[R-G] 'Pilger's may be a partisan voice in the wilderness but few can quarrel with the evidence he presents'

[Anthony Fenton]

Copyright 2007 The Sunday Tribune plcAll Rights Reserved Sunday Tribune (Ireland)August 26, 2007SECTION: NEWS; Pg. N20LENGTH: 957 wordsHEADLINE: Comment - 'Pilger's may be a partisan voice in the wilderness but few can quarrel with the evidence he presents'BYLINE: Eithne Tynan BODY:John
Pilger's film, The War on Democracy, broadcast on UTV on Monday, was a
real throwback. Those of us who survived the '80s, and remember
campaigning feebly - in the fashion of privileged western
undergraduates - against the Latin American foreign policies of Ronald
Reagan and George HW Bush, will have felt the blood coursing through
our veins.It was a throwback because, as
Pilger claims, Latin America appears to be again attempting to crawl
from the wreckage of American neocolonialism, as it did in the '80s,
when it became a cherished cause of the left. But more poignantly, the
film harked back to the days of crusading journalism, before a new
generation of besuited reporters began taking the side of the
establishment. It was a nostalgia trip. "Since
1945," Pilger said, "the United States has attempted to overthrow 50
governments, many of them democracies; 30 of them have been bombed in
the process."He is heartfelt and strident
on the subject of Latin America, and the continuing efforts of the US
to oust 'unfriendly' governments. The film goes through that story: El
Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile and most recently Venezuela,
where the US is bent on casting the president, Hugo Chavez, as a
tyrant. The coup that briefly overthrew Chavez in 2002, Pilger claims,
was orchestrated and backed by the US.He
pointed to the noticeable, insidious change in US practice. Now,
instead of installing a puppet dictatorship, the greatest power on
earth installs a puppet democratic state, by means of the sinister National Endowment for Democracy.
As Pilger said: "This breed of democracy meant that, whoever you voted
for, the policies would be broadly the same, and your country's economy
would be in step with the US, and Washington would be your closest
friend, or else." These states will then comply with the American way
of doing things, selling off and privatising state assets so as to
benefit big business. Sound familiar?Philip
Agee, a CIA agent in the 1950s and '60s, put it candidly: "In the CIA
we didn't give a hoot about democracy. I mean it was fine if a
government was elected and would cooperate with the US, but if it
didn't, then democracy didn't mean a thing to us, and I don't think it
means a thing today."The War on Democracy
is a powerful and necessary film, but while it answers many questions
about aggressive American foreign policy in what the US regards as its
'backyard', it asks many more about the purpose and perceived merit of
journalistic objectivity. The worst condemnation Pilger's critics
generally throw at him is that he is manifestly biased. Few can quarrel
with the evidence he presents - unless, like former CIA man Duane
Clarridge in Pilger's film, they persist in seeing only 200 murders by
Pinochet's forces where others see thousands - but they do, always,
take issue with the conclusions he draws from his evidence.Yes,
Pilger appears to see the world in simplistic terms of good versus evil
and yes, he seems capable of suspending disbelief at the sound of a
South American president talking like a Miss World contestant. But more
often than not he is derided by people who themselves make not the
smallest effort to establish non-partisan credentials. And let's face
it, global market capitalism has more than enough media mouthpieces as
it is: it doesn't have to throw rotten tomatoes at those maverick
journalists who have to shift for themselves without the benefit of
corporate patronage.In any case, the
campaign to disown Pilger has been successful. Pilger's is now a voice
in the wilderness. Witness the 11pm screening time of his film (though
possibly it's a surprise it was shown on television at all). This
marginalisation may be the work of a right-wing media conspiracy; on
the other hand, it may simply be because Pilger is not complying with
the media's new, self-appointed role as consensus-builder: he is not
guiding everyone towards an easy-listening centrist harmony. Either
way, his name and the kind of work he has been trying to do for four
decades now has become associated with a small cadre of bolshevik
diehards stinking of patchouli and refusing to face facts. If
it weren't for the internet, in fact, a new generation of young people
with their own ideas about social justice would now be missing out on
the chance to learn the lessons of history from people like Pilger.
Many of them came of age after the collapse of communism in Europe and
will be scarcely on nodding terms with Marx. What conclusions can they
draw from the progress of American imperialism, now the Red Menace has
been dispatched? What is this new thing called socialism in Latin
America?According to 2005 data, 5% of all
Venezuelan landowners owned 75% to 80% of private land. Pilger points
clearly to a wealthy, business elite that has long been pulling the
strings politically (and I think we're all well-acquainted with how
that arrangement works). He visits rich, frustrated people in the posh
suburbs of Caracas, who, like white South Africans before them, are now
thinking of quitting Venezuela because those "bleddy natives" don't
know how to run a country. At the same time, he meets desperately poor
but - take note - literate people in the barrios, who have their own
big plans for achieving social justice, with or without their
president. As Chavez put it, quoting Victor Hugo, "There is nothing so
powerful as an idea whose time has come."This
is not about the return of communism, after all, or an east-versus-west
global polarity, but about the emergence of a new global split between
north and south. We saw it coming decades ago. And at least with the
help of partisan reporters like John Pilger, we can decide for
ourselves which side we're on.etynan at tribune.ie