In my last post I alluded to the terrorist/guerrilla threat faced by the West as “a war with a hidden and inscrutable foe difficult to understand and cope with; a foe over which advanced military technology has little effect.” I have just finished watching Adam Curtis’ documentary “The Power of Nightmares” on DVD (an Xmas present). If Curtis is anything to go by then it seems that that foe is even more difficult to understand and cope with than I thought.
According to Curtis there never was a formal Islamic terrorist network. That network, he claims, has been talked up by those who, through a combination of paranoia and occupational raison detre, have a profound interest in believing it to be true; chiefly, it seems the American neoconservatives. The neoconservatives, who in the main came to the fore on the back of rumours about the Soviet global threat (which was in fact a decrepit empire in decline) have their origins in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss was a political philosopher who advocated the cynical propagation of socially unifying myths (or “noble lies”) which he believed give meaning and purpose to societies, thereby stiffening their moral fiber and civic ethos. Unlike Strauss, however, it seems that the neoconservatives themselves weren’t and aren’t cynical, but really believed the “noble lies” they were telling.
If Curtis is right what are we left with? We are left with something even more untouchable and invisible than an underground conspiracy: Namely, an idea or myth of war that serves two classes of warring protagonists; firstly the neoconservatives for whom a rumour of war is a socially unifying myth; secondly the Islamic extremists for whom it acts as a rallying cry galvanizing them into belligerent action and in the process picking up many who are disaffected, alienated and looking for meaning, value and purpose. According to Curtis there isn’t a physical terrorist network to destroy, but instead something that floats around in the conceptual ether; a conceptual virus akin to one of those indestructible conspiracy theories. This fanciful perspective brings out the hero element on both sides of the conflict in that by joining the fight they can become part of something significant and important, a player in a cosmic drama of good vs. evil.
At this point the ironies come in thick and fast.
Curtis tells us that the neo-conservatives were partly voted into power by the religious right. And yet there is a contingent of the Western religious right represented, for example, by the deceased New Zealander Barry Smith and Alex Jones, who believe America to be in the hands of the conspiratorial illuminati. Jones, in particular, claims that the 9/11 attack was a false flag operation carried out under the Bush administration in order to unify the nation and put it onto a war footing. Conspiracy theory’s seductive simplifying assumption of a unified and inscrutable adversary pulling the strings in the background is caught in the act of working against itself.
It is ironic that the neoconservatives are largely against the global warming scare. They claim that global warming is a myth being peddled by the liberal community and bound up with that community’s self interests and desire to control. Clearly Leo Strauss would be proud, if only the neoconservatives were quicker off the mark at exploiting this “noble lie”; the neoconservatives lost their opportunity to weigh in early on the right side. Trouble is, it is a “lie” that may be inclined to conflict with a free market ethos and thus not have been to their liking. “Noble lies” feel nobler if they serve one’s own interests first.
I am not aware that Curtis is in any sense a believer in anything, but towards the end of the production he notes that Western societies, a la postmodernism, no longer believe in anything. This, he says, makes them all too vulnerable to the “power of the nightmare”; for they fear those individuals, especially fundamentalists, who do believe in something and are who prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to impose their vision on society.
If as Curtis claims the neoconservatives with their close ties to the religious right have views that trace back to the theories of Leo Strauss, then where does that leave the religious beliefs espoused by so many of their supporters and which those supporters claim to be the seat of their morality and social cohesion? Is that religion to be regarded as a “noble lie”? In fact would they want us to believe that “noble lie theory” is the explanation of religion? That is, does religion have nothing to it other than to serve as a “noble lie”?
According to Curtis there never was a formal Islamic terrorist network. That network, he claims, has been talked up by those who, through a combination of paranoia and occupational raison detre, have a profound interest in believing it to be true; chiefly, it seems the American neoconservatives. The neoconservatives, who in the main came to the fore on the back of rumours about the Soviet global threat (which was in fact a decrepit empire in decline) have their origins in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss was a political philosopher who advocated the cynical propagation of socially unifying myths (or “noble lies”) which he believed give meaning and purpose to societies, thereby stiffening their moral fiber and civic ethos. Unlike Strauss, however, it seems that the neoconservatives themselves weren’t and aren’t cynical, but really believed the “noble lies” they were telling.
If Curtis is right what are we left with? We are left with something even more untouchable and invisible than an underground conspiracy: Namely, an idea or myth of war that serves two classes of warring protagonists; firstly the neoconservatives for whom a rumour of war is a socially unifying myth; secondly the Islamic extremists for whom it acts as a rallying cry galvanizing them into belligerent action and in the process picking up many who are disaffected, alienated and looking for meaning, value and purpose. According to Curtis there isn’t a physical terrorist network to destroy, but instead something that floats around in the conceptual ether; a conceptual virus akin to one of those indestructible conspiracy theories. This fanciful perspective brings out the hero element on both sides of the conflict in that by joining the fight they can become part of something significant and important, a player in a cosmic drama of good vs. evil.
At this point the ironies come in thick and fast.
Curtis tells us that the neo-conservatives were partly voted into power by the religious right. And yet there is a contingent of the Western religious right represented, for example, by the deceased New Zealander Barry Smith and Alex Jones, who believe America to be in the hands of the conspiratorial illuminati. Jones, in particular, claims that the 9/11 attack was a false flag operation carried out under the Bush administration in order to unify the nation and put it onto a war footing. Conspiracy theory’s seductive simplifying assumption of a unified and inscrutable adversary pulling the strings in the background is caught in the act of working against itself.
It is ironic that the neoconservatives are largely against the global warming scare. They claim that global warming is a myth being peddled by the liberal community and bound up with that community’s self interests and desire to control. Clearly Leo Strauss would be proud, if only the neoconservatives were quicker off the mark at exploiting this “noble lie”; the neoconservatives lost their opportunity to weigh in early on the right side. Trouble is, it is a “lie” that may be inclined to conflict with a free market ethos and thus not have been to their liking. “Noble lies” feel nobler if they serve one’s own interests first.
I am not aware that Curtis is in any sense a believer in anything, but towards the end of the production he notes that Western societies, a la postmodernism, no longer believe in anything. This, he says, makes them all too vulnerable to the “power of the nightmare”; for they fear those individuals, especially fundamentalists, who do believe in something and are who prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to impose their vision on society.
If as Curtis claims the neoconservatives with their close ties to the religious right have views that trace back to the theories of Leo Strauss, then where does that leave the religious beliefs espoused by so many of their supporters and which those supporters claim to be the seat of their morality and social cohesion? Is that religion to be regarded as a “noble lie”? In fact would they want us to believe that “noble lie theory” is the explanation of religion? That is, does religion have nothing to it other than to serve as a “noble lie”?
