All language subtitles for Hypernormalisation

We live in a strange time.

Extraordinary events keep happening that
undermine the stability of our world.

Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald
Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit.

Yet those in control seem unable to deal
with them.

No one has any vision of a different or
a better kind of future.

This film will tell the story of how we
got. to this strange place.

It is about how over the past 40 years
politicians, financiers and

utopians rather than face up to the real
complexities of the world retreated.

Instead they constructed a simpler
version of the world in order to hang on

power.

And as this fake world grew all of us
went along with it.

because the simplicity was reassuring.

Even those who thought they were
attacking the system, the radicals, the

artists, the musicians and our whole
counterculture, actually became part of

trickery, because they too had retreated
into the make -believe world, which

is why their opposition has no effect
and nothing ever changes.

But this retreat into a dream world
allowed dark and destructive forces to

fester and grow outside.

Forces that are now returning to pierce
the fragile surface of our carefully

constructed fake world.

The story begins in two cities at the
same moment in 1975.

One is New York.

The other is Damascus.

It was a moment when two ideas about how
it might be possible to run the world

without politics first took hold.

New York City was on the verge of
collapse.

For 30 years, the politicians who ran
the city had borrowed more and more

from the banks to pay for its growing
services and welfare.

But in the early 70s, the middle classes
fled from the city, and the taxes they

paid disappeared with them.

So the banks lent the city even more.

But then they began to get worried about
the size of the growing debt.

and whether the city would ever be able
to pay it back.

And then, one day in 1975, the bank just
stopped.

The city held its regular meeting to
issue bonds in return for the loans,

overseen by the city's financial
controller.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Today the city of New York is offering
for competitive bidding sale 260 million

tax anticipation notes, of which 100
million will mature on June 3rd, 1975.

The banks were supposed to turn up at
11am, but it soon became clear that none

of them were going to appear.

The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm, and
the banks promised they would turn up.

The announcement on behalf of the
Comptroller is that the offer, which we

expected to receive and announce at 2 o
'clock this afternoon, is now expected

at 4 o 'clock.

Does this mean that so far nobody wants
those bonds? We will be making a further

announcement at 4 o 'clock and anything
further that I could say now I think

would not advance the interest of the
sale which is now in progress. Does this

mean that you have not been able to sell
them so far today?

We will have a further announcement at 4
o 'clock.

What happened that day in New York
marked a radical shift in power.

Banks insisted that in order to protect
their loans, they should be allowed to

take control of the city.

The city appealed to the president, but
he refused to help.

So a new committee was set up to manage
the city's finances.

Out of nine members, eight of them were
bankers.

It was the start of an extraordinary
experiment, where the financial

institutions...

took power away from the politicians and
started to run society themselves.

The city had no other option.

The bankers enforced what was called
austerity on the city, insisting that

thousands of teachers, policemen and
firemen were sacked.

This was a new kind of politics.

The old politicians believed that crises
were solved through negotiations and

deals.

The bankers had a completely different
view.

They were just the representatives of
something that couldn't be negotiated

with. The logic of the market.

To them, there was no alternative to
this system.

It should run society.

Just by shifting paper around, these
slobs can make 60, 65 million dollars in

single transaction.

That would take care of all of the
layoffs in the city.

So it's reckless, it's cruel, and it's a
disgrace.

There'd be a fair number of bankers, of
course, who'd say, well, it's the unions

who have been too greedy.

Now, what would your reaction be to
that? I guess they're right in a way. If

can make $60 million on a single
transaction and a worker makes $8 ,000,

a year, I suppose they're correct, and
as they go back to their little estates

in Greenwich, Connecticut, I want to
wish them well, the slobs.

But the extraordinary thing was, no -one
opposed the bankers.

The radicals and the left -wingers, who
ten years before...

had dreamt of changing America through
revolution, did nothing.

They had retreated and were living in
the abandoned buildings in Manhattan.

The thinger Patti Smith later described
the mood of disillusion.

that had come over them.

I could not identify with the political
movements any longer, she said.

All the manic activity in the streets.

In trying to join them, I felt
overwhelmed by yet another form of

What she was describing was the rise of
a new powerful individualism.

that could not fit with the idea of
collective political action.

Instead, Hattie Smith and many others
became a new kind of individual radical

who watched the decaying city with a
cool detachment.

They didn't try and change it.

They just experienced it.

Look at that. Isn't that cool?

I love that. We're like kids right all
over the world.

That to me is neater than any art
sometimes.

Jose and Maria forever.

Oh, there's a lot of things like when
you buy big movie houses, maybe we'll

one, but they have little movie screens
where you can see clips of like Z or

something like that. People watch it
over and over. I've seen people, I've

checked them out all day.

I've gone back and forth and they're
still there watching the credits of a

because they don't have enough dough,
but it's some entertainment, you know.

Instead, radicals across America turned
to art

and music as a means of expressing their
criticism of society.

They believed that instead of trying to
change the world outside, the new

radicalism should try and change what
was inside people's heads.

And the way to do this was through self
-expression, not collective action.

V.

W.

X.

Y.

Z.

But some of the left saw that something
else was really going on.

that by detaching themselves and
retreating into an ironic coolness, a

generation were beginning to lose touch
with the reality of power.

One of them wrote

at that time, it was the mood of the
era, and the revolution was

deferred indefinitely.

And while we were dozing, the money
crept in.

What's your date of birth, Larry?

But one of the people who did understand
how to use this new power was Donald

Trump.

Trump realised that there was now no
future in building housing for ordinary

people because all the government grants
had gone.

But he saw that there were other ways to
get vast amounts of money out of the

state.

Trump started to buy up derelict
buildings in New York.

And he announced that he was going to
transform them into luxury hotels and

apartments.

But in return, he negotiated the biggest
tax break in New York's history, worth

$160 million.

The city had to agree because they were
desperate.

And the banks...

seeing a new opportunity, also started
to lend him money.

And Donald Trump began to transform New
York into a city for the rich, while he

paid practically nothing.

At the very same time, in 1975, there
was a confrontation between two powerful

men in Damascus, the capital of Syria.

One was Henry Kissinger, the US
Secretary of State.

The other was the President of Syria,
Hafez al -Assad.

The battle between the two men was going
to have profound consequences for the

world.

And like in New York, It was going to be
a struggle between the old idea of

using politics to change the world and a
new idea that you could run the world

as a stable system.

President Assad dominated Syria.

The country was full of giant images and
statues that glorified him.

He was brutal and ruthless.

Killing or imprisoning anyone he
suspected of being a threat.

But Ahad believed that the violence was
for a purpose.

He wanted to find a way of uniting the
Arab countries and using that power

to stand up to the world.

Kissinger was also tough and ruthless.

He had started in the 1950s as an expert
in the theory of nuclear strategy, what

was called the delicate balance of
terror.

It was the system that ran the Cold War.

Both sides believed that if they
attacked, the other side would

launch their missiles and everyone would
be annihilated.

Kissinger had been one of the models for
the character of Dr Strangelove.

in Stanley Kubrick's films.

Mr. President, I would not rule out the
chance to preserve a nucleus of human

specimens.

It would be quite easy.

At the bottom of some of our deeper
minds, sir.

Henry was not a warm, friendly, modest,
jovial sort of person.

He was thought of as one of the more...

anxious, temperamental, self -conscious,
ambitious,

inconsiderate people at Harvard.

Kissinger saw himself as a hard realist.

He had no time for the emotional turmoil
of political ideologies.

He believed that history had always
really been a struggle for power between

groups and nations.

But what Kissinger took from the Cold
War was a way of seeing the world as an

interconnected system.

And his aim was to keep that system in
balance and prevent it from falling into

chaos.

I believe that with all the dislocations
we now experience, there

also exists an extraordinary opportunity
to form for the first time in history.

a truly global society carried by the
principle of interdependence.

And if we act wisely and with vision, I
think we can look back to all this

turmoil as the birth pangs of a more
creative and better

system. If we miss the opportunity, I
think there's going to be chaos.

The flight has been delayed, we
understand now.

The passenger will be arriving here
about...

an hour and a half from now.

So we'll just have the press informed
and then we'll stay in contact with you.

And it was this idea that Kissinger set
out to impose on the chaotic politics of

the Middle East.

But to manage it, he knew that he was
going to have to deal with President

of Syria.

President Assad was convinced that there
would only ever be a real and lasting

peace between the Arabs and Israel if
the Palestinian refugees were allowed to

return to their homeland.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
were living in exile in Syria, as well

in the Lebanon and Jordan.

Have you found that the Palestinians
here want to integrate with the Syrians

all? Oh, no. No, never.

They don't want not here or neither in
Lebanon or in Jordan, never.

No, because they want to stay as a
whole, as Palestinians.

They call themselves those who go back.
Al -A 'idun, they say in Arabic.

Assad also believed that such a peace
would strengthen the Arab world.

But Kissinger thought that strengthening
the Arabs would destabilise his balance

of power.

So he set out to do the very opposite,
to fracture the power of the Arab

countries by dividing them and breaking
their alliances so they would keep each

other in check.

Kissinger now played a double game, or
as he termed it, constructive ambiguity.

In a series of meetings, he persuaded
Egypt to sign a separate agreement with

Israel.

But at the same time, he led Assad to
believe that he was working for a wider

peace agreement, one that would include
the Palestinians.

In reality, the Palestinians were
ignored.

They were irrelevant to the structural
balance of the global system.

The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking
about international politics is its

structural design.

Everything is always connected in his
mind to everything else.

But his first thoughts are on that
level, on the structural global balance

power level.

And as he addresses questions of human
dignity, human survival, human freedom,

I think they tend to come into his mind
as an adjunct.

of the play of nations at the power
game.

When Assad found out the truth, it was
too late.

In a series of confrontations with
Kissinger in Damascus, Assad raged about

treachery.

He told Kissinger that what he had done
would release demons hidden under the

surface of the Arab world.

Kissinger described their meetings.

Assad's controlled fury, he wrote, was
all the more impressive for its eerily

cold, seemingly unemotional demeanour.

Assad now retreated.

He started to build a giant palace that
loomed over Damascus.

And his belief that it would be possible
to transform the Arab world began to

fade.

A British journalist who knew Assad
wrote,

Assad's optimism has gone.

A trust in the future has gone.

What has emerged instead is a brutal,
vengeful Assad, who believes in nothing

except revenge.

The original dream of the Soviet Union
had been to create a glorious new world.

A world where not only the society, but
the people themselves would be

transformed.

They would become new and better kinds
of human beings.

But by the 1980s, it was clear that the
dream had failed.

The Soviet Union became instead a
society where no one believed in

had any vision of the future.

If you had a wish, what would it be now?

What? If you had a wish, what would it
be now?

What? A wish.

A dream.

A dream?

Yes.

Well, how can I tell you?

I don't know what else to tell you. A
dream.

Before, I didn't wish, I didn't guess, I
didn't see anything anyway.

I dreamed and guessed, but now it's the
other way around.

And now I don't believe, and I will
never think or dream.

Do you believe?

To whom?

What? To whom do you believe?

I don't know.

To God?

I don't believe in anyone, I don't
believe in anything.

Not even in you.

You have such a strange hairstyle.

Where did you get it?

They cut it beautifully.

I met the Moscow punks, and they cut it.

And what kind of punks are these?

Well, these are people who love freedom.
They brought you there.

And you're not free, are you?

I'm free.

Well, I think something happened to you.
Yes, I don't know.

I don't know.

No, but then they'll tell you.

I don't know if it's going to be
difficult, but I'll try my best.

Those who ran the Soviet Union had
believed that they could plan and manage

new kind of socialist society.

But they had discovered that it was
impossible to control and predict

everything, and the plan had run out of
control.

But rather than reveal this, the
technocrats began to pretend that

was still going according to plan.

And what emerged instead was a fake
version of the society.

The Soviet Union became a society where
everyone knew that what their leaders

said was not real, because they could
see with their own eyes that the economy

was falling apart.

But everybody had to play along and
pretend that it was real.

Because no one could imagine any
alternative.

One Soviet writer called it hyper
-normalization.

You were so much a part of the system
that it was impossible to see beyond it.

The fakeness was hyper -normal.

In this stagnant world, two brothers
called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

the inspiration of a growing new
dissident movement.

They weren't politicians.

They were science fiction writers.

And in their stories, they expressed the
strange mood that was rising up as the

Soviet empire collapsed.

Their most famous book was called
Roadside Picnic.

It is set in a world that seems like the
present.

except there is a zone that has been
created by an alien force.

People known as stalkers go into the
zone.

They find that nothing is what it seems,
that reality changes minute by minute.

Shadows go the wrong way.

There are hidden forces that twist your
body and change the way you think and

feel.

The picture the Strugatzis gave was of a
world where nothing was fixed.

where reality, both what you saw and
what you believed, had become shifting

unstable.

And in 1979, the film director, Andrei
Tarkovsky, made a film that was based on

Roadside Picnic.

He called it Stalker.

What happened?

Why did you stop me?

I didn't stop you. Who?

You?

Ronald Reagan, you solemnly swear that I
will faithfully execute the office of

President of the United States. That I
will faithfully execute the office of

President of the United States.

The new President of America had a new
vision of the world.

It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry
Kissinger any longer. It was different.

It was a simple moral crusade where
America had a special destiny to fight

and to make the world a better place.

The places and the periods in which man
has known freedom are few and far

between, just scattered moments on the
span of time.

And most of those moments have been
ours. The American people have a genius

great and unselfish deeds.

Into the hands of America, God has
placed the destiny of an afflicted

God bless America.

But this crusade was going to lead
Reagan to come face to face with Henry

Kissinger's legacy.

And above all, the vengeful fury of
President Assad of Syria.

Israel was now determined to finally
destroy the power of the Palestinians.

And in 1982, they sent a massive army to
encircle the Palestinian camps in the

Lebanon.

Do you know how strong the Israelis are?
Do you know how many tanks

they have outside Beirut? Do you know
how strong they are?

They are not

ready

to surrender.

As long as the people raise their heads
and the people are with us, no one can

beat us.

Quick, quick.

Two months later, thousands of
Palestinian refugees were

massacred in the camps.

It horrified the world.

But what was even more shocking... was
that Israel had allowed it to happen.

Its troops had stood by and watched as a
Christian Lebanese faction murdered the

Palestinians.

This was the first of the massacres we
discovered yesterday. Now, 24 hours

later, the stench here is appalling.

But the effects on the Israelis of what
their Christian allies did here and in

dozens of other places around this camp
are going to be immense.

There's always been a risk of such
massacres if Christian militiamen were

allowed to come into Palestinian camps,
and the Israelis seem to have done

nothing to prevent them coming into this
one.

In the face of the horror and the
growing chaos, President Reagan was

act.

He announced that American Marines would
come to Beirut to lead a peacekeeping

force.

Reagan insisted that the troops were
neutral, but President Assad was

that there was another reality.

He saw the truth as part of the growing
conspiracy between America and Israel to

divide the Middle East into factions and
destroy the power of the Arabs.

Assad decided to get the Americans out
of the Middle East.

And to do this, he made an alliance with
the new revolutionary force of

Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.

And what Khomeini could bring to Assad
was an extraordinary new weapon that he

had just created.

It was called the Poor Man Atomic Bomb.

Ayatollah

Khomeini

had come to power two years before as
the leader of the Iranian revolution.

But his hold on power was precarious.

and Khomeini had developed a new idea of
how to fight his enemies and defend the

revolution.

Khomeini told his followers that they
could destroy themselves in order to

the revolution, providing that in the
process they killed as many enemies

them as possible.

This was completely new, because the
Koran specifically prohibited suicide.

In the past, you became a martyr on the
battlefield.

because God chose the time and place of
your death.

But Khomeini changed this.

He did it by going back to one of the
central rituals of Shia Islam.

Every year, Shiites march in a
procession, mourning the sacrifice of

founder, Hussein.

As they do, they whip themselves,
symbolically re -enacting Hussein's

Khomeini said that the ultimate act of
penitence was not just to whip yourself,

but to kill yourself, providing it was
for the greater good of the revolution.

In the name of God, the compassionate,
the merciful, good afternoon.

An Iraqi Soviet -made MiG -23 was shot
down by the Air Force jet fighters of

Islamic Republic over the northwestern
Iranian border region of Marivan at 10

.08 hours local time Saturday, said the
Joint Staff Command's communique

numbered 1710.

Khomeini had mobilized this force when
the country was attacked by Iraq.

Iran faced almost certain defeat because
Iraq had far superior weapons, many of

them supplied by America.

So the revolutionaries took tens of
thousands of young boys out of schools,

them on buses and sent them to the front
line.

Their job was to walk through the
enemy's minefields, deliberately blowing

themselves up in order to open gaps that
would allow the Iranian army to pass

through unharmed.

It was organised suicide on a vast
scale.

This human sacrifice was commemorated in
giant cemeteries across the country.

Fountains flowing with blood -red water
glorified this new kind of martyrdom.

And it was this new idea of an
unstoppable human weapon that President

took from Khomeini and brought to the
West for the first time.

But as it travelled, it would mutate
into something even more deadly.

Instead of just killing yourself, you
would take explosives with you into the

heart of the enemy and then blow
yourself up, taking dozens or even

along with you.

It would become known as suicide
bombing.

In October 1983, two suicide bombers
drove trucks into the U .S. Marine

in Beirut.

It was seeing something move that took
me out of my trance.

And then I recognized, oh yeah, Marines
were in that building.

A lot of Marines were in that building.

And that's when I ran down.

And it was a black marine.

He looked white. The dust had just
covered him.

The massive explosions killed 241
Americans.

The bombers were members of a new
militant group that no one had heard of.

They called themselves Hezbollah, and
although many of them were Iranian, they

were very much under the control of
Syria and the Syrian intelligence

President Assad was using them as his
proxies to attack America.

Whoever carried out yesterday's
bombings, Shia Muslim fanatics, devotees

Ayatollah Khomeini, or whatever, it is
Syria who profits politically.

The most significant fact is that the
dissidents live and work with Syrian

protection.

So it is to Syria, rather than to the
dissident group's guiding light,

Khamenei of Iran, that we must look for
an explanation of the group's

activities.

Destabilization is Syria's Middle
Eastern way of reminding the world that

must not be left out of plans for the
future of the area.

There are no words that can express Our
sorrow and grief over the

loss of those splendid young men and the
injury to so many others.

These deeds make so evident the bestial
nature of those who would assume

power if they could have their way and
drive us out of that area.

But despite his words, within four
months, President Reagan withdrew all

American troops from the Lebanon.

The Secretary of State, George Shultz,
explained.

We became paralysed by the complexity
that we faced, he said.

So the Americans turned and left.

For President Assad, it was an
extraordinary achievement.

He was the only Arab leader to have
defeated the Americans and forced them

leave the Middle East.

He had done it by using the new force of
suicide bombing.

a force that once unleashed was going to
spread with unstoppable power.

But at this point, both Assad and the
Iranians thought that they could control

it.

And what gave it this extraordinary
power was that it held out the dream of

transcending the corruptions of the
world and entering a new and better

One should defend the realm of Islam and
Muslims against heretics and invaders.

And to fulfill this duty, one should
even sacrifice one's life.

We believe that martyrs can overlook our
deeds from the other world.

It means that after death, the martyr
lives and can still witness this world.

By the middle of the 1980s, the banks
were rising up and becoming ever more

powerful in America.

What had started ten years before in New
York, the idea that the financial

system could run society, was spreading.

But unlike older systems of power, it
was mostly invisible.

A writer called William Gibson tried to
dramatise what was happening in a

powerful, imaginative way in a series of
novels.

Gibson had noticed how the banks and the
new corporations were beginning to link

themselves together through computer
systems.

What they were creating was a series of
giant networks of information that were

invisible to ordinary people and to
politicians.

But those networks gave the corporations
extraordinary new powers of control.

Gibson gave this new world a name.

He called it cyberspace.

And his novels described a future that
was dangerous and frightening.

Hackers could literally enter into
cyberspace.

And as they did, they travelled through
systems that were so powerful that they

could reach out and crush intruders by
destroying their minds.

In cyberspace, there were no laws and no
politicians to protect you.

This raw, brutal, corporate power.

But then a strange thing happened.

A new group of visionaries in America
took Gibson's idea of a hidden, secret

world and transformed it into something
completely different.

They turned it. into a dream of a new
utopia.

They were the technological utopians who
were rising up on the west coast of

America.

They turned Gibson's idea on its head.

Instead of cyberspace being a
frightening place dominated by powerful

corporations, they reinvented it as the
very opposite, a new, safe world.

where radical dreams could come true.

Ten years before, faced by the
complexity of real politics, the

given up on the idea of changing the
world.

But now the computer utopians saw in
cyberspace an alternative reality,

a place they could retreat to, away from
the harsh right -wing politics that now

dominated Reagan's America.

The roots of this vision lay back in the
counterculture of the 1960s, and above

all, with LSD.

We've got some more acid over here if
you want to go ahead and drop it. Many

those who had taken LSD in the 60s were
convinced that it was more than just

another drug, that it opened human
perception.

and allowed people to see new realities
that were normally hidden from them.

See, the ones that have white in them
are really great.

It freed them from the narrow, limited

view of the world that was imposed on
them by politicians and those in power.

In the United States, in the next 5, 10,
15 years, you're going to see more and

more people taking LSD.

and making it a part of their lives, so
there will be an LSD country within 15

years. An LSD society, there'll be less
interest in, obviously, warfare, in

power politics. You know, politics today
is a disease, that's a real addiction.

Politics, politics, politics, politics.

Don't politic, don't vote. These are old
men's games, impotent and senile old

men that want to put you onto their old
chess games of war and power.

Twenty years later, the new networks of
machines seemed to offer a way to

construct a real alternate reality, not
just one that was chemically induced,

but a space that actually existed in a
parallel dimension to the real world.

And like with acid, cyberspace could be
a place where you would be liberated

from the old corrupt hierarchies of
politics and power and explore new ways

being.

One of the leading exponents of this
idea was called John Perry Barlow.

In the 60s, he had written songs for the
Grateful Dead and been part of the acid

counterculture.

Now he organised what he called
cyberthons to try and bring the

movement together.

Well, you know, the cyberthon as it was
originally conceived was supposed to be

the 90s equivalent of the acid test.

and we had thought to involve some of
the same personnel.

You and I and Timmy should sit down and
talk.

Okay, that's good.

And it immediately acquired a financial
quality or commercial quality that was

initially a little unsettling to an old
hippie like me, but as soon as I saw it

actually working, then I thought, ah,
well, if you're going to have an acid

for the 90s, money better be involved.

Instead of having a glass barrier,

that separates you, your mind, from the
mind of the computer. The computer pulls

us inside and creates a world for us.

Incorporates everything that could be
incorporated. It incorporates experience

itself.

Barlow then wrote a manifesto that he
called A Declaration of Independence of

Cyberspace.

It was addressed to all politicians,
telling them to keep out of this new

It was going to be incredibly
influential, because what Barlow did was

powerful picture of the Internet, not as
a network controlled by giant

corporations, but instead as a kind of
magical free place, an alternative to

old systems of power.

It was a vision that would come to
dominate the Internet over the next 20

Governments of the industrial world,
cyberspace does not lie within your

borders. We are creating a world where
anyone, anywhere may express his or her

beliefs, no matter how singular, without
fear of being coerced into silence

or conformity. I declare the global
social space we are building to be

naturally independent.

of the tyrannies you seek to impose on
us.

We will create a civilization of the
mind in cyberspace.

May it be more humane and fair than the
world your government has made before.

None.

This is a plea to a new order.

This code means freedom.

But two young hackers in New York
thought that Barlow was describing a

world, that his vision bore no
relationship at all to what was really

online.

They were cult figures on the early
online scene, and their fans followed

recorded them.

They called themselves Fibre Optic and
Acid Freak, and they spent their time

exploring and breaking into giant
computer networks.

that they knew were the hard realities
of modern digital power.

My specific instance, I was charged with
conspiracy to commit a

few dozen overt acts, they called them,
among a number of things having to do

with computer trespass and, I guess,
computer eavesdropping, interception,

unauthorized access to federal interest
computers, which is pretty vague.

law, communications network computers,
and so on. In a notorious public debate

online, the two hackers attacked Barlow.

What infuriated them most was Barlow's
insistence that there was no hierarchy

controlling powers in the new cyber
world.

The hackers set out to demonstrate that
he was wrong.

Acid Freak hacked into the computers of
a giant corporation called TRW.

TRW had originally built the systems
that ran the Cold War for the US

They had helped create the delicate
balance of terror.

Now TRW had adapted their computers to
run a new system, that of credit and

debt.

Their computers gathered up the credit
data of millions of Americans and were

being used by the banks to decide
individuals' credit ratings.

The hackers... broke into the TRW
network, stole Barlow's credit history,

published it online.

The hackers were demonstrating the
growing power of finance, how the

that ran the new systems of credit knew
more and more about you, and

increasingly used that information to
control your destiny.

And the system that was allowing this to
happen were the new giant networks of

information connected through computer
servers.

The hackers were questioning whether
Barlow's utopian rhetoric about

might really be a convenient camouflage,
hiding the emergence of a new and

growing power that was way beyond
politics.

But cyberspace was not the only
imaginary story being created.

Faced with the humiliating defeat in the
Lebanon, President Reagan's government

was desperate to shore up the vision of
a moral world where a good America

struggled against evil.

And to do this, they were going to
create a simple villain, an imaginary

one that would free them from the
paralyzing complexity of real Middle

politics.

And the perfect candidate was waiting in
the wings.

Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.

The Americans were going to ruthlessly
use Colonel Gaddafi to create a fake

terrorist mastermind.

And Gaddafi was going to happily play
along because it would turn him into a

famous global figure.

Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a
coup in the 1970s, but from the very

he was convinced that he was more than
just the leader of one country.

He believed that he was an international
revolutionary whose destiny was to

challenge the power of the West.

Gentlemen, the Queen.

When he was a young officer, Gaddafi had
been sent to England for training.

And he had detested the patronising
racism that he said he had found at the

heart of British society.

Yes, I attended a course.

I had been in England since 1936, from
April to

August. You had the best months.

I was in...

Baconsfield, a village called
Baconsfield, in an army school.

In fact, we were ill -treated in that
place from some

British officers.

I think those officers were Jews,

maybe. Ill -treated in what sort of way?

They ill -treat us every time.

By being rude or by being bullying or...
In their own

behavior towards us, they ill -treat us.

They hate us anyhow because of
colonization. It is the result of

colonialism.

Once in power, Gaddafi had developed his
own revolutionary theory, which he

called the Third Universal Theory.

It was an alternative, he said, to
communism and capitalism.

He published it in a green book, but
practically no one read it.

He had sent money and weapons to the IRA
in Ireland to help them overthrow the

British ruling class.

But all the other Arab leaders rejected
him and his ideas.

They thought that he was mad.

And by the mid -1980s, Gaddafi was an
isolated figure, with no friends and no

global influence.

Then suddenly that changed.

In December 1985, terrorists attacked
Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously,

killing 19 people, including five
Americans.

There was growing pressure on President
Reagan to retaliate.

It's time to rename your State
Department the Capitulation Department.

Get off of your stick, Mr. President.

The American people are sick and tired
of being kicked around.

You talk tough.

Let's say you use some of these billions
and billions and billions of dollars

worth of weapons that you've asked us to
approve.

Your words are cheap talk.

President Reagan immediately announced
that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely

behind the attacks.

These murderers could not carry out
their crimes without the sanctuary and

support provided by regimes such as
Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.

The Rome and Vienna murders are only the
latest in a series of brutal terrorist

acts committed with Gaddafi's backing.

But the European security services, who
investigated the attacks, were convinced

that Libya was not involved at all, that
the mastermind behind the attacks was

in fact Syria.

that the terrorists had been directed by
the Syrian intelligence agencies.

But the Americans say that the attack at
Rome airport was organized by Gaddafi,

not by Damascus. No. What do you say? We
don't have any evidence.

You have no evidence? Supporting such
affirmation.

The only evidence we have shows...

Do you say that it was Libya and the
president said the evidence of Libya's

culpability was irrefutable?

Yeah. But the Italian authorities to
whom I've spoken say emphatically on the

record that their investigations have
shown that it was entirely masterminded

Syria.

I don't agree with that at all.

Well, they've interrogated the surviving
terrorists.

I must just say I don't agree with that.

But you've no evidence that Libya was in
on the planning either. Our evidence on

Libya is circumstantial but very strong.

But why did the president then say it's
irrefutable if you call it

circumstantial? Well, people can be
convicted and sentenced in our courts on

circumstantial evidence.

But what made it even more confusing was
that although there seemed to be no

evidence that Gaddafi had been behind
the attacks, he made no attempt to deny

the allegations.

Instead, he went the other way.

and turned the crisis into a global
drama.

It is not a time of saying it is a time
of war, a time of confrontation.

Threatening suicide attacks against
America.

This hostile position cannot be
explained in racist and crusade terms.

Suicidal attacks will have to be an
answer to a military attack, but Libya

not.

Gaddafi now started to play a role that
was going to become very familiar.

He grabbed the publicity that had been
given to him by the Americans and used

dramatically.

He promoted himself as an international
revolutionary who would help to liberate

oppressed peoples around the world, even
the blacks in America.

Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite
link to a mass meeting of the Nation of

Islam in Chicago.

Brothers and sisters, it is with great
honour and privilege that I present to

you the leader of the al -Fatah
revolution from Libya, our brother

-Gaddafi.

Gaddafi told them that Libya was now
their ally in their struggle against

America. To express my full support.

and support of my country to your
struggle for freedom, for emancipation.

Gaddafi promised that he would supply
weapons to create a black army in

of 400 ,000 men.

If white America refuses to accept
blacks as US citizens, he told them, it

therefore be destroyed.

Gaddafi also invited a group of German
rocket scientists to come to Libya to

build him a rocket.

He insisted it had no military purpose.

Libya was now going to explore outer
space.

It has nothing to do with any military
things.

But no -one believed him.

Journalists warned that Gaddafi was
really preparing to attack Europe,

dramatising the new danger.

That is something like this, which goes
that way to put something into space.

But the same device tilted, say, to an
angle of 45 degrees could, of course,

become something very different, a
missile possibly carrying a warhead.

That would put Libya within range of an
enormous area.

A chilling proposition with its range of
2 ,000 kilometres.

The Americans and Gaddafi now became
locked together in a cycle of mutual

reinforcement.

In the process, a powerful new image was
created that was going to capture the

imagination of the West.

Gaddafi became a global supervillain at
the head of what was called a rogue

state.

A madman who threatened the stability of
the world.

And Gaddafi was loving every minute of
it.

Don't you think in the past his
decisions sometimes have been taken too

Maybe, maybe. On world affairs?

Maybe.

I think sometimes that is what has made
people in the world nervous of you,

perhaps.

Then there was another terrorist attack,
at a discotheque in West Berlin.

A bomb killed an American soldier and
injured hundreds.

The Americans released what they said
were intercepts by the National Security

Agency that proved that Colonel Gaddafi
was behind the bombing, and a dossier

that they said proved that he was also
the mastermind behind a whole range of

other attacks.

President Reagan ordered the Pentagon to
prepare to bomb Libya.

But again, there were doubts, this time
within the American government itself.

There were concerns that analysts were
being pressured to make a case that

didn't really exist.

And to do it, they were taking Gaddafi's
rhetoric about himself as a global

revolution and his manic ravings and
then representing them as fact.

And in the process, together, the
Americans and Gaddafi were constructing

fictional world.

The analyst was certainly, I'm
convinced, pressured

into developing a prima facie case
against the Libyan government. From

the somewhat incoherent ravings of a
maniac, both...

Interceptions of a clandestine nature,
interceptions of an open radio

broadcast or whatever, as well as other
sources, quotations of his, that one can

assemble a neatly put together package
demonstrating that the man had violent

interests against the United States and
its European allies.

The European intelligence agency told
the Americans that they were wrong.

that it was Syria that was behind the
bombing, not Libya.

But the Americans had decided to attack
Libya because they couldn't face the

dangerous consequences of attacking
Syria.

Instead, they went for Gaddafi, a man
without friends or allies.

Libya had... There were less downside
consequences, if you will. There's less

Arab support.

for Gaddafi. We figured there would be
less Soviet support for Gaddafi.

There's no question but what Libya was
more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.

And that is certainly an element of
court.

In April 1986, the Americans attacked
Libya.

Their targets included Colonel Gaddafi's
own house.

Immediately after the attack, Gaddafi
appeared in the ruins to describe what

happened. The family were asleep and my
wife was, that day, tied down to the bed

because she had a slip disc.

I tried to rescue the children and the
house started to collapse, as you can

see, and the books started to burn.

They concentrated on the children's room
so that they would kill all the

children.

Our small adopted daughter was killed.

And two of our children were injured.

But yet again, Gaddafi might have been
lying.

Ever since then, there have been rumours
that his adopted daughter actually

survived.

But many other children were killed in
the raid because the American bombing

so inaccurate.

Gaddafi realised that the attention of
the whole world was now focused on him.

And he grabbed the moment to promote his
own revolutionary theory, the third

way. as a global alternative to
democracy.

I feel that I am really responsible for
conveying the Third World Theory and the

Green Book to the rising generation, to
the young American and British people,

so that we can rescue America and
Britain.

and these generations of young people
from this theory which, this electoral

party theory, which enabled an empathy
like Reagan to rule the mighty power on

earth and use it to destroy other
people's homes and enable the harlot

Thatcher to rule a great nation like
Britain.

What the heck is that?

Oh my God. Look at that.

Holy crap.

It's just moving really slowly.

Wow.

What is it doing?

Dude, what is happening?

What is going on?

Oh, my God! Oh, my God, guys!

Guys, is that a... What the hell?

Wait, can you get a good video? What the
hell?

In the 1980s, more and more people in
the United States reported seeing

unexplained objects and lights in the
sky.

At the same time, investigators who
believed in UFOs revealed that they had

discovered top -secret government
documents that stated that alien craft

visited Earth.

The documents had been hidden for 20
years and they seemed to prove that

had been a giant cover -up.

But actually, the reality was even
stranger.

The American government might have been
making it all up.

that they had created a fake conspiracy
to deliberately mislead the population.

The lights that people imagined were
UFOs may in reality have been new high

-technology weapons that the US
government were testing.

The government had developed the weapons
because they, in turn, imagined that

the Soviet Union was far stronger than
it was.

and still wanted to conquer the world.

The government wanted to keep the weapon
secret, but they couldn't always hide

their appearance in the skies.

So it is alleged that they chose a
number of people to use to spread the

that these were really alien
visitations.

One of those chosen was called Paul
Benavides, who lived outside a giant

in New Mexico and had noticed strange
things going on.

Years later, I sat down with Paul at
dinner and told Paul exactly

that everything we did was a sanctioned
counterintelligence operation to

convince him that what he was seeing was
UFOs and that what we didn't want him

to know was that he tapped into
something on the base, and we didn't

ever disclose that.

We kind of planted the seed in Paul that
what he was seeing and what he was

hearing and what he was collecting was,
in fact, Probably, maybe UFOs.

Benovitz and others chosen by the agency
were, it is alleged, given a series of

forged documents.

Many of them were top -secret memos by
the military describing sightings of

unidentified aerial vehicles.

The documents spread like wildfire, and
they formed the basis for the wave of

belief in UFOs that would spread through
America in the 1990s.

What the fuck is that?

That's crazy,

bro.

Is that a space?

And it also fueled the wider growing
belief that governments lied to you,

conspiracies were real.

What the Reagan administration were
doing, both with Colonel Gaddafi and

the UFOs, was a blurring of fact and
fiction.

But it was part of an even broader
programme.

The President's advisers had given it a
name.

They called it Perception Management,
and it became a central part of the

American government during the 1980s.

The aim was to tell dramatic stories
that grabbed the public imagination.

Not just about the Middle East, but
about Central America and the Soviet

And it didn't matter if the stories were
true or not, providing they distracted

people, and you the politician, from
having to deal with the intractable

complexities of the real world.

Reality became less and less of an
important factor in American politics.

It wasn't what was real that was driving
anything or the facts driving anything.

It was how you could turn those facts or
twist the facts or even make up the

facts to make your opponent look bad.

So perception management became a device
and the facts could be twisted.

Anything could be anything.

It becomes how can you manipulate the
American people.

And in the process reality becomes what?

Reality becomes simply something to play
with to achieve that end.

Reality is not important in this
context.

Reality is simply something that you
handle.

But something was about to happen that
would demonstrate dramatically just how

far the American government had detached
from reality.

The Soviet empire was about to implode.

A new one.

None of the politicians, or the
journalists, or the think tank experts,

economists, or the academics saw it
coming.

Thank you.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also
had a powerful effect on the West.

For many, it symbolised the final
failure of the dream that politics could

used to build a new kind of world.

What was going to emerge instead was a
new system that had nothing to do with

politics.

A system whose aim was not to try and
change things, but rather to manage a

-political world.

One of the first people to describe this
dramatic change was a left -wing German

political thinker called Ulrich Beck.

Beck said that any politician who
believed that they could take control of

society and drive it forward to build a
better future was now seen as dangerous.

In the past, politicians might have been
able to do this, but now they were

faced with what he called a runaway
world.

where things were so complex and
interconnected, and modern technologies

potentially dangerous, that it was
impossible to predict the outcomes of

anything you did.

The catalogue of environmental disasters
proved this.

Politicians would have to give up any
idea of trying to change the world.

Instead, their new aim would be to try
and predict the dangers in the future,

and then find ways to avoid those risks.

Although Beck came from the political
left, the world he saw coming was deeply

conservative.

The picture he gave was of a political
class reduced to trying to steer society

into a dark and frightening future,
constantly peering forward and trying to

the risks coming towards them.

Their only aim?

To avoid those risks and keep society
stable.

It only lasted for a few seconds, so
you're basically shocked you really

know what was going on at the time.
Where were you in the building and where

the explosion?

Oh, my God!

But a system that could anticipate the
future and keep society stable was

already being built, pieced together
from all kinds of different and

surprising sources, all of them outside
politics.

One part of it was taking shape in a
tiny town in the far northwest of the

United States called East Wenatchee.

It was a giant computer whose job was to
make the future predictable.

The man building it was a banker called
Larry Fink.

Back in 1986, Mr Fink's career had
collapsed.

He lost $100 million in a deal and had
been sacked.

He became determined it wouldn't happen
again.

Fink started a company called BlackRock
and builds a computer he called Aladdin.

It is housed in a series of large sheds
in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee.

Fink's aim was to use the computer to
predict with certainty what the risk of

any deal or investment was going to be.

The computer constantly monitors the
world, and it takes things that it sees

happening and then compares them to
events in the past.

It can do this because it has in its
memory a vast history of the past 50

not just financial, but all kinds of
events.

Out of the millions and millions of
correlations, the computer then spots

possible disasters, possible dangers
lying in the future, and moves the

investments to avoid any radical change
and keep the system stable.

Today I'm going to deliver 1 .8 million
reports.

Execute 25 ,000 trades.

And avert 3 ,000 disasters.

I'm going to monitor interest rates in
Europe. Silver prices in Asia. Droughts

in the Midwest.

I'm going to witness 4 billion shares
change hands on the New York Stock

Exchange. And record the effects on 14
trillion in assets across 20 ,000

portfolios. I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin. And today, I'll find the
numbers behind the numbers.

I will see the trends the models don't.
The connections. The risks.

I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin, and I will get the data
right.

I am 25 million lines of code. Written
by hundreds of people.

Across two decades.

I'm smarter than any algorithm.

More powerful than any processor.

Because I am Aladdin.

Because I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin.

Aladdin has proved to be incredibly
successful.

The assets it guides and controls.

now amount to $15 trillion, which is 7 %
of the world's total wealth.

But Wenatchee was also a dramatic
example of another kind of craving for

stability and reassurance.

More of its citizens took Prozac than
practically any other town in America.

When a person's central nervous system
is changed...

By an SSRI, with that medicine, they
will view things differently, and they

be strangers.

They look at things differently.

I have a chemical up here that changes
me. I think differently. For me, it was

like walking around like this for my
whole life, and really not knowing that

was nearsighted. I mean, really.

I mean, no one had ever offered me
glasses.

And then all of a sudden, here comes
somebody that says, okay, now try these

Try this Prozac on. And I tried it on,
and for the first time in my life, I

went, whoa.

Is this the way reality really is?

Your perception can be changed. And it's
frightening and it's scary to people.

It speaks of science fiction almost.

Well, the medicine just kind of lets you
listen to what needs to go on. And then

your doctor, you know, every time you
come back, he says, you're looking so

better. And then he just, like Jim,
every time I come in, he goes.

You are so beautiful, you know.

And he isn't even sucking up. I mean,
he's being nice, you know. You're

beautiful. You're nice. You're friendly.
You've got so much going for you. And I

think, yeah, I do.

Yeah. So I go out and I tell my friends,
oh, I feel so much better about myself.

You know, mom goes out, oh, I feel so
much better about myself.

So your friends start saying, you know,
I've seen such improvement.

I've seen such improvement.

And everybody improves all the way
around.

They see improvement. You know, it's
like everybody's kind of.

brainwashing each other into being
happy.

But there was a more effective way of
reassuring people that was being

that did not involve medication.

It too came from computer systems, but
this time artificial intelligence.

But the way to do it had been discovered
by accident.

Back in the 1960s, there had been
optimistic dreams that it would be

develop computers that could think like
human beings.

Scientists then spent years trying to
programme the rules that governed human

thought.

But they never worked.

One computer scientist at MIT became so
disillusioned that he decided to build a

computer programme that would parody
these hopeless attempts.

He was called Joseph Weizenbaum, and he
built what he claimed was a computer

psychotherapist.

Just like a therapist, people could come
and talk to the machine by typing in

their problems.

Weizenbaum called the programme Eliva.

He modelled it on a real psychotherapist
called Carl Rogers.

who was famous for simply repeating back
to the patient what they had just said.

And that is what Eliza did.

The patient sat in front of the screen
and typed in what they were feeling.

And the programme repeated it back to
them, often in the form of a question.

Men are all alike.

In what way?

They're always bugging us about
something or other. Can you think of a

example?

Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

Your boyfriend made you come here?

He says I'm depressed much of the time.

I'm sorry to hear that you're depressed.

It's true.

I am unhappy.

Do you think coming here will help you
not to be unhappy?

Well, I need some help. That much seems
certain.

One of the first people to use Eliza was
Weisenbaum's secretary.

And her reaction was something that he
had not predicted at all.

Then I asked her to my office and sat
her down at the keyboard and she began

type. And of course I looked over her
shoulder to make sure that everything

operating properly.

After two or three interchanges with the
machine, she turned to me and she said,

Would you mind leaving the room, please?

And yet she knew, as Weissenbaum did,
that Eliza didn't understand a single

that was being typed into it.

You're not my father in some way.

You don't argue with me.

Why do you think I don't argue with you?

You're afraid of me.

Does it please you to think I'm afraid
of you?

Weissenbaum was astonished.

He discovered that everyone who tried
Eliza became engrossed.

They would sit for hours telling the
machine about their inner feelings and

incredibly intimate details of their
lives.

They also liked it because it was free
of any kind of patronising elitism.

One person said, After all, the computer
doesn't burn out, look down on you,

or try to have sex with you.

What Eliza showed was that in an age of
individualism, what made people feel

secure was having themselves reflected
back to them.

just like in a mirror.

Artificial intelligence changed
direction and started to create new

did just that, but on a giant scale.

They were called intelligent agents.

They worked by monitoring individuals.

gathering vast amounts of data about
their past behaviour, and then looked

patterns and correlations from which
they could predict what they would want

the future.

It was a system that ordered the world
in a way that was centred around you.

And in an age of anxious individualism,
frightened of the future, that was

reassuring, just like Eliza.

A safe bubble that protected you.

from the complexities of the world
outside.

But the applications of this new
direction proved fruitful and

If you liked that, you'll love this.

What was rising up in different ways was
a new system that promised to keep the

world stable.

Its tentacles reached into every area of
our lives.

Finance promised that it could control
the unpredictability of the free market,

while individuals were more and more
monitored to stabilise their physical

mental states.

And increasingly, the intelligent agents
online predicted what people would want

in the future and how they would behave.

But the biggest change was to politics.

In a world where the overriding aim was
now stability, politics became just part

of a wider system of managing the world.

The old idea of democratic politics,
that it gave a voice to the weak against

the powerful, was eroded.

And a resentment began to quietly grow
out on the edges of society.

But the new system did have a dangerous
flaw.

Because in the real world, not
everything can be predicted by reading

the past.

And someone who was about to discover
that, to his own cost, was Donald Trump.

One day, a man called Jeff Markham
received a phone call.

It was from Donald Trump.

and Trump was desperate for help.

Markham was a strange, mysterious
figure.

He had been a nuclear scientist in the
1950s and studied the effect of

from nuclear weapons on the human body.

Then Markham had gone to Las Vegas and
become obsessed by gambling.

He had a photographic memory and he used
it to instantly process the data of the

games as they were played.

From that, he could predict the outcome.

And he always won.

The Las Vegas gangsters were fascinated
by him.

They called him the automat.

Donald Trump was one of the heroes of
the age.

But in reality, much of his success was
a facade.

The banks that had lent Trump millions
had discovered that he could no longer

pay the interest on the loans.

Trump's empire was facing bankruptcy.

His wife, Ivana, hated him because he
was having an affair with Miss Hawaiian

Tropic, 1985.

And then, a famous Japanese gambler
called Akio Kashiwagi came to one of

casinos and started to win millions of
dollars in an extraordinary run of luck.

Trump, who was desperate for money...

as day after day he watched millions
being siphoned out of his casino.

So he turned for help to Jess Markham.

Markham came to Trump's casino in
Atlantic City.

He analysed all the data about the way
that Kashiwagi had been playing.

He then told Trump to suggest a
particular high -stakes game that he

Japanese gambler could not resist.

His model, Markham said, predicted that
Kashiwagi had to lose.

And after five agonising days, he did.

Kashiwagi lost $10 million and he gave
up.

Donald Trump was elated.

He thought he'd got his money back.

Before Kashiwagi could pay his debt, he
was hacked to death in his kitchen by

Yakuza gangsters.

And Donald Trump didn't get his money.

Trump's business went bankrupt, and he
was forced to sell most of his buildings

to the banks.

And he married Miss Hawaiian Tropic.

In the future, he would sell his name to
other people to put on their buildings.

And he himself... would become a
celebrity tycoon.

President Assad didn't want stability.

He wanted revenge.

In December 1988, a bomb exploded on a
Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland.

Almost immediately, investigators and
journalists pointed the finger at Syria.

The bombing had been done, they said, in
revenge for the Americans shooting down

of an Iranian airliner in the Gulf a few
months before.

And for 18 months, everyone agreed that
this was the truth.

But then a strange thing happened.

The security agencies said that they had
been wrong.

It hadn't been Syria at all.

It was Libya who had been behind the
Lockerbie bombing.

But many journalists and politicians did
not believe it.

They were convinced that the switch had
happened for the most cynical of

reasons.

That America and Britain desperately
needed Assad as an ally in the coming

War against Saddam Hussein.

So once again...

They blamed Colonel Gaddafi as the
terrorist mastermind.

Syria, of course, was unfortunately
accused of many terrorist outrage and of

harbouring terrorist groups.

It appears that we have now restored
relations with them, as have the

They are now our friends, although we
get no real assurances on the past

whatsoever. It strikes me as very
strange indeed that many of the things

thought were previously the
responsibility of Syria have now

the responsibility of Libya.

But Assad was not really in control,
because he had released forces that no

would be able to control.

The force that ten years before he had
brought from Iran to attack the West,

human bomb, is now about to jump, like a
virus, from Shia to Sunni Islam.

In December 1992, the militant group
Hamas... kidnapped an Israeli border

and stabbed him to death.

The Israeli response was overwhelming.

They arrested 415 members of Hamas, put
them on buses and took them to the top

of a bleak mountain in southern Lebanon.

They left them there.

and refused to allow any humanitarian
aid through.

But the Israelis had dumped the Hamas
militants in an area controlled by

Hezbollah.

They spent six months there, and during
that time they learnt from Hezbollah how

powerful suicide bombing could be.

Hezbollah told them how they had used it
to force the Israelis out of Beirut and

back to the border.

The first sign that the idea had spread
to Hamas was when a group of the

deportees marched in protest towards the
Israeli border, dressed as martyrs, as

the Israelis shelled them.

But it soon became more than just
theatre.

Hamas began a wave of suicide attacks in
Israel.

Just before nine, at the height of Tel
Aviv's rush hour, the bomb ripped apart

commuter bus.

An amateur cameraman recorded the scene
in the moments afterward as a dazed

woman was helped out of the smouldering
wreckage.

I didn't want to believe that under my
house there is a bomb.

And when I realised it's a bomb, I
started to cry because it was

the first time I saw it in Tel Aviv.

Hamas sent the bombers into the heart of
Israeli cities to blow themselves up.

and kill as many around them as
possible.

In doing this, Hamas were going much
further than Hezbollah ever had.

They were targeting civilians, something
Hezbollah had never done.

The tactic shocked the Sunni world.

This was something completely alien to
its history.

Not only did the Koran forbid suicide,
but Sunni Islam did not have any rituals

of self -sacrifice, unlike the Shias.

The most senior religious leader in
Saudi Arabia insisted it was wrong.

But a mainstream theologian from Egypt,
called Sheikh Karadawi, seized the

moment.

He issued a fatwa that justified the
attacks.

And, he added, it was also justified to
kill civilians.

Because in Israel, everyone, including
women, serve as a reserve.

So really, they are all part of the
enemy army.

It's not suicide.

It is martyrdom in the name of God.

Islamic theologians and jurisprudence
have debated this issue.

Israeli women are not like women in our
society because Israeli women are

militarized.

Secondly, I consider this type of
martyrdom operation as indication of

of Allah Almighty.

Allah is just.

Through His infinite wisdom, He has
given the weak, what the strong do not

possess, and that is the ability to turn
their bodies into bombs like the

Palestinians do.

Hamas kept sending the bombs into
Israel, sometimes day after day.

The horror overwhelmed Israeli society,
and it completely destroyed the ability

of politics to solve the Palestinian
crisis.

Instead, in the Israeli election of
1996, Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

He turned against the peace process,
which was exactly what Hamas wanted.

And from then on, the two sides became
locked together in ever more horrific

cycles of vows.

The human boss had destroyed the very
thing that President Assad had first

wanted, the real political solution to
the Palestinian question.

It was just after one o 'clock and the
market was full of shoppers.

Streams of ambulances came to carry away
the dead and the injured.

It was a place of appalling suffering.

But even with the first grief came the
immediate political impact on the peace

process. It's impossible.

This moment, it will be the end, must be
the end of this bloody peace process.

And in America, all optimistic visions
of the future had also disappeared.

Instead, everyone in society, not just
the politicians, but the scientists, the

journalists and all kinds of experts,
had begun to focus on the dangers that

might be hidden in the future.

This, in turn, created a pessimistic
mood that then began to spread out from

rational technocratic world and infect
the whole of the culture.

and everyone became possessed by dark
foreboding, imagining the very worst

might happen.

Dream,

baby, dream.

Dream, baby, dream.

Dream, baby, dream.

is oh

Oh, you never dream.

You never dream. You never dream. You
never,

you never, you never, you never, you
never dream.

Why you keep that.

I got to keep that.

The attacks in September 2001 were
suicide bombs, but now on a huge scale.

They demonstrated the terrifying power
of this new force to penetrate all the

fences.

They had come to kill thousands of
Americans on their own soul.

Twenty years before, President Reagan
had been confronted by the first suicide

bombers.

They had been unleashed by President
Assad of Syria to force America out of

Middle East.

But rather than confront the complexity
of Syria and Israel and the Palestinian

problem, America had retreated and left
Syria and suicide bombing to

fester and mutate.

They had gone instead for Colonel
Gaddafi.

and turned him into an evil global
terrorist.

But in the process, this changed the way
people saw and understood terrorism.

Instead of a violence born out of
political struggles for power, it became

replaced by a much simpler image of an
evil tyrant at the head of a rogue

who became more like an arch -criminal
who wanted to terrorise the world.

All the politics and power dropped away.

The problem was just them and their evil
personalities.

And after 9 -11, this led to a new and
equally simple idea.

That if only you could remove these
tyrannical figures, then the grateful

of their country would transform
naturally into a democracy.

Because they would be free of the evil.

We owe it to the future of civilization
not to allow the world's

worst leaders to develop and deploy and
therefore blackmail free -loving

countries with the world's worst
weapons.

We know they've already got chemical and
biological weapons there. We know that

they're certainly doing their best to
acquire nuclear weapons technology. If

allow them to do that... and do nothing
about it, then I think later generations

will consider us deeply irresponsible.

Both Tony Blair and George Bush became
possessed by the idea of ridding the

world of Saddam Hussein.

So possessed that they believed any
story that proved his evil intentions.

And the line between reality and fiction
became ever more blurred.

In September 2002, the head of MI6
rushed to Downing Street.

to tell Blair excitedly that they had
finally found the source that confirmed

everything.

The source, he said, had direct access
to Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons

programme, which was making vast
quantities of VX and sarin nerve agents.

The nerve agents were being loaded into
linked hollow glass spheres.

But then someone in MI6 noticed that the
detail the source was describing was

identical to scenes in the 1996 movie
The Rock, starring Sean Connery and

Nicolas Cage.

A really elegant string of pearls
configuration.

Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.

And what exactly does this stuff do?

It's what the rocket renders an aerosol
and can take out the entire city of

people.

How? The cholinesterase inhibitor.

It stops the brain from sending nerve
messages down the spinal cord. A later

report into the Iraq war pointed out
glass containers were not typically used

chemical munitions.

Seizes your nervous system. Do not move
that!

And the informant had obviously seen a
popular movie known as The Rock that had

inaccurately depicted nerve agents being
carried in glass beads or spheres. Your

skin melts off.

My God.

That there is a threat from Saddam
Hussein.

and the weapons of mass destruction that
he has acquired, is not in doubt at

all.

Hafez al -Assad had died in 2000.

His son Bashar became the new president
of Syria.

But he couldn't escape the inexorable
logic of what his father had started.

Twenty years before, his father had sent
Shiite suicide bombers to attack the

Americans in Lebanon.

Now, as America and Britain invaded
Iraq, Bashar decided that he would copy

father.

But what he was about to let loose would
tear the Arab world apart, and then

come back to try to destroy him.

Bashar Assad was never supposed to have
been present.

It was always going to have been his
elder brother, Basil.

But then Basil had died in a car crash.

So now, Bashar took over the giant
palace that his father had built above

Damascus.

Up to this point, Bashar had not been
interested in politics.

He was fascinated by computers.

He founded the Syrian Computer Society
and brought the Internet to the country.

His favourite band was the Electric
Light Orchestra.

But now he was president.

And he set out to attack America.

Bashar Assad was convinced that the
invasion of Iraq was just the first step

a plot by the Western powers to take
over the whole of the Middle East.

He knew that the invasion had outraged
many of the radical Islamists in Syria,

and what they most wanted to do was to
go to Iraq and kill Americans.

So Bashar instructed the Syrian
intelligence services to help them do

Syrian agents... set up a pipeline that
began to feed thousands of militants

across the border and into the heart of
the insurgency.

And it grew.

Within a year, almost all the foreign
fighters from across the world were

through Syria.

And they brought the suicide bombing
with them.

The Americans estimated that 90 % of the
suicide bombers in Iraq were foreign

fighters.

But it began to run out of control.

Most of the jihadists had joined the
group al -Qaeda in Iraq, that then

to killing Shiites in an attempt to
create a civil war.

And the force that had originally been
invented by the Shiites, suicide

now returned and started to kill them.

Then this.

A moment of silence before people
realised what was happening.

A few seconds ago we just had repeated
explosions in the street below me.

People are now fleeing in terror from
the central square around the mosque.

This is what everybody feared. We just
heard another explosion in the distance.

That somebody would try to target this
religious festival to try to bring about

a sectarian conflict in Iraq.

There was panic, a terrified stampede.

But some of these people were running
into the next bomb.

We counted at least six separate
explosions.

Tony Blair and George Bush were faced by
disaster.

Iraq was imploding, while at home they
were being accused of lying to their own

people to justify the invasion.

What they desperately needed was
something that would show that the

having a good effect in the Arab world.

So they made an extraordinary decision.

They turned for help to the man who they
had always insisted... was one of the

world's most dangerous tyrants, Colonel
Gaddafi.

And instead, they set out to make him
their new best friend.

It was going to be the highest
achievement of perception management.

A man who had been created by the West
as a fake global supervillain was now

going to be turned into a fake hero of
democracy.

And everyone, Not just politicians would
become involved.

Public relations, academics, television
presenters, spies and even musicians

were all going to help reinvent Colonel
Gaddafi.

It would show just how many people in
the Western establishment had by now

become the engineers of this fake world.

Ever since he had been accused of the
Lockerbie bombing, Colonel Gaddafi had

been a complete outcast.

The West had imposed sanctions on Libya,
and the economy was falling apart.

But then suddenly, Tony Blair broke live
into the BBC evening news.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is about
to make a statement the BBC understands

from Downing Street. It's of
international significance.

He'll be making his statement at any
moment now. We can see pictures of him

Durham, Durham City. Here he is. Colonel
Gaddafi has confirmed that Libya has in

the past sought to develop weapons of
mass destruction capabilities.

Libya has now declared its intention to
dismantle its weapons of mass

destruction completely.

This decision by Colonel Gaddafi.

It's an historic one and a courageous
one, and I applaud it. Today in Tripoli,

the leader of Libya, Colonel Muammar al
-Qadhafi,

publicly confirmed his commitment to
disclose and dismantle

all weapons of mass destruction programs
in his country.

Colonel Gaddafi now became, for Western
politicians, a heroic figure.

His decision to give up his weapons of
mass destruction

seemed to prove that the invasion of
Iraq could transform the Middle East.

And Tony Blair travelled to meet Gaddafi
in his desert tent, to welcome him

back into what one journalist called the
community of civilised nations.

But as in the past, Nothing was what it
deemed with Colonel Gaddafi.

In reality, Gaddafi did not really have
the terrifying weapons of mass

destruction that he was promising to
destroy.

His nuclear program had stuttered to a
halt long ago, and never produced

anything dangerous.

He had managed to buy some equipment on
the black market, but his technicians

had been unable to assemble it.

His biological weapons were non
-existent.

All he had was some old mustard gas in
leaking barrels.

But now, he had to pretend to have a
terrifying arsenal of weapons.

And the West had to pretend that they
had avoided another global threat.

And then the made -up stories became
even more complicated.

As part of the deal, the West said that
if Gaddafi admitted that Libya had done

the Lockheed bombing, then they would
lift the sanctions.

But many of those who had investigated
Lockerbie were still convinced that

hadn't done it, that really it had been
Syria.

But Colonel Gaddafi confessed.

His son Saif was interviewed about this
confession.

He said that his father was simply
pretending that he had been behind the

Lockerbie bombing to get the sanctions
lifted, that new lies were being built

top of old lies, to construct a
completely make -believe world.

You have to accept, or you had to accept
at that time, a responsibility because

you have to accept responsibilities, you
have to pay compensation in order to

get rid of the sanction.

It means we did that not because we are
convinced that we did it, but because to

find an exit out of this nightmare.

So what you're saying is that you accept
responsibility, but you're not

admitting that you did it? Yes.

And this is all a sham, you're saying,
just to get sanctions over with so that

you can start normal diplomatic
relations with the West.

Okay. What's wrong with that?

It's a very cynical way to behave as a
country, isn't it?

Many people would say.

First of all,

I mean, the Americans in the British,
they told us to write that letter.

They told us to pay compensation.

And then they opened their embassies and
they restored the relation and they

came to us.

It was their game, not our game.

Public

relations

companies then came to Libya to do what
they called... reframing the narrative.

One firm was paid $3 million to turn
Gaddafi into what they described as a

modern world thinker.

They did this by bringing other famous
world thinkers and TV

presenters out to Libya to meet the
colonel and discuss his theories.

Hello and welcome to Libya.

In the global age, a conversation with
Muammar Gaddafi. But

first, let's get the story so far of
Libya.

One world thinker was called Lord
Anthony Giddens.

Coincidentally, he had a theory which he
called the third way, which had

inspired Tony Blair.

Colonel Gaddafi's own theory was called
the third universal theory.

Lord Giddens later wrote about his talks
with the Libyan leader.

Colonel Gaddafi likes my term, the third
way, because his own political

philosophy is a version of this idea.

He makes many intelligent and perceptive
points.

I leave enlivened and encouraged.

After 40 years, the leader of Libya,
Muammar Gaddafi. And then Colonel

achieved his lifelong dream.

He was invited to address the United
Nations.

He spent almost two hours explaining his
third universal theory and also

demanded an investigation into the
shootings of President Kennedy and

Luther King.

When he was in New York, Gaddafi was
offered a tent, just like the one he had

home, in the gardens of a grand mansion.

The man who made the offer was Donald
Trump.

We're not done with everybody.

Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land.
He paid me more for one night than the

land was worth for the whole year or for
two years.

And then I didn't let him use the land.
That's what we should be doing.

I don't want to use the word screw, but
I screwed him. That's what we should be

doing.

People in Britain and America now began
to turn away from politics.

The effect of the Iraq war had been very
powerful.

Not only did millions of people feel
that they had been lied to over the

of mass destruction, but there was a
deeper feeling that whatever they did or

said had no effect, that despite the
mass protests and the fears and the

warnings, the war had happened anyway.

Liberals? Radicals and a whole new
generation of young people retreated.

They turned instead to another world
that was free of this hypocrisy and the

corruption of politics.

They went into cyberspace.

our cyber space had become even more
sophisticated and responsive to human

interaction.

The online world was full of algorithms
that could analyse and predict human

behaviour.

The man behind much of this was a
scientist called Judea Pearl.

He was the godfather of modern
artificial intelligence.

Pearl's breakthrough had been to use
what were called Bayesian belief

They were systems that could predict
behaviour.

even when the information was
incomplete.

But to make the system work, Pearl and
others had imported a model of human

beings drawn from economics.

They created what were called rational
agents, software that mimicked human

beings, but in a very simplified form.

The model assumed that the agent would
always act rationally in order to get

what it wanted, nothing more.

One of the early utopians of cyberspace,
Jaron Lanier, warned of the

implications of this.

The agent's model of what you are
interested in will always be a cartoon

And in return, you will see a cartoon
version of the world through the agent's

eyes.

And, he added, it will never be clear
who they are working for.

You.

Or someone else?

New technology began to allow people to
upload millions of images and videos

into cyberspace.

And the web, which up to that point had
seemed like an abstract other world,

began to look and feel like the real
world.

From videos of animals, personal moments
of experience, extraordinary events, to

horrific terror videos, more and more is
uploaded.

And in a strange, sad twist,

The first terrorist beheading video that
was posted online was that of Judea

Pearl's own son, Daniel Pearl.

He was a journalist for the Wall Street
Journal and had been kidnapped by

radical Islamists in Pakistan.

They recorded what they said was his
confession and then his killing.

My name is Daniel Pearl.

I'm a Jewish -American.

I come from a...

This was a new world that the old
systems of power

found it very difficult to deal with.

In the wake of the 9 -11 attacks, the
security agencies secretly collected

from millions of people online.

One programme was called Optic Nerve.

It took stills from the webcam
conversations of millions of people

world, trying to spot terrorists
planning another attack.

The programme did not discover a single
terrorist, but it did discover something

else.

A top -secret assessment said...

Unfortunately, there are issues with
undesirable images within the data.

It would appear that a surprising number
of people are using webcam

conversations to show intimate parts of
their body to the other person.

Also, the fact that the software allows
more than one person to view a webcam

stream means that it appears to be being
used to broadcast pornography.

But increasingly, people were using the
internet in other ways to present

themselves as they wanted to be seen.

I guess a video blog is about me.

I don't really want to tell you where I
live because you could, like, stalk me.

The web drew people in because it was
mesmerising.

It was somewhere that you could explore
and get lost in in any way you wanted.

But behind the screen... Like in a two
-way mirror, the simplified agents were

watching and predicting and guiding your
hand on the mouse.

Stop. I nearly threw my phone away.
Stop.

Stop. Pose. Pose. Snap a selfie.

There you go.

My name is Sweetie.

The man asked me to take off my clothes.

They undress.

They play with themselves.

But what they don't know, I'm not real.

I'm a computer model made piece by piece
to track down these men who

do this.

As the intelligence systems online
gathered ever more data, new forms of

guidance began to emerge.

Social media created filters, complex
algorithms that looked at what

liked and then fed more of the same back
to them.

In the process, individuals began to
move, without noticing, into bubbles

isolated them from enormous amounts of
other information.

They only heard and saw what they liked.

And the news feeds increasingly excluded
anything that might challenge people's

pre -existing beliefs.

Thank you.

The version of cyberspace that was
rising up seemed to be very much like

Gibson's original vision.

That behind the superficial freedoms of
the web were a few giant corporations

with opaque systems that controlled what
people saw and shaped what they

thought.

And what was even more mysterious was
how they made their decisions about what

you should like and what should be
hidden from you.

But then, the other utopian vision of
cyberspace re -emerged.

After the financial crash of 2008, the
politicians saved the banks.

But they did practically nothing about
the massive corruption that was revealed

in its wake.

And the reason they gave was that it
might destabilise the system.

Public anger burst out. The Occupy
movement took over Wall Street and then

Senate in Washington.

The issue is that certain individuals
that are very wealthy have pretty much

corrupted our political system.

And this is, like, the heart of it. I
mean, this is a Senate building. These

people have been cut off, and they've
basically corrupted our democracy, and

it's literally killing people.

I'm an Iraqi war vet. I went to Iraq in
2009.

I see what happens firsthand when we let
corruption rule our government and our

democracy, and we're coming here today
basically just a way of the rareness.

What drove the Occupy movement was the
original dream of the Internet that

people like John Perry Barlow had
outlined in the early 1990s.

In his declaration of the independence
of cyberspace, Marlow had described a

world, free of politics and the old
hierarchies of power.

A space where people connected together
as equals in a network and built a new

society without leaders.

Now, the Occupy movement set out to
build that kind of society in the real

world.

The camps were to be the models.

All the meetings used the idea of the
human microphone.

People throughout the crowd repeated a
speaker's words so everyone could hear

them. We are now going to vote on
whether to stay here for the next two

hours or leave now.

But if someone wanted to challenge the
speaker, the human amplifiers also had

repeat their words.

so their voice had equal power.

What's he said?

What's he said?

What's that?

What's that?

The proposal... Each person was an
autonomous individual who expressed what

believed. But together, they became
components in a network that organised

itself through the feedback of
information around the system.

You could organise people without the
exercise of power.

Then, almost immediately, the Arab
Spring began.

The first revolution started in Tunisia,
but it quickly spread to Egypt.

On January 25th, 2011, thousands of
Egyptians came out in groups across

and then started moving towards Tahrir
Square.

It seemed like a spontaneous uprising,
but the internet had played a key role

organising the groups.

One of the main activists was an
Egyptian computer engineer called Wahil

He worked with Google in Egypt, but he
had also set up the Facebook site that

played the key role in organising the
first protest.

As hundreds of thousands took over
Tahrir Square, Ghanim gave an interview

Egyptian TV.

They used to call us, in the days of
Khaled Saeed's protests, the first time

went out, the low rate on Facebook, the
one that makes a lot of noise. Don't you

believe that these guys came down with
tens of thousands on the 25th?

So please, guys, there are no heroes.

The heroes are the people on the street.
The heroes are everyone among us. There

is no one, there is no one today, the
one who rides the horse is the one who

hits the fence and moves people. Yes,
someone is laughing at you and telling

this.

But Ghanim was also overwhelmed by the
power this new technology had, that a

computer engineer with a keyboard could
call out thousands of people, some of

whom then died in the midst of the
protest.

Many liberals in the West saw this as
proof of the revolutionary power of the

Internet.

Again, it seemed to be able to organize
a revolution.

without leaders.

A revolution powerful enough to topple a
brutal dictator who had been backed by

America and the West for 30 years.

But the internet radicals were not the
only ones who saw their dreams being

fulfilled in the Arab Spring.

Many of the political leaders of the
West also enthusiastically supported the

revolutions.

because it seemed to fit with their
simple idea of regime change.

It might have failed in Iraq, but now
the people everywhere were rising up to

rid themselves of the evil tyrants, and
democracy would flourish.

So when an uprising began in Libya,
Britain, France and America supported

And suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped
being a hero of the West.

All the politicians and the public
relations people and the academics who

all promoted him as a global thinker
suddenly disappeared.

And Gaddafi became yet again an evil
dictator who had to be overthrown.

His son Saeed said, The way these people
are dethoning me and my father is

disgusting.

Just a few months ago, we were being
treated as honoured friends.

Now that rebels are threatening our
country, these cowards are turning on

Colonel Gaddafi retreated to the ruins
of the house that the Americans had

bombed 30 years before.

and addressed the world.

Those who love Muammar Gaddafi, Muammar
Gaddafi is the glory.

If I had a position, if I were a
president, I would have resigned.

I would have thrown my resignation in
your face. But I have no position,

no post.

I have nowhere to resign from. I have my
gun. I have my rifle to fight for

Libya.

Withdraw your children from the street.

Take your children back.

They are dragging your children, they're
making your children drunk, and they're

sending them to hell.

Your children will die.

What for?

In November 2011, a large convoy was
spotted driving at high speed away from

Colonel Gaddafi's hometown of Thirt.

An American drone, controlled from a
shed outside Las Vegas, was sent to

it.

The operator fired a missile at the lead
car of the

convoy.

Gaddafi then fled, looking for shelter
from the oncoming rebel forces.

He hid under the road in a drainage
pipe.

But instead of becoming a democracy,
Libya began to descend into chaos.

And the other revolutions were also
failing.

The Occupy camps had become trapped in
endless meetings.

And it became clear that there was a
terrible confusion at the heart of the

movement. The radicals had believed that
if they could create a new way of

organising people, then a new society
would emerge.

But what they did not have was a picture
of what that society would be like, a

vision of the future.

The truth was that their revolution was
not about an idea.

It was about how you manage things.

And those who had started the revolution
in Egypt came face to face with the

same terrible fact.

Social media had helped to bring people
together in Tahrir Square.

But once there, the internet gave no
clue as to what kind of new society they

could create in Egypt.

The movement stalled.

And a group that did have a powerful
idea, the Muslim Brotherhood, rushed in

fill the vacuum.

The Brotherhood took power in an
election, and one of them, Mohamed

became president.

The Liberals and the left were shocked,
and bit by bit they turned back to the

military, protesting, asking them to
fave the revolution from being captured

Idlimith.

In the spring of 2013, the military took
action.

They arrested the president and killed
hundreds of his supporters who

And an extraordinary spectacle unfolded
in Tahrir Square.

Thousands of the liberal activists who
had begun the revolution two years

before, summoned by social media, now
welcomed the military back by waving

laser pens at the helicopters flying
overhead.

The crowd had been summoned there once
again by Facebook.

After the failure of the revolutions, it
was not just the radicals. No one in

the West had any idea of how to change
the world.

At home, the politicians had given so
much of their power away to finance and

the ever -growing managerial
bureaucracies that they, in effect, had

managers themselves.

While abroad, all their adventures had
failed.

and their simplistic vision of the world
had been exposed as dangerous and

destructive.

But in Russia, there was a group of men
who had seen how this very lack of

belief in politics and dark uncertainty
about the future could work to their

advantage.

What they had done was turn politics
into a strange theatre, where nobody

what was true or what was fake any
longer.

They were called political technologists
and they were the key figures behind

President Putin.

They had kept him in power,
unchallenged, for 15 years.

Some of them had been dissidents back in
the 1970s and had been powerfully

influenced by the science fiction
writings of the Strugatsky brothers.

20 years later, when Russia fell apart
after the end of communism, they rose up

and took control of the media.

and they used it to manipulate the
electrode on a vast scale.

For them, reality was just something
that could be manipulated and shaped

anything you wanted it to be.

But then a technologist emerged who went
much further, and his ideas would

become central to Putin's grip on power.

He was called Vladislav Surkov.

Surkov came originally from the theatre
world, and those who have studied his

career say that what he did was take
avant -garde ideas from the theatre and

bring them into the heart of politics.

Surkov's aim was not just to manipulate
people, but to go deeper.

and play with and undermine their very
perception of the world, so they are

never sure what is really happening.

Surkov turned Russian politics into a
bewildering, constantly changing piece

theatre.

He used Kremlin money to sponsor all
kinds of groups, from mass anti -fascist

youth organisations to the very
opposite, neo -Nazi skinheads.

and liberal human rights groups, who
then attacked the government.

Surkov even backed whole political
parties that were opposed to President

But the key thing was that Surkov then
let it be known that this was what he

doing, which meant that no one was sure
what was real or what was fake in modern

Russia.

As one journalist put it, it's a
strategy of power.

that keeps any opposition constantly
confused.

A ceaseless shape -shifting that is
unstoppable because it is indefinable.

Meanwhile, real power was elsewhere,
hidden away behind the stage, exercised

without anyone seeing it.

And then the same thing seemed to start
happening.

in the West.

By now, it was becoming ever more clear
that the system had deep flaws.

Every month, there were new revelations
of most of the bank's involvement in

global corruption, of massive tax
avoidance by all the major corporations,

the secret surveillance of everyone's
emails by the National Security Agency.

Yet no one was prosecuted, except for a
few people at the lowest levels.

And behind it all, the massive
inequality kept on growing.

Yet the structure of power remained the
same.

Nothing ever changed.

Because nothing could be allowed to
destabilize the system.

But then, the shape -shifting began.

Thank you very much. So nice.

So amazing.

So amazing.

What? That's OK. I love you more, OK?

The campaign that Donald Trump ran was
unlike anything before in politics.

Nothing was fixed.

What he said, who he attacked and how he
attacked them was constantly changing

and shifting.

Trump attacked his Republican rivals as
being all part of a broken and corrupt

system. A politics where everyone could
be bought.

using words that could have come from
the Occupy movement.

You've also donated to several
Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton

Nancy Pelosi.

You explained away those donations
saying you did that to get business

favors. And you said recently, quote,
when you give, they do whatever the hell

you want them to do. You better believe
it. So what specifically did they do?

If I ask them, if I need them, you know,
most of the people on this stage I've

given to, just so you understand, a lot
of money. I will tell you that our

system is broken.

I give to many people before this,
before two months ago, I was a

give to everybody when they call. I
give. And you know what? When I need

something from them two years later,
three years later, I call them. They are

there for me. So that's a broken system.

But at the same time.

Trump used the language of the extreme
racist right in America, connecting the

people's darkest fears, pushing them and
bringing those fears out into the open.

Many of the facts that Trump asserted
were also completely untrue.

But Trump didn't care.

He and his audience knew that much of
what he said bore little relationship to

reality.

This meant that Trump defeated
journalists, because the journalists'

belief was that their job was to expose
lies and assert the truth.

With Trump, this became irrelevant.

Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin admired
this.

But it's not our job to determine his
dignity, it's the job of the voters of

United States. But he is an absolute
leader, we see today, in the

race. He says that he wants to move to a
different level of relations, a more

dense, deeper level of relations with
Russia. But can we not

welcome this? Of course, we welcome it.
As for the internal political things...

The Liberals were outraged by Trump, but
they expressed their anger in

cyberspace, so it had no effect, because
the algorithms made sure that they only

spoke to people who already agreed with
them.

Instead, ironically, their waves of
angry messages and tweets benefited the

large corporations who ran the social
media platforms.

One online analyst put it simply, angry
people click more.

It meant that the radical fury that came
like waves across the Internet no

longer had the power to change the
world.

Instead, it was becoming a fuel.

that was feeding the new systems of
power and making them ever more

But none of the liberals could possibly
imagine that Donald Trump could ever win

the nomination.

It was just a giant pantomime.

And then, of course, there's Donald
Trump.

Donald Trump has been saying that he
will run for president as a Republican,

which is surprising, since I just
assumed he was running as a joke.

Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which
is ironic because a fox often appears

on Donald Trump's head.

Donald Trump owns the Miss USA pageant,
which is great for

Republicans because it will streamline
their search for a vice president.

Donald Trump said recently he has a
great relationship with the blacks,

unless the blacks are a family of white
people, I bet he's mistaken.

But underneath the liberal disdain, both
Donald Trump in America and Vladislav

Surkov in Russia had realized the same
thing.

that the version of reality that
politics presented was no longer

that the stories politicians told their
people about the world had stopped

making sense.

And in the face of that, you could play
with reality, constantly shifting and

changing, and in the process, further
undermine and weaken the old forms of

power.

And there was another force that was
about to dramatically reveal just how

politics had become in the West.

Syria.

So the attack happened here at a central
police station in Damascus. Police say

the bomber came up the stairs.

Police then opened fire and then police
say he detonated the explosives.

And the damage is here to see. Behind
me, the pockmarked walls where the ball

bearings hit.

Blood splattered on the walls.

And the force of the blast caused walls
to collapse and everything

It's topsy -turvy, everything destroyed.

By now, Syria was being torn apart by a
horrific civil war.

What had started as part of the Arab
Spring had turned into a vicious battle

the death between Bashar Assad and his
opponents.

And at the heart of the conflict was the
force that his father had first brought

to the West, suicide bombing.

Back in the 1980s, Bashar Assad's father
had seen suicide bombing as a weapon he

could use to force the Americans out of
the Middle East.

But over the next 30 years, it had
shifted and mutated into something that

now ended up doing the very opposite,
tearing the Arab world apart.

Hafez al -Assad's dream of a powerful
and united Arab world was now destroyed.

In Iraq, extremist Sunni groups had used
suicide bombing as a way to start a

sectarian war.

And now, groups like ISIS brought the
same techniques into Syria to attack not

just Assad's son, but his fellow Shias.

And like his father, Bashar Assad
retaliated with a vengeful fury, and the

country fell apart.

My fellow Americans, tonight I want to
talk to you about Syria, why it matters,

and where we go from here.

Faced by the war, Western politicians
were bewildered.

They insisted that Bashar Assad was
evil.

But then it turned out that his enemies
were more evil and more horrific than

him. The question before the House today
is how we keep the British people safe

from the threat posed by ISIL.

This is not about whether we want to
fight terrorism, it's about how best we

that.

So Britain, America and France decided
to bomb the terrorist threat.

The effect of that was to help keep
Assad in power.

Then it became more confusing.

Suddenly, the Russians intervened.

President Putin sent hundreds of planes
and combat troops to support Assad.

But no -one knew what their underlying
aim was.

They seemed to be using a strategy that
Vladislav Surkov had developed in the

Ukraine.

He called it non -linear warfare.

It was a new kind of war, where you
never know what the enemy are really up

The underlying aim, Surkov said... was
not to win the war, but to use the

conflict to create a constant state of
destabilized perception in order to

manage and control.

In March

2016, the Russians

suddenly announced with a great fanfare
that they were leaving Syria.

And a concert was held in the ruins of
Palmyra.

to celebrate the withdrawal.

But in reality, the Russians never left.

But they are still there, and still no
-one knows what they really want.

And

within

Syria, there was a new Islamist
ideologist who was determined to exploit

growing uncertainties in Europe and
America.

He was called Abu Musab al -Suri, the
Syrian.

Al -Suri had originally worked with

Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but he
had turned against him.

Al -Suri gave lectures that had a
powerful effect on the Islamist

He argued that bin Laden had been wrong
to attack the West head -on because it

created a massive military response that
had almost destroyed Islamism.

Instead, al -Suri said, independent
groups or individuals should stage

small -scale attacks on civilians in
Europe and America.

The aim was to spread fear, uncertainty
and doubt and undermine the already

failing authority of Western
politicians.

The effect of the attacks shocked Europe
and America and gave powerful force to

the new politics of uncertainty and
anxiety.

I'm sure that you with me share the
absolute horror and total

revulsion at what happened in Paris last
Friday.

And I'm afraid there is, and we have to
be honest and frank about this.

and talk about these things without
being fearful, there is a problem with

of the Muslim community in this country.

There is a problem, and we have to be
honest about it. Our politicians, I'm

afraid, haven't had the guts.

This could be the great Trojan horse of
all time.

Because you look at the migration, study
it, look at it.

Now they'll start infiltrating with
women and children.

Both the Brexit campaign in Britain and
Donald Trump in America did exactly what

al -Suri had predicted.

They used the fear to dramatize a world
where everything, even going to a

restaurant, had become a risky event.

And what had been seen as doomed
campaigns on the fringes of society that

never win became frighteningly real.

I am genuinely freaked out right now
about this whole Brexit thing.

Because we'd all been told that it
wasn't going to happen. Like it was

away. It was going away from Brexiting
and on to the staying.

And because I had this like bedrock
belief. I have friends who like live and

work in London. They said, oh, don't
worry. We're very sensible people.

This isn't going to happen. It's a lot
of talk, but we don't do that sort of

stuff here.

They were wrong.

And that really kind of crushes my view.

of what can happen that is bad that we
don't think is going to happen.

It's just not supposed to happen.

a fascist group in Europe again.

And I genuinely never thought it would
be my country.

I thought it would be America.

I thought America was the people who
were so built to hate.

I'm so disappointed.

I'm so hurt.

You must think my bed's above dark.

The way you come and go.

I see you with the lights on.

Two nights in a row.

To pack your...

Don't help me set the table, cause now

there's one left place.

I won't blame Mama Silver for a man

who won't say grace.

Who not?

Thank you.