Exploiting Fear in The Power of Nightmares

The Politics of Fear: The BBC special describes how Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago and Egyptian Syyid Qotb each simultaneous began the Neo-Conservative Movement, and Radical Wahhabist Islam as methods to manipulate and control the masses, but instead became the converging paths on a road to mutual destruction.



You see the big flaw in America/Western Culture according to both Strauss and Qotb is our individualism. Our Freedom. Or Greed, Selfishness and lack of desire for a common purpose. Qotb felt this common purpose should be a devotion to Islam, and after visiting the United States to review our educational system returned to Egypt to begin thinktank of Islamic thinker, who eventually become more and more radicalized until they attempted to overthrow the government, were imprisoned, tortured and eventually executed - but not for influencing other Islamic thinker such as Ahyman al Zawahiri, the eventually mentor of Osama Bin Laden.

Strauss similarly influenced his contemporaries including Irvin Kristol, reacted to the Great Society arguing that it was an "abject failure".

Irvin Kristol: (The Liberals) had their reforms, and they have led to consequences they did not expect and have no answer for.

The crime and strife of the 60's and early 70's couldn't have been the result of an unreasonable War and restrictive regressive policies of division and exclusion - No, it had to be those Liberals, and all those damn Peace Loving, Anti-Discriminatory HIPPIES fault.

Other similar travelers, using Strauss's thoughts on anti-indiviudalism to answer Kristol, which included his son William, Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukiyama and of course, Donald Rumsfeld.

Part 2 focuses on the Rise of Reagan, the eventual Fall of Afghanistan, and the Phantom Victory over the Cold War



So interesting that President Reagan dedicated the crashed Space Shuttle Columbia to the Afganistan Freedom Fighters.


In part 6 you'll see a very young looking David Brock arguing vehemently that then President Bill Clinton had perpetrated a sexual assault against Paula Jones - but Brock realizing that he had become part of the Scaif funded "Arkansas Project" eventually rejected the destructive practices of the Right, and has since gone on for found Media Matters.

This is what he says now...

Brock: They didn't care (if any of it was true). It was terrorism, political terrorism.

The last section address the rise of Bin Laden, become the perfect tool and foil for the Neo-Cons now regaining power with the Election of George W. Bush who supposedly represented the "Return of Honor" to the White House following the (mostly falsified) scandals of Bill Clinton.

When originally broadcast by the BBC this special very nearly prevented Tony Blair from joining in the War on Iraq - nearly, but not quite.

Quite an informative piece on the Neo-Cons, the Religious Right and Radical Islam. It's always good to know your enemies at least as well, if not better, than they know themselves.

We can still see the techniques of Strauss in the constant propaganda of the Fox Disinformation Network. The constant drumbeat of Fear of Socialism, Marxism, Islamicism, Secularism coming from Fox, filtered through the Tea Party and back into wacked-out radical candidates such as Sharron Angle (who rails against the government while living on the government dole), Christine O'Donnell (who hasn't met a gratuitous self-aggrandizing LIE she didn't love), Joe Miller (who wants to cut the Social Security and Medicare his own parents depend on), Meg Whiteman (whose tossed her own former illegal immigrant maid under the bus) and Karl Paladino (who threatened to take out a HIT on a reporter).

We can't allow this fear-mongering to continue to rip our country apart.

Vyan