War on Democracy - the truthand other lies

Thu 4th Oct, 2007 in Features

To adopt a seasoned slogan, I can say without hyperbole: If you only see one film this year, make sure it’s The War of Democracy. Inspiring, confronting, life changing – these are all appropriate adjectives for John Pilger’s amazing new documentary.

Born in Australia, but now living in Britain, John Pilger has sculpted an impressive resume of hard-hitting, confronting documentaries. In The War on Democracy, he hangs out with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, visits those in Chile who survived the pogroms of General Pinochet’s dictatorship and highlights America’s brutal history of overthrowing democratically-elected leaders and installing dictators who will help propagate American capitalism and “democracy”. I had the honour of speaking to a rather jet-lagged John Pilger while he was in Sydney.

Why did you choose The War on Democracy to be your first feature length film?
Well, I wanted a film that would have a universal theme and although it’s a film about Latin America, it’s really a film about the imposition of great power all over the world. I mean, what you see in Latin America you get in the Middle East. So I suppose the film is a sort of metaphor for the struggle against power in many parts of the world. And I’ve long wanted to make a film about Latin America. I think it does encapsulate the US imperial role in the world because it’s in the so-called “backyard”. It’s very direct, it’s very crude. Governments are overthrown, or have been in the past, at will, and the rise of popular democracy and social movements in recent years is clearly a threat to this. It’s also probably the most positive film I’ve made, and that was something I wanted to do, in that it shows how people with very little can, in their own way, begin to renew the whole notion of democracy.

Was it inspiring making this film?
Yes it was. You put your finger on it – being inspired. We go, say, into barrios and spend a very long day there, but from my point of view, the discussions and conversations, which became interviews with people, were encouraging, you know? You came away thinking, – œThat’s working, there’s a real possibility of that succeeding’.

Your interview with Duane Clarridge, the former head of CIA operations in South America, is particularly confronting. How did you approach this interview?
Well, I approach every interview with the aim of really that person giving as much information as possible, and that can be somebody speaking about the changes in their life in a barrio or Duane Clarridge. I mean, that’s a professional aspect of interviewing. It’s a long way to go and not get the best from people. And Clarridge… Clarridge was authentic, and he was, in his own terms, honest. He said [things], in a very crude way, that I have heard from other CIA and former CIA people when they’ve had a few beers. Here you had the authentic voice of great power. OK, it’s also quite bizarre and entertaining perhaps, but it’s an authentic voice. He’s a believer. He believes that American interests are the most important thing in the world. There are a lot of very polite people in the United States who occupy very exalted positions in universities who actually believe the same thing, or in the White House, or in Congress, but they don’t quite say it in the same way [laughs].

Your film highlights how America is on a brutal crusade of “spreading democracy”. Do you feel that the United States has become drunk with power?
I think he [Clarridge] is almost the logical product of empire, of imperialism, and that’s what I tried to explain in the film: that empires are not very pleasant, they’re very unpleasant; they set out to control people. Those who are their foot soldiers are often believers, as if it’s a crusade. Clarridge clearly is a believer, and empires become drunk with power. That’s usually at a time when they start to make very serious mistakes.

Do you think America have started to make these mistakes?
Well, it’s made quite a few. It made one in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the victims of these mistakes are mostly not Americans. But from its own point of view, I’m not sure, I’m not sure about that. I think that, in one sense, this particular administration is quite pleased that there is instability in Iraq. It would have much preferred to conquer Iraq and had people waving American flags in the streets and all that nonsense, but that wasn’t to be.

Do you think a change in government is going to do anything to change something such as our country’s involvement in Iraq?
It might. In Australia, it might. Rudd has said, hasn’t he… in fact I’m not quite sure what Rudd has said. But I think he’s said – œeventually’ or something… I don’t think breaths should be held on this one, and for people in Western countries, the real challenge is to understand that there’s been a convergence of the political parties; that they’re basically the same. They have different personalities, and the media concentrates on those personalities, but the basic policies of the ALP and the Coalition in this country are not all that different.

How do people in the general public enact change then?
Well, they’ve got to, and that’s what the film is about. The War on Democracy is about the renewal of democracy at a grass roots level. It’s about new ways of democracy, and I think what unites people in countries like Australia and Britain and the US is their cynicism about the system as it is. Often in other places, like in poor countries, where people live on the edge, they have freedom to be able to start thinking about changing and renewing it. I’m more than happy to take part in discussion, but the discussion needs to begin, and the interesting thing is that in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other Latin American countries, there is a very vibrant political debate about how you renew and keep popular democracy. That debate has not even begun in Australia.

Do you think people in Australia are apathetic, in the sense that life is pretty good so we don’t really need to worry about politics as much?
I don’t think so, politics touches everybody’s lives. I think modern Western societies like Australia are very insecure.

In the places that you’ve mentioned, politics is literally life or death…
Yes, yes, in a way they have an advantage because life is on the edge, and life, for some, is on the edge in this country if you’re at the bottom of the pile, in that largely invisible group – a fifth of population at the bottom – or you’re an asylum seeker or, above all, if you’re an Indigenous Australian, where life Is permanently on the edge. And it’s quite interesting that a discussion about that invariably excludes the Aboriginal people for whom the Australian democracy has had such devastating results, and excluded them.

If people want to get the truth, what would your advice be to them?
Well, when I get up in the morning, I no longer pick up a newspaper. First of all I go and log on, and the internet is not perfect, far from it, but it does provide a spectrum of information that you no longer get in the so-called mainstream media. You have to be very selective, but it’s there. And the old truism that information is power applies today more than ever before when propaganda is so insidious. So my advice is that the first thing people might like to do is to get themselves informed, and then they can decide what action they want to take.

What: The War on Democracy
When: In cinemas now