If you haven't watched "The Power of Nightmares" yet, I believe it should be required viewing in every high school world history class. I have always believed that pattern recognition is one of the most underrated skills that can be nurtured in young people. It helps us to navigate through the lies that we are constantly being fed, and to search for the truth behind them. Without a highly developed sense of it, we will be duped into believing absurdities and letting history repeat itself over and over again. The BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares," which was banned by all the U.S. networks for reasons which will become obvious when you read further, is a shining example of what I'm referring to as pattern recognition. It is also a must-see for its impeccable research and A-list interviewees! I'll post links at the bottom of this blog for you to view the whole series on Google video for free.

Here's the opening statement of the documentary (with my commentary in brackets, links to video clips, and emphasis added):

"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this (read: free-market conservatives vs. socialists), but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered 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 can not 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 that has been distorted and exaggerated 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 this fantasty was created, and who it benefits..."

If the clip below - about the origins of and motivations behind the Neoconservative and Religious Right movements in the U.S. - does not convince you to watch the rest of this series, you must be in a media-induced coma.

Leo Strauss - The Creation of Myths to Retain Power

Key Points:

There is no such thing as an organized network of international terrorists called Al Qaeda. Even Bin Laden never used the term until after he'd heard it in the American media.

Yes, there are radical Islamist organizations that carry out acts of terror and share certain ideologies, but they are by no means organized in the way that the media portrays them to be. At the time that we started our "war on terror," these groups were beginning to die down and lose followers in their countries because of their extremist tactics.

This is another Straussian Neoconservative rallying gimmick, just like the myth that the Soviet Union had somehow coordinated every terrorist act carried out during the Cold War, in an effort to "take over the world", whether the act of violence was commited by the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Irish Republican Army, or any other radical group. Despite the fact that there was no evidence to suggest this, and a surplus of evidence from the CIA to debunk it, we proceeded with the Cold War as if our way of life depended on it. In reality, the Soviet Union was crumbling from within and did not pose the threat that we were made to live in constant fear of.

I worry that young people today won't make this connection of history repeating itself, because they did not live through the Cold War. We had to perform school drills for what to do in the event of a nuclear attack, as if to "duck and cover" would somehow protect us from nuclear annihilation. Like the gas masks and duct tape recommended just a few years ago as security measures. We had to "bring democracy" to the people of the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Look at what our free market "democracy" has done for the Soviet Union. It's essentially a country run by organized crime.

Here are links to this highly recommended series on Google video (if they stay up):

Part 1: Baby, It's Cold Outside
Part 2: The Phantom Victory
Part 3: The Shadows in the Cave

This post can viewed with embedded video at:
http://angryatheist.blogspot.com/

Why? Because I love you.