The Power of Nightmares
In comment #24 of a post over at ThinkProgress, Pete gives a couple of links to info on a BBC series, The Power of Nightmares. That link is to the Wikipedia article, and below are the 7 Youtube videos which together present one of the shows, ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside‘, uploaded by the user ouroboros712. He describes the series this way:
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. The series consists of three one-hour films, consisting mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been subsequently aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and noting strong 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 in fact 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.
I’m not a serious heavyweight in my understanding of ‘how we got here’, but neither am I a total slouch. So I was very pleased to find that this series includes several interesting pieces of information I did not have already, or had not understood within a larger context. If you have an insatiable curiosity, or there’s just nothing on the boobtube tonight, take an hour and watch these. You’ll be glad you did. If you only have about 10 minutes, I suggest watching at least the last 2 parts. Enjoy…
ONE 9:55
TWO 9:55
THREE 9:57
FOUR 9:56
FIVE 9:54
SIX 4:53
SEVEN 4:43
I’m Jon, and I just gotta ask: How does it make you feel , watching these guys on camera, seeing how they’ve manipulated the choices in your life?