinism. In all four cases, the message remains the same: Man achieves greatness only when he becomes subsumed into a current more powerful than himself. Life has no meaning without a devil to fight and a cause to die for. We can see this collectivist instinct in the severe, Comintern-style discipline which, until quite recently, gripped the Republican party. We see it in the reliance on myth and the fear of fact. We see it in the assault on privacy and the erosion of human dignity. We see it in the demonization of opponents and in the growth of mega-churches. We see it in the mass application of cultic brainwashing techniques. Strauss predicted this marriage of State power and Christian fundamentalism.

To combat this collectivist menace, individualists who normally would never get along have formed alliances of convenience. That's why many a progressive web page will include a link to the Libertarian Anti-War site. Curtis is correct: The most interesting political struggle in today's America is the one being waged between the self-centered "greed is good" Ayn Rand rightists and the break-the-bank "onward Christian soldier" Neocon rightists. Those are the two ideological power centers; progressives can do little but choose the lesser of two evils and hope, at some point in the struggle, to catch a break.

(Arguably, a similar collectivist/individualist conflict played itself out on the left in the late 1960s-early 1970s. That was the era of the great divide between the hard-core revolutionists and the more hedonistic hippie movement. Hedonism, of course, won the day; a number of the revolutionists became neocons.)

A documentary need not present just an arid accumulation of facts, although the facts must not be falsified. A good documentary, like a good non-fiction book, will present an argument -- one which engages the minds and imaginations of even those viewers who interpret the evidence in another way. Even if you think you know this material well, The Power of Nightmares will force you to look at it with new eyes.

Technical notes: If you want to download these videos (or most other videos found via Google) to your hard drive, follow these steps:

1. Use Firefox.

2. Use this video downloader plug-in. (It's safe.)

3. When you go to the URL containing the video you want, pause the presentation (the video will load automatically) and hit the "downloader" icon. If you are given a choice of things to download, always choose the file with the ".avi" extension. Save to disk. The downloads will take a while -- perhaps an hour. (Grab some lunch.) You can download two videos at once, which means that Power of Nightmares, which comes in three parts, will require some extra effort.

4. To play the documentary on your computer, your best option is VLC Player. It ain't a pretty program, but it plays everything. It's free and safe.

5. If you want to burn the .avi files to a DVD which you can watch on your living room TV, the easiest solution is VSO's ConvertXtoDVD. I've tried a number of options; this software is, by far, the fastest -- an hour to re-encode the video and to burn a disc, as opposed to five or six hours using other programs. Just choose the "normal" option (the results will look fine), push one button, and within a short while you will have a ready-to-go DVD filled with Nightmares. All three parts will fit on one disc. The freeware version places a watermark on the DVD; I advise you to pay VSO the small amount they ask for.