Both fighting to same end?

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#01. "Baby, it's cold outside!"

Another good BBC documentary produced and directed by Adam Curtis. This time around, he is trying to make sense of the world around us by trying to analyse the genesis of Islamic jihadist and the American neoconservatives. He tells us that the seed of their origin is America itself.

Politicians used to give hope to their people, promising them to bring them to a better world. With the big wars, I suppose, people lost trust in their leaders. They became 'anti-establishment', but now the tide has changed. People have once again given their leader a role to protect them from an increasingly hostile world -so the leaders claim, is the threat over-exaggerated or is it real?

Sayid Qutb

Both the American neoconservatives and the Muslim ultra-conservatives both wish for a better world but instead what they get is a nightmare.
It all started around 1949...

In Colorado, an Egyptian school inspector, Sayid Qutb was sent to the US to learn the school system. The opinion he formed after watching an innocent school dance involving teens slow dancing to the song "Baby, it's cold outside!" changed his opinion about America altogether! He thought that the society was decaying, corrupt, crass, vulgar, materialistic, selfish and self-centred. Even though the community was free, or they thought they were, were actually lost souls. The culture of individualism was actually taking them backwards in civilisation.

Leo Strauss

In Chicago, a political philosopher in the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss stated his fear of the destructive nature of individualism that would lead to nihilism (anarchy). At an era when Man was behaving like herds of animals when everything is possible, and boundaries of morality are blurred, he felt that to give confidence to people, the politicians ought to create necessary myth and delusions to move forward as a nation. Strauss' favourite TV shows, 'Gunsmoke' and 'Perry Mason' epitomises his train of thought - where a group of elite, at least in public life, irrespective of what they thought privately, used whatever method and trick possible to maintain law and order.

After his stint in the USA, Kutb returned home to see a nation already immersed in American culture. He suggested religion as a basis to squash individualism, using vanguards to lead people to be saved from corruption and bring them back to the path of truth. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement. In 1952, the movement helped General Nasser to oust the British. After securing power, Nasser forged an alliance with the Americans. CIA was given the task of organising security services. Kutb and his fellow same minded individuals were arrested and tortured via CIA techniques - electrocuted, mauled by savage animals etcetera. He survived incarceration and heart attack. His opinion about humanity regressed. People were regressing, being infected, without realising into barbarism (jahiliyyah). In 1966, he was executed, not without having a mark in the life of people like Ayman Zawahiri who later became the right-hand man of Osama Bin-Laden.

In the USA, 1967 saw the optimistic liberal dominant order crumble with riot and violence. Irving Kristol explored Strauss' theory. People like Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and William Kristol started this neoconservative movement. They tried to destroy the destruction of society by giving a shared purpose in life. They promoted US' unique way of life with a mission against the enemy of the world, i.e. USSR.

In opposition to their suggestion, Kissinger (1972) signed a peace accord with USSR admitting mutual interdependence in a globalised world. With the Watergate scandal and the loss in Vietnam War, neoconservatives infiltrate Washington to assist President Gerald Ford - Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cherney. They created fear against the Soviets even though independent panel never found any evidence of disproportionate weapons. The neoconservatives responded that the Soviets have such a high technology that the armaments and submarines remained undetectable. In reality, however, the Kremlin was crumbling economically and military wise! The war between the good and the bad had begun.

Ayman Zawahiri

In Egypt, by the 70s, it had prospered, and the middle class had expanded. The American ally in Anwar Sadat tried to have peace talks with Israel. The vanguards from the Muslim Brotherhood looked at it as an insult to Islam and plotted Sadat's assassination. Qutb's dream of liberating people via religion materialised through the Iranian Revolution. Islamist jihadist who also pursued the same vision.

On the other side, the neoconservatives were creating new fantasies to support democratic revolutions by supporting groups that support democracy and are under the threat of tyranny.