The Power of Nightmares

If you have access to BBC2 don’t for­get to watch “The Power of Night­mares” doc­u­men­tary, the series every­body talk about. Eex­plor­ing the idea that the threat of a ter­ror net­work is a myth.

Part I Baby it’s cold outside

Amer­i­can Neo­con­ser­v­a­tives and rad­i­cal Islamists come together to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and both believe that it is they who have defeated the Evil Empire and now have the power to trans­form the world. But both fail in their revolutions.

Part II The Phan­tom Victory

In response, the Neo­con­ser­v­a­tives invent a new fan­tasy enemy, Bill Clin­ton the depraved moral mon­ster, to try and regain their power, while the Islamists descend into a des­per­ate cycle of vio­lence and ter­ror to try and per­suade the peo­ple to fol­low them.

Part III next Wednesday

Links related to the series

The Guardian: The mak­ing of the ter­ror myth

Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor: Pol­i­tics of “fear over vision”

NRO: The Power of Bad Television

CROOKED TIMBER: The Power of Nightmares

List of ter­ror­ist incidents

You can down­load Part I here (you need Bit­tor­rent)

I deserve some cred­its in the comments