The Power of Nightmares

Season 12004

Examines how politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society.

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3 Episodes

E01 Baby It's Cold Outside

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. The first part of the series explains the origins of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism.

October 20, 2004

E02 The Phantom Victory

Islamist factions, rapidly falling under the more radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to combat the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. They are successful in repulsing the Soviet armies and, when the Eastern Bloc begins to collapse in the late 1980s, both groups believe they were the primary architect of the "Evil Empire's" defeat and thus have the power to carry out their revolutions in their homelands. Curtis instead argues that the Soviets were on their last legs and were doomed to collapse without intervention.

October 27, 2004

E03 The Shadows in the Cave

Curtis argues that, after their failed revolutions, bin Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular support, let alone a serious complex organisation of terrorists, and were dependent upon independent operatives to carry out their new call for jihad. The film instead shows the United States government wanting to prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, and needing to prove him to be the head of a criminal organisation to do so. They find a former associate of bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that bin Laden was the head of a massive terrorist organisation called "al-Qaeda". With the September 11th attacks, Neo-Conservatives in the new Republican government of George W. Bush use this created concept of an organisation to justify another crusade against a new evil enemy, leading to the launch of the War on Terrorism.

November 3, 2004

The Power of Nightmares

E01 Baby It's Cold Outside

E02 The Phantom Victory

E03 The Shadows in the Cave

The Century of the Self

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Wild China

Xavier: Renegade Angel

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

The Men Who Killed Kennedy

How Art Made The World

Riddle of the Skies

Ascension

The Spy

Generation Kill

Battlestar Galactica

Serial Experiments Lain

Limitless

Better Call Saul

Breaking Bad

Money Heist

Game of Thrones

Chernobyl

Arcane

E01 Baby It's Cold Outside

E02 The Phantom Victory

E03 The Shadows in the Cave