Community Partnerships and student present Human Rights films to campus

by Shakira Croce

Wednesday February 22, 2006

“The War on Terror,” “The Axis of Evil,” “Wanted: Dead or Alive”: these anxiety-producing phrases became an intricate part of American political lingo in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that swept the nation, the Bush administration’s attempts at retaliation were deemed acceptable by a shell-shocked nation, even to the point of preemptively attacking a nation that posed no security threat to the United States.

But what if the anticipated fears of masked terrorists communicating and plotting another intricate attack were a “fantasy?” This was the question proposed and explored in a BBC Documentary screened by SLC Community Partnerships and organized by their student coordinator, junior Heliana Mezzabolta, on February 9. A discussion led by Professor Ray Seidelman of the Political Science Department followed the screening.

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, written and directed by Adam Curtis, is a documentary in three parts with the first two installments addressing the Soviet Union and the rise of 1970s neoconservatives and radical Islamists.

The third episode, “The Shadows in the Cave,” specifically deals with the validity of the threat of terrorism in a post-9/11 world. This part of the documentary propses that the widely held conception that al-Qaeda is a radical organized network posing a threat of terrorism to the United States is nothing more than a phantasmagoric illusion. Beyond the illusory, the film maintains that the supposed threat of the Axis of Evil may be nothing more than a hoax fabricated by neoconservatives to maintain and perpetuate power.

Seidelman described the film as outlining “how fear is generated to gain support on both sides [al-Qaeda and the neoconservatives].”

The film illustrated the immense power that politicians are able to achieve when promising to “protect us from nightmares” and the vague crusade as an American fights against “evil.” The group that is now known as al-Qaeda and led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri as part of a jihadist movement is portrayed to be nothing more than a deeply disjointed group of disillusioned, angry and isolated individuals with “no organization,” only united by an abstract ideology. Bin Laden simply provided financial assistance and helped in recruiting volunteers for the separately planned 9/11 attacks, which subsequently “brought neoconservatives back to power in America.”

The film cites examples such as the absence of the highly imagined and publicized “sleeper cells” in the mountains of Tora Bora, the failure to find substantial evidence to incriminate supposed members of al-Qaeda in the United States, and the gross exaggeration of the horrific threat of “dirty bombs.”
“I was infuriated…at myself for not being aware of the majority of what the film was discussing and that all of this had happened under the nose of the American public,” said first year Angelina Duell, “That we have so easily allowed ourselves to slip into bizarre apathy of fear and ignorance is deeply troubling.”

“This documentary reminded me to think critically,” Mezzabolta added.

This film is not ignoring the existence of terrorism, but it is saying that the threat has been “distorted and exaggerated.” Such fears have already allowed the Bush administration to lead the nation into a war based on fearful, illegitimate and speculative assumptions of an international network of terror connecting Saddam Hussein and Iraq to 9/11 and al-Qaeda: the boogey-man syndrome.

The next film in the Spring 2006 Human Rights Film Festival will be Stolen Childhoods, featuring special guest speaker and creator of the film, Robin Romano, and public policy Professor Dean Hubbard. The film will take place on March 7 at 7 p.m. in Titsworth Lecture Hall.

Contact hmezzabolta@slc.edu for more information.