Australian-born, award-winning, Liberal, anti-Imperialist journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger is interviewed here about the US Election on RT: Going Underground by Afsin Rattansi.

The legendary Pilger has made several films, including ‘Stealing a Nation’, ‘The War on Democracy’ and ‘The War You Don’t See’, in which he champions the causes of the oppressed peoples around the world.

Therefore, I thought that this would be a worthwhile interview to share with those who are distraught by the election of Donald Trump as President of the US and I’ve made a partial transcript, here.

Pilger says he not surprised by the election’s outcome, unlike the shocked Liberals of the US but he doesn’t seem to realize how many Trump supporters are as shocked (and scared) by the outcome as Hillary’s supporters – but for different reasons.

The latter thought they had it locked up and that the other camp was so “deplorable” that they could never possibly win, whereas many Trump supporters didn’t believe that he could win, due to the power of Hillary’s machine to tamper the votes, which is known to have occurred during the Primary Election, per WikiLeaks and from the testimony of poll workers.

Pilger states, “The corrupt candidate; the embodiment of the status quo, that has declared the whole world a battlefield, was the candidate of ‘sanity’, the candidate for ‘women’. This grotesque campaigning for…a person who represented great, rapacious power has been probably the most eye-opening side to this…

Of Hillary, Pilger continues, “She is the embodiment of a very dangerous, warmongering system that has declared the world a place where it can go to war wherever it likes, where it can bomb agricultural communities in Yemen, where half the children are malnourished, where it can do what it likes in Syria, do what it likes in Iraq…

“Most of humanity regards that kind of behavior from allegedly the most powerful country in the world as abhorrent…

“Now, whether Trump will be [abhorrent] is an open question. He says he’s anti-establishment – but of course, he will come with his own establishment. He’s anti- their establishment. I don’t believe for a moment that he’ anti- the wider establishment of the United States. Indeed, he’s a product of it…

“That shock-surprise is the same as the Brexit vote; a kind of, ‘How dare these people vent their frustrations at the ballot box?’ The truth is, there was no one to vote for in the United States…

“The system threw up those who could afford it – Trump had his own money. Clinton was backed by the Democratic Party. Clinton was backed by the arms companies…her financial backers included all but one of the ten leading arms manufacturers in the world.

“People, for all kinds of reasons don’t like this…The main reason is what has happened to their lives; the way a corrupt banking system has destroyed their lives, has destroyed jobs, destroyed whole cities and towns – the towns that the Democratic Party once claimed to represent. That’s what they don’t like and that’s why they voted for Trump…

As for the Mainstream Media, Pilger has this to say: “They’re not journalists, they’re anti-journalists. One of the most revealing aspects of this has been the exposure of journalism.

“The exposure of journalism as an extension of that same corrupt, established power that I’ve been speaking about. They’re not independent. They are echo chambers; they amplify and echo that which is handed down to them. And the worst, of course the greatest echoes other so-called ‘enlightened’, ‘respectable’ Liberal press. The New York Times has become a kind of Cold War propaganda sheet, with all the nonsense about Russia interfering in this campaign.

“The Guardian has given up. Yesterday, we had in The Guardian an article called the ‘Hall of Shame’ by Jonathan Friedland, in which he pointed the finger at a truth-teller like Julian Assange, as if he would be to blame if Hillary Clinton, this ‘paragon a liberal virtue’ were to be defeated. It was grotesque. That’s not journalism…

“There was a monstrous situation applied in the United States and journalists enabled it. They created Trump. The media, along with the Pentagon, the CIA the State Department and all the rest, including the Republican Party – were Trump’s opponents but they were the shouters… the BBC, CNN as I mentioned, The Guardian, The New York Times and you know, you name it – they were all there because Hillary Clinton represented them.”

Rattansi asks, “Millions of people have watched your film that you made, that was broadcast on Saturday. You mentioned Julian Assange. In that film, Assange said ‘they’ wouldn’t allow Donald Trump to win. But if Hillary was President-Elect would we expect what pressure on the Ecuadorian Government? Would he just be extradited or is there more hope for him?”

Pilger replies, “I don’t the answer to that. I’m not a futurist. I can’t predict. Trump could turn out pretty much the same! No one really listened to Trump’s narratives. They saw only this salacious side of Trump, of ‘getting’ Trump, demonizing – he certainly demonized himself – of course but now, they have to go back through all that news footage and find out ‘what did what did that man actually say?’ you know. It’s extraordinary and shameful.”

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  • Pl-lease… this guy is totally off-base in accusing “Liberals” of being war-mongers. Yes, Hillary Clinton is part of the Establishment. As such, she is a CENTRIST Democrat who is pragmatic in approach. She did support the Iraq War, and she is definitely beholden to the deep pockets of Wall Street. Bernie Sanders, on the contrary, was the Liberal candidate in this election cycle. What we now have; and the entire world will soon have to deal with, is an unstable President-elect who gains arousal by crushing his enemies. The only good that might come out of it is that his bellicose manner may be enough to intimidate our adversaries into behaving. Certainly, Obama is a part of the Liberal establishment, but did he create the Syrian Civil War? Pilger’s premise is just as absurd as the question. If anything, Obama’s legacy is viewed by many here and abroad as “weak” due to his indecisiveness concerning the terrible carnage there. However, Syria has been a Russian ally since Assad’s father turned his back on the West during the Cold War. They had their reasons, but it certainly has nothing to do with American liberals. Obama tread lightly in that situation. If he was determined to unleash our war machine on Syria, he would have. Instead, he hesitated, and probably saved many American troops from getting in harms way. He may have even saved humanity from the fall-out of a nuclear confrontation with Russia. For the sake of what? Another Iraq? Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his restraint even before Syria came to a head. Yes, he made mistakes, and many millions of people in the Middle East have suffered. I just don’t think our intervention would have solved anything. Hillary Clinton, on the contrary, is a known entity to Putin and the rest of the World Community because of her stint as Secretary of State. It is my opinion that Russia’s meddling in our electoral process along with the hacks offered by Wikileaks and Edward Snowden had everything to do with their great trepidation of Hillary Clinton taking the reins of power. Liberals here were certainly not responsible for these revelations, were they? What those of Liberal persuasion are guilty of, including myself, is of simply not taking Trump seriously in the first place. He was regarded as a loud-mouthed buffoon whose words would be the source of his own demise as a candidate. Consequently, we did not really hear what he was saying. But those that elected him did. What is the message? Throw the bums out! If Liberals are at fault at all, it is because they have lost touch with many of their constituents. Those who worked for the coal and steel industries; many in the automobile industry; and blue-collar Americans in general, have been left behind by automation and the Global Economy. Inevitably, they have become underemployed; if employed at all. This has created enormous anger which has been exacerbated by the enormous cultural shifts that have occurred over the last three decades. Many Americans can still probably not define the letters L.G.B.T. It is just not part of their reality. They see a black man and his family ‘occupying’ the White House. They see attacks by radical jihadists on the tube, and attacks on our police forces, simultaneously. When a candidate comes along that voices their concerns in the strongest possible way, they listen and respond at the ballot box. If Liberals are responsible for this, there must be alien bases on the dark side of the Moon! Conservatives that didn’t support The Donald will pay a political price for not seeing the way the wind blows as well. It is on us ALL as a nation… Liberals, Conservatives, Independents, apathetic non-voters, and everyone else in between, to take responsibility for this election result. The questions we must ask ourselves at this point is: What kind of country have we become? And what kind of legacy do we want to leave for our children? Yes, we have made mistakes. Big mistakes that have affected hundreds of millions of people around the Globe. But we have paid as huge a price in terms of troops killed and maimed as any nation in history. Our economy has been significantly impacted by our escapades as well. The question I would pose to Mr. Pilger is: Would you prefer if China or Russia had the kind of influence we have exerted on the world? Maybe you should talk to the people of Crimea, Ukraine, and Tibet before answering the question.

  • “I don’t think Sanders would have beaten Trump”…John, Sanders polled double digits over Trump for close to a year. Also, John, please don’t slough off shillery’s personal ability to make decisions onto the cult she belongs to…that would imply she is a robot with no free will nor sense of right and wrong. The liberal class gave it up in the late 80’s when they decided to be lazy asses and make a hundred calls to 1%’ers for a hundred million rather than solicite the masses with tens of thousands of calls, which at the same time would have organized the grass roots…stupid greed and bedazzlement with celebrity and power.

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