"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today, people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us - from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror.
But much of this threat 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.
This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists.
Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.
And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure.
These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended.
Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world.
A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age.
And those with the darkest fears, became the most powerful."
"He’s a marvelous man, and one of my favorite filmmakers. I think that “The Power of Nightmares” is the single best piece of documentary television I have ever seen."
Alan Moore on Adam Curtis and The Power of Nightmares
"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." "
Adam Curtis
The Power of Nightmares - Baby It's Cold Outside from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
"[Leo] Strauss believed it was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in.
They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions.
One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation."
At the end of 1992, Bill Clinton won a dramatic victory.
But the NeoConservatives were determined to regain power.
And to do this, they were going to do to Bill Clinton what they had done to the Soviet Union.
They would transform The President of the United States into a fantasy Enemy -
an image of evil that would make people realise the truth of the Liberal corruption of America...
"Mentioning the name of Clinton provokes disgust and revulsion; the President has a heart that knows no words.
A heart that kills hundreds of children, definitely knows no words.
Our people in Arabia will send us messages with our words, because he does not understand words.
If there is a message that I may send through you, I address the mothers of the American troops - to these mothers I say, 'If they are concerned for their sons, then let them object to the US Government's policy'"
Usama Bin Laden,
CNN Interview,
Khost, Afghanistan, 1997
"The idea... that Bin Laden ran a coherent organisation, of which you could be a member, is a myth.
That idea of a coherent, organised structure simply does not exist."
The Power of Nightmares. The Century of the Self. Pandora’s Box. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. If you’re familiar with the alternative media, you’ve doubtless come across references to the documentary work of Adam Curtis. But besides the well-known examples of brilliance within Curtis’ work is a deeply doctrinaire strain that seeks to normalize mainstream history and convince us that the driving ideologies of the political elite are exactly what they say they are.
Join us today on The Corbett Report as we deconstruct Curtis’ documentaries and look for the deeper meaning behind the globalist ideology.
The Loving Trap from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
