Australian journalist and film maker John Pilger was recently in Sydney on the way back to England from a trip to New Zealand. Zanny Begg from Green Left Weekly spoke with him about the changing face of world politics.
John Pilger isn't very popular with the establishment. His commitment to social justice makes enemies of many governments and multinational companies that would prefer to have their actions escape his gaze. He has offended the Australian Labor Party by blowing the cover on its role in East Timor. He was banned from South Africa for his opposition to apartheid. He told the world about what the UN was really up to in Cambodia. He has earned the wrath of media magnates worldwide for his courageous exposure of uncomfortable truths.
Pilger's aim is to "turn conventional journalism on its head". He takes as his departure point the "aspirations of ordinary people, not of the powers that burden their lives". Pilger's commitment to ordinary people makes him side consistently with the forces of social change. It has taken him to the heart of conflicts all over the world.
During our discussion, a briefcase was left next to our table in the restaurant. A nervous waiter asked if the case belonged to us before promptly removing it. Pilger's calm was momentarily ruffled as he asked, "Is it ticking?". He immediately laughed the moment away with a disclaimer, "It comes from being in war zones all the time. You get attuned to nerves."
The last war zone Pilger travelled into was East Timor. His film Death of a Nation helped revitalise the campaign for solidarity with that country. The East Timor support hot line was choked with callers after the first screening in Britain. In New Zealand, 600 calls flooded in on the opening night. In Australia the ABC declined the offer to screen Death of a Nation. It was later revealed by sources inside the ABC that political factors influenced that decision. When Channel 9 eventually screened it, 3000 callers rang in to the hot line.
There are many journalists who have supported this or that cause. What makes Pilger such an anathema to the powers that be is his willingness to side openly with the struggle for change on a worldwide scale. He grounds his concern for "ordinary people" in an understanding of the forces of capital that oppose them.
Challenging power
Rather then regarding the 1960s as an era of good music and bad haircuts, as mainstream society would have us do, Pilger sees the legacy of the '60s as political. "The 1960s in the West, and through much of the developing world, called the establishment to account. They represented a dramatic raising of political consciousness which we are still the beneficiaries of today.
"The revolutionary fervour of the 1960s raised consciousness, without which many of us would not be in a position to analyse the balance of power. The Cuban revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution, the Vietnamese revolution were all part of, or came out of, that. These are crucial models for challenging power."
According to Pilger, power today lies in the United States. He believes that we live "in a uni-polar world. The United States is the strongest regime on earth and is unchallenged in that position." Pilger argues that the dominance of the United States is filtered through the United Nations and its associated financial institutions.
"One of the real dangers to democracy in the world is the international financial institutions. It is through these institutions that we see imperialism operate in its new form. I think we are seeing a kind of world government develop which is managed by the World Bank and the IMF and which has its headquarters in Washington.
"We are seeing a return to the autocratic conduct of world financial authorities that was got rid of in the 19th century. In many ways it is more subtle then the old days of imperial power.
"It doesn't need gunboats, because once you have a country indebted, you can do what you like. For example, during the Gulf War, Egypt's support was bought with a bribe: $14 billion of its debt payments were cancelled in return for its cooperation. So the financial arms of the UN have enormous power and in the end all look to the power of Washington. Even Japan, the greatest economic power on earth does not have power in the UN."
Pilger is clear on the effect the UN has on world politics: "I don't think we should be naive about the role of the UN. It cannot bring peace in its current form. The UN is a vehicle that is used by Western powers. There are parts of the UN which have produced positive results — the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the Human Rights Organisation — but overall the UN is not a friend of the developing world. The contrast is very vivid if you take the Gulf War and look at how the UN was used to mobilise a massive force to attack Iraq, and then you take Rwanda, where the UN was not mobilised to save lives. The priorities of the UN are those of Western powers.
"In the 1970s the UN came as close as possible, under its present structure, to being a world body. This was when power went to the General Assembly and for a brief period the majority of nations held sway and influenced bodies such as UNESCO. But during the 1980s power came back to the Security Council — a totally anachronistic body born of the Cold War".
The domination of the world by global financial elites Pilger sees as the agenda behind the signing of GATT. "We are told Orwellian truths about GATT. The real truth about GATT is that it is a rather ingenious form of wealth creation for one seventh of the world. In 60 years time, one seventh of the world will control three quarters of the world's resources. GATT is nothing but a way of ensuring their influence and power.
"The agreement reaches into the developing world, but only to give seductive crumbs to various elites. Fundamentally GATT is about finding the cheapest labour possible, getting natural resources at the cheapest prices possible and developing them for the maximum profit for the smallest number of people in the world. It's straightforward logic really; one feels obliged to congratulate those who thought it up".
Reinventing democracy
According to Pilger, Orwellian doublespeak lies behind the pronouncements that bodies like the UN make on their role in preserving and nurturing democracy. Pilger argues that "democracy has been reinvented". The propaganda of the UN, governments and the establishment media has drawn an automatic equals sign between "capital" and "democracy" in an attempt to "hide the devastation that market forces have wreaked upon the world".
A prime illustration of this trend, Pilger argues, is the invasion of Haiti. "A man was democratically elected by a people on a platform of real change for the country." A military coup, with tacit approval from the US, deposed him. "He was then taken out by the US, and a lobotomy was done on him." The US subsequently invaded and "he was then reinstated. So now", Pilger concludes, "'democracy' has been installed and if this so-called 'democracy' is challenged, the US marines will arrive to save it". The irony is devastating.
Pilger believes that rhetoric of "democracy" will mean that "dictators are going out of fashion". Instead puppet governments, which give lip service to freedom and democracy while opening up their country to foreign investment, will be on the wish list of imperial powers.
Drawing on issues raised in his film Return to Year Zero, Pilger continues, "You only have to look at the zeal with which 'democracy' was installed in Cambodia to understand this phenomenon. The fact that the UN peace process in Cambodia handed back most of the country to the Khmer Rouge, the fact that the country was left covered in landmines, didn't matter. What mattered was holding the elections and getting out. This whole process was used to blunt revolutionary movements and has nothing to do with real democracy."
The myth that democracy equals capitalism underpinned much of the West's gloating over the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. After the Berlin Wall came down, newspapers the world over declared "Communism is dead". Pilger rejects these assumptions. He argues that the experience of Stalinism has left socialists "with a terrible legacy" but the assertion that capitalism has won the Cold War is "utterly false".
Pilger believes that Stalinism "so perverted socialism in the Soviet Union that it handed the forces of capitalism in the West a weapon of propaganda that is still being used against those who seek even a modest form of change today. During the Cold War socialists had to bear the brunt of this propaganda.
"The forces of capitalism were able to say that socialism had been tried and found wanting for the Soviet people. This was utterly false, of course. Even since the Cold War, socialists have had to bear an added burden of people saying that socialism has been defeated in the Soviet Union by the forces of capital, when of course it didn't exist.
"It is a very powerful myth that the forces of capital have shown themselves to be superior to socialism. It is not true. It is a matter of common sense that socialism is the only force that can give any semblance of equity and justice in the lives of most people in the developing world. That socialism should not be a form of organised government is an absurdity.
"Propaganda saying that socialism has been defeated by something that is causing the greatest disparities of wealth in recorded history is equally absurd. The poverty in the developing world is so severe it almost defies the record books."
But Pilger doesn't look at inequalities and the need for change only in the developing world. The implications of GATT, trade agreements like NAFTA and the financial arms of the UN also reach into the wealthy countries. In the heartlands of imperialist power, poverty and unemployment affect growing numbers of people. "When you walk through the streets of London and meet the homeless", Pilger explains, "you are meeting the Third World".
"In the First World", Pilger continued, "the whole notion that people have the right to work decent hours for a decent wage in decent and safe conditions, and that they have the right to withdraw their labour in an organised and collective way if a dispute arises, has been summarily withdrawn because of these trade deals.
"These trade deals no longer mean the piecemeal destruction of rights fought for by trade unionists in the late part of the 19th century and the early part of this century; they mean the wholesale destruction of them. We see this process in Australia with enterprise bargaining.
"Parties like the Australian Labor Party are no longer a social democratic party. They should be called a conservative party. They have united labourism with Thatcherism. They are the ones who are cutting back on public services like health and education and introducing enterprise bargaining."
Optimism
The information that Pilger deals with is fairly depressing. He describes a world where giant multinational companies move "all over the world searching for the cheapest labour". A world where wages and living conditions are being driven down, in both the First and Third World. But Pilger is not a pessimist. He remains optimistic because of his faith in the ability of "ordinary people".
"You must never underestimate the power of popular forces", he asserts, "even in countries were the odds seem almost impossible. The Zapatistas in Mexico are just the tip of the iceberg. Right throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa you see the great phenomenon of human change beginning again. I think in the early part of next century there will be real and sustained challenges to the power structures that exist today, particularly in the developing world. There is no doubt about that.
"Already there have been indicators of this, if not yet real gains. South Africa is a prime example. Apartheid is not over yet, but there has been an initial victory. There has been an initial victory in Eritrea. There has been an initial victory in Namibia. This is just on the African continent.
"Throughout the continent of Latin America there have been the stirrings of radical change.
"Even in the Philippines — just because the popular mass movements that got rid of Marcos were betrayed by Aquino doesn't mean that they won't rise again, and rather wiser then they were last time. In Indonesia the mass movements that were shattered in 1965 are stirring again.
"People have got used to accepting the monolithic nature of capital. But we can tend to forget that throughout the last 300 or 400 years the most powerful force in the world was not capital but popular power. That is not to say that the people have always won. They haven't, they have often lost. But the people have demonstrated their power, and I am confident that they will rise again."
Pilger believes that "popular mass movements are the only way to change the world". He argues strongly that "you do everything most effectively if you do it collectively".
With reference to Australian politics, he told me, "You are changing things by being member of an organisation and by being part of Green Left Weekly. I think this is significant. A few years ago the government of this country could say virtually anything about Indonesia and East Timor and get away with it. Now they can't, and that is because there has been a turnaround in propaganda and an increase in popular outrage."
Pilger cautions people who are dismissive of radical change happening in Australia: "If people despair about change not being popular in Australia, they should look to New Zealand. There you have a country that has undergone massive economic assault. Yet the New Zealand Alliance has been able to gain enormous popularity. The Alliance is addressing the bind of two conservative parties. This is the same bind we have in Australia."
Pilger's concluding remarks during the interview sum up the basis of his optimism: "I have never lost confidence in the fact that people have enormous potential power if it is used collectively. A great deal of the power imposed on people is that of paper tigers. We have seen many historical examples of people winning, and I think we will see them again."