On the other hand, he stood for an inner moral weakness at the very heart of the empire which could corrupt and undermine it from within, the contradiction of a project that claimed moral superiority and used bestial methods to achieve it. On the one hand, he represented those forces of primitive violence that lay just beyond the frontiers of the 'civilised world', the very same shadowy 'others' with which the current leaders of the free world threaten the badly behaved children of their day. Kurtz first appeared in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', but his role was complex. Its central figure, Kurtz, the crazed officer who reverts to a state of barbarism deep in the rainforest, might be taken to symbolise the same 'evil forces' that Blair and Bush denounce in their daily meetings with the press.
It seems appropriate that Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' should be reissued.
