The BBC recently screened Adam Curtis' controversial three-part documentary series The Power of Nightmares, a genealogy of how the Political Islamist (Sayyed Qutb) and American Neoconservative (Leo Strauss) worldviews have informed the War on Terror. Curtis created debate.

∙ Part 1: Baby It's Cold Outside video stream
∙ Part 2: The Phantom Victory video stream
∙ Part 3: The Shadows In The Cave video stream

Curtis posits this as an 'intergroup conflict' (Howard Bloom) between two elite groups of Vipra (intellectuals) whose nightmarish visions reshape the political landscape. Pareto and Mosca's point about elites is an undercurrent to episode one. This is a good example of the Critical layer in Causal Layered Analysis (applied to the Western security discourse of counterterrorism) with satirical imagery and editing. Curtis' thesis has been rejected by some American conservatives.

A central point in episode 2 is that the West's understanding of Al Qaeda came from the FBI's 1998 case into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Under US laws the FBI needed to posit a criminal organization (a la the Mafia) to try Bin Laden. Curtis interviews author Jason Burke, who argues that Al Qaeda must be understood as a loose network underpinned by an idea, rather than a hierarchical organization with bin Laden as leader.

Curtis highlights Sarkar's point that Vipra may end up controlling Ksattriyans (warriors) via ideologies. The 'current of transmission' from Sayyed Qutb to Ayman Al-Zawahiri is documented. Curtis doesn't mention Fred Polak's important work on social imaging; he does observe that both groups had success because of their dystopian future visions---and that they gained currency when the general public became skeptical of linear visions (particularly the Comtean 'faith' in science and progress). Near the third episode's end some of Curtis' interviewees talk about the shift from Positivist 'evidence-based' science to 'What If?' speculation---the latter is not explored, and would have been if Curtis had been aware of Futures Studies and Counterfactual History.