War correspondent, journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger
was one of several outspoken keynote speakers at Socialism 2009
held at the Women’s Building in San Francisco, July 4th.
Photos by Luke Thomas
July 7, 2009
“The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
– Milan Kundera.
Legendary Australian-born investigative journalist John Pilger spoke at the 2009 Socialism Conference held at the Women’s Building on July 4th. Kind of ironic that the organizers chose to host a left-wing event on the national independence day of the one country in the world most afraid of Socialism.
His subject was “Empire and Obama: Power, Illusion and America’s Last Taboo,” a wordy title whose length Pilger duly apologized for.
Born in Sydney in 1939, Pilger is one of only two individuals to be twice awarded Britain’s Journalist of the Year. His documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US, and he has been gifted honorary doctorates and human rights awards. He has been an oft vociferous critic of Western foreign policy, especially that of the United States since his early years as a war correspondent in Vietnam.
Pilger writes for the New Statesman and has written for many other publications including The New York Times and The Guardian (UK). His documentary work stretches from Vietnam – The Quiet Mutiny (1971), through The New Rulers of the World (2001-2), to The War on Democracy (2007). His books include Heroes, Hidden Agendas, and Freedom Next Time. More recently he has turned his sights on the incumbent US president, attacking Barack Obama’s continuation and expansion of the wars in the Middle East.
America is an empire. There we go, I’ve said it. Shoot me, but it’s true. It has followed in the footsteps of ancient European nations proclaiming the right to bring “liberty” to other nations in exchange for their natural resources.
“The difference”, says Pilger, “is that America is trained to deny its imperialism.”
“Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology,” he said. “It’s both conservative and its liberal, and it’s right and it’s left – and Barack Obama is its embodiment.”
Pilger spoke of his time as war correspondent in Vietnam, and of America’s policy of WHAM (Winning Hearts And Minds), which involved handing out packets of Uncle Ben’s rice, Hershey Bars and thousands of toothbrushes in a local village, holding back the portable toilets for the arrival of the Colonel who duly proclaimed: “These gifts represent America.”
American textbooks shamelessly refer to the period that US troops were conquering Mexico and sending Marines to Nicaragua as the “Age of Innocence.” In fact, states Pilger, “Since 1945, by deed and by example, to use Obama’s words, America has overthrown fifty governments including democracies, crushed some thirty liberation movements, and bombed countless men, women and children to death.” Some food for thought when America regularly claims it wants to bring peace and liberty to other peoples.
Even before Edward Bernays’ early 20th Century influence on propaganda manipulation, extensive revisionism and omission has enabled the United States to conveniently sweep these atrocities under the carpet. The American Military Machine perpetuates its own raison d’etre, says Pilger, who once asked an American general why he was sending so many B-52s to destroy such a small target. “Because we have them,” came the reply.
Rest easy, folks: America’s not going to run out of killing machines anytime soon. Nor is it going to run out of people to use them on. Though many believe that the war(s) in the Middle and Far East are being scaled down, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton speaks ominously of “high value targets.”
“Here is the 45th President of United States, having stacked his government with war mongers, corporate fraudsters, and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan,” said Pilger, arguing that America’s wars have been “justified by the enduring myth of ‘exceptional America,’ a myth the late Harold Pinter described as ‘a brilliant, witty, highly successful, act of hypnosis.’”
“The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran,” Pilger said. “Obama is the myth that is America’s last taboo.”
In fact the rise of Obama has coincided with a silencing of the Left. This silence is largely a result of new hope that things will change. The fascinating thing about this new hope that Obama has instilled in us is totally baseless. This supposed swing to the Left, this Socialist revival, is nothing but a smokescreen. Even those who stood to ask questions challenged Pilger’s assertion that we should not cling to hope. No, for this is false hope perpetuated by the current regime.
“Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope,” Pilger stated. “Real activism has little time for identity politics which, like exceptionalism, can be fake.”
This hope for something different is engendered, and indeed fostered by the fact that Obama looks different and speaks differently than previous presidents.
“Race, gender and class can be very seductive,” says Pilger, observing that Bush’s team was one of the most “politically-correct” in history, harboring both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. “It is the class one serves that matters.”
President Barack Obama is, says Pilger, “a marketing dream. He makes people feel good. He’s a post-modern man with no political baggage, and all that’s fake.”
“Obama’s very presence in the White House appears to reaffirm ‘the moral nation.’”
Like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Obama is a great actor; a perfect front-man to pacify the people, to quell their anger with rousing speeches which look and sound impressive but ultimately deliver very little of any substance. He is a modern day Houdini, creating distractions at home in order to hide the real issues that are being glossed over.
“Whilst President Obama is doing one thing, Brand Obama gets you to believe something else,” Pilger said.
Of course, Obama is as much a product of the skewed and faulty political system as any other leader and, thus, the blame for his political hypocrisy cannot be laid solely at the feet of the individual. This does not, however, excuse some of his more obvious failings.
“The real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement, the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress, just 30 are willing stand up against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party,” adding, “On June 16th, they voted for $106 billion for more war. The ‘out-of-Iraq caucus’ is out of action.”
Whilst Americans are losing their jobs and homes, Obama has increased the military budget, contradicting his election promise that the “troops are coming home.”
“He’s not hateable,” said Pilger of Obama, mentioning the 700 Pakistani civilians killed this year by American military drones, “but he’s on the way.”
In his many years struggling to uncover the truth in the face of ‘mainstream’ journalism and all it serves, Pilger has come up against many a stone wall. He once said, “The censorship is such on television in the US that films like mine don’t stand a chance.” Hence his works wouldn’t be found on the usual channels.
The political elite are contemptuous towards the public which “explains why the Progressive attitudes of the public are seldom reported in the media, because they’re not ignorant, they’re subversive; they’re informed; they’re even ‘anti-American.’”
Quoting Martha Gellhorn, Pilger elaborated, “I’ll tell you what anti-american is. It’s what governments and their vested interests call those who wander America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these Americans in the United States. They are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms, though they would call it ‘common decency.’ They are not vain. They are the people with a weightful conscience, the best of America’s citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional.”
Pilger urges us instead to, “Give up on hope, and instead listen to the voices from below. The opportunity within our grasp is to recognize that something is stirring in America, but it’s unfamiliar, perhaps, to many of us on the left but is related to a great popular movement that’s growing all over the world. Polls have shown that more than two-thirds of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves. 64% would pay higher taxes to guarantee healthcare for everyone. 60% are favorable towards unions. 70% want nuclear disarmament. 72% want the US completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
These are figures which reflect the word on the street, but would never be publicly aired on mainstream media.
“My own guess is that a populism is growing once again in America, evoking a powerful force beneath which has a proud history,” Pilger said. “What Obama and the bankers and the generals and the IMF and the CIA and CNN and BBC fear, is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy.”
The system isn’t working, and the people aren’t happy about it, and their swelling ranks are refusing to be silenced.
Quoting George Orwell, Pilger said, “At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
More Info
Pilger’s documentary films on Google, YouTube
The Hunger Site
July 12, 2009 at 9:52 am
I don’t see much real hope out there, though that may well be a reflection of my internal state.
I nevertheless value the truth, and am glad to hear it spoken, and published. It has intrinsic value, wherever shared, even if it’s consequence is not predictable.
Near the end of his life, after the British paid for his release from Nazi arrest in Austria, Freud said, “I still have hope. The voice of reason is very faint, but it is very persistent.”
July 8, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Well said, Ruth, I do agree 1) the US is an Empire and 2) it would serve us all well to evolve into something better and to shift toward a holistic political approach. Reading this article from my location, it surfaced for me many tensions and stagnations in self-identified “activist” narratives.
Mr. Pilger declares: “Give up on hope, and instead listen to the voices from below.”
Coupling an “and” with “instead” presents a false choice of EITHER “Hope” OR “Listening to the voices below”. For me, I perceive that a person has deeply listened to the “voices from below” when they speak with words that allow for the pluralism of truth and experience. A language of AND/ALSO (win-win) over EITHER/OR (win-lose). So drink up all the hope you’d like, AND when as your spirit lightens, if you are so inclined to do so with me, let that hope serve to open our ears, hearts and imaginations to the wisdom from the experience found in the “voices below”. It is all of our responsibility to build relations of power in the world where no one human, Obama included, is granted access to so much power through manufactured consent.
A speaker who proclaims a need to listen to “voices below” while in the same talk dismisses “Race, gender and class” as “seductive”, may benefit from reflecting: “What is the nature of this “class” I’m serving? That is, when Mr. Pilger states that “Real activism has little time for identity politics which, like exceptionalism, can be fake,” he leaves little room the hard-won knowledge offered by “identity politics” about the importance of location (read: above/below) in a global power matrix of domination. Structurally, this statement is another example of a false choice of EITHER “real activism†OR “fake identity politics.â€
An AND/ALSO framework allows for the understanding of how identities function within Empire-building projects (there are many) to inform how we build a world where many worlds coexist in mutuality. That is, in focusing on “identities†what surfaces is how “Empire†– as a cultural, hegemonic force maintained by ever-persistent relations of domination – has persisted to this day because of its ability to integrate itself onto the imaginations of traumatized people and its ability to embody itself into the relations of traumatized people, reconstituting itself through us in the everyday.
Understanding trauma is important. Trauma is a consequence of a violent human history, it is a healthy response to overwhelming external events (human made or not) that threaten our lives. Unhealed trauma shows itself in adaptive behaviors, and is passed down generations through Culture (relationships, belief systems, etc). In an attempt to make sense/achieve safety for our existence, typical responses by those experiencing trauma include: anger, minimization and denial. Yes, denial! Thus, America is not only “trained to deny†Empire, there is a cognitive, behavioral, emotional need satisfied by the denial. For those of us who envision a different world, understanding how trauma impacts people over time and space opens up opportunity for effectively disrupting the cycles of violence – state violence, as well as intimate violence. These things are connected.
So back to Mr. Pilger, thank you for your words and I will be so bold as to suggest some alignment of language with vision for maximum reception of message. Because the resilient voices from below remind me that life moves through us all, that none of us chose the politics of the places into which we are born, and that our paths toward collective liberation are each uniquely different. My heart dances (and trips up on) the change I want to see in the world, and I see yours doing the same. Thank you.
July 7, 2009 at 9:16 pm
John Pilger is right that the U.S. is an empire and has been throughout most of its history.
The imperialism began with the expansion and war against the native Indians of North America, continued up through the Cold War, and persists until today, involving many areas around the globe.
However, the U.S. is not the last empire, as the title of this thread suggests. The last empire will likely be China.
Look at the struggle now going on in NW China. The Han (Chinese) muscled into the area, overwhelmed the native occupants, and are now suppressing their uprisings.
There are other places in what is today called China where similar things have happened. Not to mention Tibet.
When China starts to unravel due due to widespread uprisings by native ethnic groups that have been imperialized, you’re going to see extraordinary acts of brutal suppression by Beijing. The central governments of China have a long, bloody record, truly horrendous.
By the way, big socialist countries in general don’t have a good record when it comes to imperialism, compared to capitalist countries. Look at the former Soviet Union. Remember the Hungarian uprising?
Imperialism is a great curse that has afflicted human history from antiquity to the present. We should all do what we can to resist it, including the imperialism of the U.S. But let’s not kid ourselves that the ideology of socialism has spared certain large countries from this curse.
It’s time to rethink politics in its entirety. That means critically examining the dogmas of all sects across the spectrum.
Otherwise, organized political life will continue to be just as vicious and oppressive as it has always been.
We all need to evolve into something better.
July 7, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I hear your judgments about the problems of America, Mr. Pilger. But I missed your solutions, unless telling me how god-awful Obama is constitutes a solution. If I cared to, I could dial into Rush and hear ranting about Obama.
But, alas, a majority of Americans voted Obama in with the full understanding that he was not immediately pulling out of Iraq. No surprise there. You say that Obama is a “brand”. Remind me if anyone running for the Presidency isn’t a “brand”. Hell, the case could be made that John Pilger is a “brand”. Your hero, Hugo Chavez, is a “brand” in the end, too.
I didn’t hear any proposed solutions or at least none in the story above. I remain skeptical of you, Mr Pilger, just as I am with the President. But for the time being, I think each of you should keep your current jobs.
July 7, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Thanks Luke and Will,
John Pilger gave a real barnburner without ever raising his voice.
Luke,
It’s unfortunate that you didn’t stick around for other parts of the Socialist Convention. If you had you might have gotten a better idea of why it is that genuine socialists wouldn’t vote for someone like Chris Daly (a conversation we didn’t get to finish). But I would submit that it isn’t pig-headedness at all. All the socialists that I talked to at the convention were as thoughtful and well-reasoned as it gets.