lightgiver
07-09-2010, 08:43 PM
Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers. He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe, but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a Nation. Andre is also the author of several works of non-fiction and fiction in Czech and in English, the latest of which is Point of No Return, a colorful tale about an international reporter whose determined effort to distance himself from the horrors he covers is shattered first by a woman and then by the events of 9-11 -- the "point of no return" of the title. On the net, Vltchek's progressive writings can be found on ZNet and at the Oakland Institute.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/PointofNoReturn300.jpg
Lila Rajiva:
Can you expand on your reference to the facelessness of this New World Order? After all, despite the internationalism of global organizations, they are usually dominated by the former colonial powers. In what way is what we are seeing today so very different from the past? Do you believe that this facelessness encourages the disengagement from politics with which you charge contemporary artists and writers in Point of No Return and elsewhere?
Andre Vltchek:
It is very simple. One hundred years ago, oppressed people knew exactly who their enemy was. If they had chosen to, they knew whom to fight. The enemy had a face. The oppressor had his flag, his language, his weapons, and his uniform. It was all very straightforward. Brutal but simple.
These days, billions of people living in gutters all over the world have no idea whom to blame for their misery. Sure, they can blame multi-nationals, but that's abstract. One could reply -- which multi-national? And what exactly do they do? How do they function? How do they steal? Then it gets very complicated, because companies are much more secretive than countries, even empires. Or poor people somewhere in Africa might say -- let's blame it on the United States. Well, I am not so sure about that either. The US is both victimizer and victim. I have written a lot about this aspect of the empire. The US has a disproportionately larger underclass than any other rich country on earth. And even middle-class people live in constant fear of losing their jobs, getting sick, having to pay for the education of their kids. Citizens of the US are targeted by propaganda more than citizens of Europe and Japan.
And this global dictatorship is not controlled only by the United States. There is almost the whole of Europe involved, too. And Japan. And Singapore, and lately Korea and Taiwan. There are tens of thousands of local members of elites who would sell their own mother in order to be accepted into the ruling clan. Look at Peru, Saudi Arabia, or Indonesia -- how brutal and racist their elites are. They are also part of that clique which is controlling the world.
As to the disengagement of artists -- that's a totally different story. The reason is mostly financial. Artists and writers have to eat, too. And they want to be admired, to be "relevant." In the Reagan era, conservatives began to win the propaganda battle and discredited everything intellectual. The aura of glory around great writers rapidly disappeared. Suddenly, an artist was nobody, unless he or she would manage to make a huge sum of money. In order to make money, artists would have to be published and promoted. In order to be published and promoted, they would have to be careful not to offend the publishing houses which were increasingly becoming part of the system of multi-nationals. And so on and on. Those who went against the establishment were made irrelevant.
The only exception were those who managed to offend the system on such an enormous scale (like Chomsky or Moore) that it gained them a huge following and, therefore, from the point of view of publishers, they were worth being considered as commodities.
France24 - André Vltchek's 'Point of No Return':
http://www.france24.com/en/20100906-writer-andre-vltchek-point-of-non-return-journalist-photohrapher-eve-jackson
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/rajiva300106.html
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/PointofNoReturn300.jpg
Lila Rajiva:
Can you expand on your reference to the facelessness of this New World Order? After all, despite the internationalism of global organizations, they are usually dominated by the former colonial powers. In what way is what we are seeing today so very different from the past? Do you believe that this facelessness encourages the disengagement from politics with which you charge contemporary artists and writers in Point of No Return and elsewhere?
Andre Vltchek:
It is very simple. One hundred years ago, oppressed people knew exactly who their enemy was. If they had chosen to, they knew whom to fight. The enemy had a face. The oppressor had his flag, his language, his weapons, and his uniform. It was all very straightforward. Brutal but simple.
These days, billions of people living in gutters all over the world have no idea whom to blame for their misery. Sure, they can blame multi-nationals, but that's abstract. One could reply -- which multi-national? And what exactly do they do? How do they function? How do they steal? Then it gets very complicated, because companies are much more secretive than countries, even empires. Or poor people somewhere in Africa might say -- let's blame it on the United States. Well, I am not so sure about that either. The US is both victimizer and victim. I have written a lot about this aspect of the empire. The US has a disproportionately larger underclass than any other rich country on earth. And even middle-class people live in constant fear of losing their jobs, getting sick, having to pay for the education of their kids. Citizens of the US are targeted by propaganda more than citizens of Europe and Japan.
And this global dictatorship is not controlled only by the United States. There is almost the whole of Europe involved, too. And Japan. And Singapore, and lately Korea and Taiwan. There are tens of thousands of local members of elites who would sell their own mother in order to be accepted into the ruling clan. Look at Peru, Saudi Arabia, or Indonesia -- how brutal and racist their elites are. They are also part of that clique which is controlling the world.
As to the disengagement of artists -- that's a totally different story. The reason is mostly financial. Artists and writers have to eat, too. And they want to be admired, to be "relevant." In the Reagan era, conservatives began to win the propaganda battle and discredited everything intellectual. The aura of glory around great writers rapidly disappeared. Suddenly, an artist was nobody, unless he or she would manage to make a huge sum of money. In order to make money, artists would have to be published and promoted. In order to be published and promoted, they would have to be careful not to offend the publishing houses which were increasingly becoming part of the system of multi-nationals. And so on and on. Those who went against the establishment were made irrelevant.
The only exception were those who managed to offend the system on such an enormous scale (like Chomsky or Moore) that it gained them a huge following and, therefore, from the point of view of publishers, they were worth being considered as commodities.
France24 - André Vltchek's 'Point of No Return':
http://www.france24.com/en/20100906-writer-andre-vltchek-point-of-non-return-journalist-photohrapher-eve-jackson
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/rajiva300106.html