Friday, 4 April 2008

The War on Democracy

The Dominion Post
Friday, 04 April 2008

GRAEME TUCKETT

The War on Democracy sees John Pilger doing what he does best, and doing it at the absolute top of his game.

Pilger is an important and divisive figure. He is one of a very few film-makers who work tirelessly to expose the cruelties and catastrophes that our capitalist-imperialist system visits upon some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. (And let's not even bother arguing about whether recent American foreign policy constitutes "imperialism". It does.)

Pilger was the man who introduced the world to the Cambodian genocide with his film Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, and also exposed the murderous rule of Indonesia in East Timor with Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy.

All of Pilger's films – there's about 20 in all – have been typified by a rigorous and painstakingly researched presentation of some very hard facts, by a great willingness to point the finger at the western sponsors of corrupt and illegal regimes, and by Pilger's own great stooped presence; sometimes lecturing, sometimes downright patronising, but always urgent and very watchable.

The War on Democracy will rate up there with Pilger's very best and most important work.

Pinned to the backdrop of a long exploration of the policies and presidency of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Pilger's film takes detours into Chile, Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina to expose some of the evil that North American interference and corruption has allowed to flourish in those countries.

Pilger's final thesis is that "people power" – as typified by Chavez's supporters – is the "seed beneath the snow" that will eventually prevail over the appallingly anti-democratic and vastly hypocritical United States.

See this film. The six o'clock news won't look the same after.

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