The Power Of Nightmares And The Real Politics Of Fear - Part 2

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Subject:The Power Of Nightmares And The Real Politics Of Fear - Part 2

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

November 19, 2004

 

MEDIA ALERT: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES AND THE REAL POLITICS OF FEAR -

PART 2

 

 

Manufacturing The Myth Of `America'

 

American elites have long sought to manufacture and promote a shared

myth of 'America' based on " symbols by which Americans defined their

dream and pictured social reality. " (Alex Carey, Taking The Risk Out Of

Democracy, UNSW Press, 1995, p.75)

 

Adam Curtis alluded to this myth-making in his BBC series The Power of

Nightmares, but he portrayed it as a process initiated and pursued by

neoconservatives from the 1940s onwards, inspired by the teachings of

Leo Strauss.

 

There was no hint that these myths were small elements of a vast

programme of social engineering carried out by US governments, both

Democrat

and Republican, and by powerful business associations, from the first

days of the 20th century and earlier.

 

Indeed Curtis had nothing to say about the key issue of business

control of American society – the words `corporate', `corporation' and

`business' were not mentioned in the series. The neocons were depicted as

fanatical ideologues, with literally zero mention of their roots in the

business community. In April 2001, the Guardian's Julian Borger reported:

 

" In the Bush administration, business is the only voice... This is as

close as it is possible to get in a democracy to a government of

business, by business and for business. " (Borger, `All the president's

businessmen', The Guardian, April 27, 2001)

 

Robert Reich, Clinton's former labour secretary added: " There's no

longer any countervailing power in Washington. Business is in complete

control of the machinery of government. " (Ibid)

 

The reality that the neocon project is profit-driven rather than

ideology-driven makes a nonsense of the idea that it aims to " spread

the good

of democracy around the world " . As the US historian Sidney Lens noted

recently:

 

" Even a cursory look suggests that American policy has been motivated

not by lofty regard for the needs of other peoples but by America's own

desire for land, commerce, markets, spheres of influence, investments,

as well as strategic impregnability to protect such prerogatives. The

primary focus has not been moral, but imperial. " (Lens, `The Forging of

the American Empire', Pluto Press, London, 2003, p.14)

 

Curtis, by contrast, uncritically accepted neocon rhetoric. On the

election of Reagan as president in 1980, Curtis said:

 

" The neoconservatives believed that they now had the chance to

implement their vision of America's revolutionary destiny, to use the

country's

power aggressively as a force for good in an epic battle to defeat the

Soviet Union. It was a vision that they shared with millions of their

new religious allies. " (`The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the

Politics of Fear. Part 1: " Baby, it's cold outside " `, BBC2, October

20, 2004)

 

Curtis reiterated the point: " A small group in the Reagan White House

saw... a way of achieving their vision of transforming the world. " They

would " bring down the Soviet Union and help spread democracy around the

world. It was called the Reagan Doctrine. " (Part 2, 'The Phantom

Victory', October 27, 2004)

 

This is deeply misleading. In her seminal account of the business

brainwashing of America from 1945-1960, Selling Free Enterprise,

Elizabeth

Fones-Wolf wrote:

 

" All this effort helped create a major political shift that would

culminate in the election of Ronald Reagan, the subsequent tax cuts

benefiting the wealthy, the elimination of regulation, and the severe

cutbacks

in social services. " (Selling Free Enterprise - The Business Assault on

Labour and Liberalism, 1945-60, University of Illinois Press, 1994,

p.289)

 

Directly contradicting Curtis' thesis, Fones-Wolf noted that " the

business community laid the ideological and institutional foundations for

the nation's movement +toward+ a more individualistic ethos. " (Ibid,

p.289, our emphasis)

 

But there was nothing new in the neocon propaganda campaign:

 

" Indeed, perhaps Ronald Reagan best symbolises the continuity.

Beginning in 1954, the future president of the United States spent

eight years

in the employment of General Electric, hosting a television programme

and speaking to employee and local civic group audiences as part of the

company's public relations and economic education programme. During

that time, Reagan fine-tuned a message that he would repeat in the late

seventies, warning of the threat that labour and the state pose to our

`free economy'. " (Ibid)

 

 

Demolishing Democracy

 

Similarly, the Reaganite neocons (many still in power, now, as part of

the Bush cabal) engaged in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of

people in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and elsewhere. The concern

was not to spread but to restrict democracy to protect US control of

human and natural resources. Robert Pastor, director of Latin American

and

Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council through the Carter

years, explained:

 

" The United States... wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except

when doing so would affect US interests adversely. " (Quoted, Noam

Chomsky, `Deterring Democracy', Hill And Wang, 1992, p.261)

 

The cover story for US intervention throughout the postwar period,

until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, was indeed the `Soviet

threat'. But as Harvard academic Samuel Huntington advised government

planners in 1981:

 

" You may have to sell [uS intervention] in such a way as to create the

misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That

is what the United States has done ever since the Truman Doctrine [of

1947] " . (Ibid, p.90)

 

The real enemy was independent nationalism, the risk that Third World

resources might fall out of US control. To select at random, a US State

Department official warned prior to the 1954 US coup in Guatemala:

 

" Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras

and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon;

its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a

victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign

enterprises

has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors

where similar conditions prevail. " (Quoted, Piero Gleijeses, Shattered

Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, Princeton

University

Press, 1991, p.365)

 

The CIA told the White House in April 1964:

 

" Cuba's experiment with almost total state socialism is being watched

closely by other nations in the hemisphere, and any appearance of

success there could have an extensive impact on the statist trend

elsewhere

in the area. " (Quoted, Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The

United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1993, p.157)

 

Curtis ignored this documented historical reality. This is particularly

significant as we know that Curtis +is+ aware of it. Two years ago,

Media Lens challenged him following the broadcast of his BBC TV series,

The Century of the Self, which purported to chart the rise of propaganda

in the 20th century. In this series Curtis argued:

 

" Politicians and planners came to believe that Freud was right to

suggest that hidden deep within all human beings were dangerous and

irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the

unleashing of

these instincts that had lead to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop

it ever happening again, they set out to find ways to control the

hidden enemy within the human mind. " (The Century of the Self - The

Engineering of Consent, BBC2, March 24, 2002)

 

We suggested to Curtis that the real fear of politicians and planners

was the existence of dangerous +rational+ desires and fears - popular

desires for equity, justice and functioning democracy; popular fears that

unbridled capitalism and militarism would once again lead to horrors on

the scale of the two world wars. We asked him: " Do you really believe

that big business was fundamentally motivated to avoid a repetition of

the barbarism of Nazi Germany? " (Media Lens to Curtis, June 5, 2002)

 

We also asked Curtis why he had given detailed attention to Guatemalan

history in that series, while failing to mention US responsibility for

the 150,000 civilians killed as a result of its attack on Guatemala. On

June 19, 2002, Curtis responded:

 

" I never said `big business was motivated to avoid a repetition of the

barbarism of nazi Germany'. I very clearly separated the early, naïve

reaction of politicians and social planners to psychological evidence

and the lobbying of ambitious psychologists, from the cynical and corrupt

use of those ideas by big business and later cold-war politicians which

then followed. "

 

Curtis continued: " I explicitly used the Guatemala story as an example

of that form of corruption. "

 

Remarkably, of this " cynical and corrupt use " of ideas by big business

there was not one word in The Power Of Nightmares.

 

 

Understanding Bin Laden – Motives Behind September 11

 

As part of his idea of parallels linking Islamic jihadists and the US

neocons, Curtis argued that both are motivated by a fear and hatred of

" selfish individualism " :

 

" The attacks on America had been planned by a small group that had come

together around bin Laden in the late 90s. What united them was an

idea: an extreme interpretation of Islamism developed by Ayman Zawahiri. "

(Part 3, `The Shadows in the Cave', November 3, 2004)

 

Inspired by Sayyed Qutb, Zawahiri, who was bin Laden's mentor, came to

believe that " the infection of [Western] selfish individualism had gone

so deep into people's minds that they were now as corrupted as their

leaders... It wasn't just leaders like Sadat who were no longer real

Muslims, it was the people themselves. And Zawahiri believed that this

meant that they too could legitimately be killed. But such killing,

Zawahiri believed, would have a noble purpose, because of the fear and

the

terror that it would create in the minds of ordinary Muslims. It would

shock them into seeing reality in a different way. They would then see

the

truth. " (Part 1, 'Baby It's Cold Outside', October 20, 2004)

 

But in interviews, Osama bin Laden has clearly listed three political

grievances as primary motives for the September 11, 2001 attacks: the

oppression of Palestinians, the devastating effect of US-UK sanctions and

war on Iraqi civilians, and US military bases in Saudi Arabia. The

Independent's Robert Fisk wrote in 2001:

 

" Why do we always play politics on the hoof, making quick-fix promises

to vulnerable allies of convenience after years of accepting, even

creating, the injustices of the Middle East and South-west Asia? How soon

before we decide - and not before time - to lift sanctions against Iraq,

and allow tens of thousands of Iraqi children to live instead of die?

Or promise (in return for the overthrow of Saddam) to withdraw our

forces from the Arabian peninsula? After all - say this not too loudly

- if

we promised and fulfilled all that, every one of Osama bin Laden's

demands will have been met. " (Fisk, 'Promises, Promises', The

Independent,

October 17, 2001)

 

To ignore these serious political grievances and to focus instead on a

fanatical hatred of Western " selfish individualism " is absurd.

 

In reality, the idea that the neocons and al Qaeda " shared the same

fears " is a satisfyingly ironic fiction rooted in selective

inattention to

the facts. Both, in reality, are highly motivated by pragmatic concerns

to do with the wielding and abuse of power.

 

Curtis's thesis is not entirely without merit. As he says, " much of

this threat [of Islamic terrorism] is a fantasy, which has been

exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that

has spread

unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services,

and the international media. "

 

The `threat' of al Qaeda clearly has been overblown by western

politicians and a compliant media.

 

But the manufactured `threat' of international terrorism is a fiction

that distracts from a far more important truth: that Western governments

are by far the most powerful and, in terms of numbers killed, most

deadly agents of terrorism. This unpalatable truth was not even

acknowledged by Curtis. Indeed it is hard to imagine that such a

genuinely

heretical and honest point could ever be made in a major BBC series.

 

 

In Hope Of Another " Crisis Of Democracy "

 

Curtis also claimed that, like the jihadists, the neocons despised the

" selfish individualism " of the 1960s, and the `threat' to American

morals it represented. But in reality this was a rhetorical cover for an

attack on a different, very real enemy - the rise of civil rights,

anti-war, environmental, feminist and other grassroots movements.

 

A 1975 study on the " governability of democracies " by the influential

Trilateral Commission warned of an " excess of democracy " in the United

States that was contributing to " the reduction of governmental

authority " at home and a consequent " decline in the influence of

democracy

abroad. " This general " crisis of democracy " resulted from the efforts of

previously marginalised sectors of the population attempting to involve

themselves in the political process. The study urged more " moderation in

democracy " to overcome the crisis. (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Necessary

Illusions, Pluto Press, 1991, pp.2-3)

 

A top secret US Defense Department memorandum in March 1968 had earlier

warned that escalating the war in Vietnam ran " great risks of provoking

a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions " , including " increased

defiance of the draft and growing unrest in the cities " . These threats

were very much on the minds of military planners as they decided whether

to massively escalate the assault on Vietnam, or back off, after the

Tet offensive. This naturally represented an intolerable interference in

policy from the point of elites. (The Pentagon Papers, Vol. IV, p. 564,

Senator Gravel Edition, Beacon, 1972)

 

The danger for the state is always that the public will see through the

Machiavellian intrigues of political power, and refuse to acquiesce any

longer in state-sponsored slaughter and corporate exploitation of the

planet. Once again, the targeted enemy was not " selfish individualism "

but cooperative altruism that threatened to precisely +challenge+

selfish vested interests.

 

By portraying the manipulation of fear as a recent development of

neocon politicians, and by blanking the institutional realities of modern

politics, The Power Of Nightmares contributed to the media deluge

obstructing the re-emergence of another " crisis of democracy " .

 

 

Conclusion

 

In his 2002 series, The Century Of The Self, Curtis claimed that

politicians and planners had " set out to find ways to control the hidden

enemy within the human mind " to ensure that " the unleashing of these

instincts that had lead to the barbarism of Nazi Germany " could never

surface

again. In The Power Of Nightmares, Curtis spins more tall tales,

claiming that the neocons are intent on using America's power

aggressively

" as a force for good " in order to " help spread democracy around the

world. "

 

The well-documented reality, of which Curtis is himself aware - that US

leaders have long projected massive economic and military force in a

conscious attempt to maximise profits and power, often regardless of the

untold cost in human suffering – was nowhere to be seen.

 

Is it really such a surprise that Curtis's work is so well-received by

the elite corporate media?

 

 

SUGGESTED ACTION

 

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and

respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge

readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

 

Write to Adam Curtis, the writer and director of `The Power of

Nightmares':

 

Ask him why failed to address the promotion of fear and nightmares by

+all+ US and UK governments in the past century. Why did he not locate

the roots of neocon policies in business control of domestic and foreign

societies for profit? Why did he almost entirely overlook the effects

of this profit-drive in mass slaughters in Latin America and the Third

World more generally? Is this very real " politics of fear " not central

to an understanding of international affairs in the 20th and 21st

centuries?

 

Email: adam.curtis

 

Write to Roly Keating, Head of BBC2:

Email: roly.keating

 

Write to the BBC's commissioning editors, at:

Email: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/

 

You can also leave messages at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nightmares

 

Write to Jana Bennet, head of BBC Television

Email: jana.bennett

 

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:

Email: editor

 

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org