MovieChat Forums > The War on Democracy (2007) Discussion > more or less accurate, more or less mani...

more or less accurate, more or less manipulative

posted 16 years ago by alanarcadia
7 replies | jump to latest

John Pilger takes on an important subject here, obviously. I think his point probably would have been made more strongly if the film hadn't seemed quite so propagandistic. It's designed to appeal to people who already agree with him, and I doubt it did much to convince anyone else. And I'm speaking as someone who is very much on Pilger's side politically.
It's easy to demonize someone like Duane Clarridge (all you have to do is film him), but what does that teach us, really? That there's at least one unapologetic, belligerently pro-American guy in the CIA. No big news there.
I suppose I'm being excessively harsh because flag waving gives me the creeps, whether it's an American flag, an anarchist flag, or a John Pilger flag. It's a good film and well worth seeing. It just suffers from "Michael Moore syndrome": entertaining, relevant, important, and incredibly biased.
I agree with most of what Pilger and Moore say about the USA. However I don't agree that the poor (in Pilger's case), or Canada, UK, France, or pretty much any country other than the USA (in Moore's case) are universally noble, well-meaning, benign, and good looking too. It's a fantasy that American liberals love to fall for because they're so sick of the dicks who run their country.
In Pilger's favour, he doesn't fall for Obama-mania: http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=492

[–] austin_fdisk 15 years ago

Yes the film may be biased...but isn't that sort of the point? To present the other side that is not represented by the major news outlets?

[–] strattford 14 years ago

I'm from Brazil and our roots makes us like an outsider in South-America. We were colonized by Portugal rather than Spain, we have a different immigration pattern (Italy, Poland, Germany, Turkey, Japan, etc.) So it's easy to realize that we have a poor attachment with others Latin-America countries. Of course, we have a big deal of economical projects like "Mercosul", but nothing about social/cultural differences.

Brazil never really had an extreme idealist guy screaming "viva la revolution" looking for the nation's leadership, like most of Latin-American countries (it's too bad for us if you ask me). For instance, Che Guevara was known to had traveled the whole continent, but it's true with an exception, Brazil. Our current president is the first one we had that are addressing such issues with great concern and is (supposedly) working with our neighbor governments to "join the club".

USA never was hated or called "the evil" here, nor democracy. After Kennedy was killed, there were a great amount of media coverage of sad, frustrated, and crying people on our cities - specially in Rio de Janeiro. We barely have an army, even considering the size of Brazil, and you can easily see for yourself on google how many wars we got involved and then realize that we got into WW2 with a 35-40,000 army because USA asked for support (not "only" because of that, though it was one of the major reasons).

Anyway, it's a nice documentary and my only discontempt is Chavez saying something like "... now that the American empire is over,". It seems that the whole thing was to make a point about Latin-America unified view of USA, something that the reported/hoster believes he understands very well, but in fact he did not...

[–] thao 15 years ago

I agree with everything you said. I was thinking the whole time: "I wish this was not so manipulative because I would love to show it to some of my friends."

- No animal was hurt during the making of this burger -

[–] huh_oh_i_c 15 years ago

I have major problems with what you say.

A thing is only biased if it's not true. What Pilger says is true, therefor not biased.
And straw man alert: Nowhere does Pilger say that the poor are noble. And "nobility"??? But "nobility" is soooooo beside the point.

The poor, and especially the Latin-American poor are being exploited. It's not because they are "noble" that we should be against their exploitation, but because exploitation is wrong, period.
Should we care less about ignoble poor people being exploited, than about noble poor people being exploited? No, in principle NOT. Sure, everybody cares more about likeable people. This is sooooo NOT the point.

The poor as noble or ignoble as the rich are. Okay, the rich are prolly less noble, since they often have stepped on people to get where they are. Still NOT the point.

And American liberals don't fall for any fantasy. This is a character trait which is pushed upon them by right wingers, who need that image: They want the liberal as a fool, so they feel comfortable mocking them.
No American liberal misses the flaws Obama has, but his deification only happens in feverish, sick and twisted fantasies of the extreme ReichWingers. Oh wait, that's not an insult to you .....

[–] strattford 14 years ago

A thing is only biased if it's not true. What Pilger says is true, therefor not biased.

omg, who are you? Plato? :)
Your "logic" is so naively wrong that I will use it as a joke from now. Sorry, but there's no co-dependent relationship between "truth" and "bias".

1 - You have low IQ (true)
2 - I think you have an even lower IQ than you actually have (a biased view)
3 - Therefore, you have high IQ because "2)" is biased (false)

[–] lattar1 12 years ago

I liked the film and really didn't miss a megalomaniac filosopher explaining how sound economy needs sacrifices in the form of tortured women and murdered children. Like somebody here said part of the point was to give a narrative you wouldn't get else where. He precented fact after fact with sources. The pace was good. You get barely time to digest an issue and then the next one is brought up. For someone who has spent decades digging the worst dirt of his era, I find Pilger extremely composed and not preacher-like.

[–] marktayloruk (2378) 2 years ago

Pilger a whinging nitpicking Marxist. Agee a traitor to his country and the West.