John Pilger

John Pilger is an award-winning journalist. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Mail & Guardian (South Africa), Aftonbladet (Sweden), Il Manifesto (Italy).

John Pilger: We are Spartacus

The bravery of those who dare to resist has allowed many of us, who might despair, to understand the real meaning of a resistance we all share if we want to prevent the conquest of us, our conscience, and our self-respect if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.

John Pilger
By John Pilger
MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS

Spartacus was a 1960 Hollywood film based on a book written secretly by the blacklisted novelist Howard Fast and adapted by the screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the ‘Hollywood 10’ who were banned for their ‘un-American’ politics. It is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times. Both writers were

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John Pilger: From Yellow Journalism to China Bashing, the Media’s Enduring Role in Promoting War

Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: ‘Before each major aggression[…] they initiated a press campaign calculated to[…] prepare the people psychologically[…]”

John Pilger
By John Pilger
John Pilger: From Yellow Journalism to China Bashing, The Media’s Enduring Role in Promoting War

In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on 'the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists' to discuss the 'rapid crumbling of capitalism' and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one

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John Pilger: The Betrayers of Julian Assange

This is an abridged version of an address by John Pilger in Sydney on 10 March to mark the launch in Australia of Davide Dormino’s sculpture of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, ‘Figures of Courage’.

John Pilger
By John Pilger
John Pilger article's thumbnail

I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends, and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral

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John Pilger: Silencing the Lambs. How Propaganda Works

Having soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official version of the last world war, isn’t it time those who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency is greater than ever.

John Pilger
By John Pilger

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer. She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on

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John Pilger: War in Europe and the Rise of Raw Propaganda

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, “shaping the narrative,” much if not most of it is pure propaganda.

John Pilger
By John Pilger
Ukraine Propaganda Feature photo

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened.  Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency

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John Pilger: The Judicial Kidnapping of Julian Assange

What is at stake is both a courageous man’s life and, if we remain silent, the conquest of our intellects and sense of right and wrong: indeed our very humanity.

John Pilger
By John Pilger
Julian Assange Feature photo

“Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening to us” – Jean-Paul Sartre Sartre’s words should echo in all our minds following the grotesque decision of Britain’s High Court to extradite Julian Assange to the United States where he faces “a living death”. This is his punishment for the crime of authentic, accurate,

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John Pilger: Justice for Assange is Justice for All

Julian Assange is a truth-teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale and so performed one of the great public services of my lifetime.

John Pilger
By John Pilger
Julian Assange Feature photo

When I first saw Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison, in 2019, shortly after he had been dragged from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy, he said, “I think I am losing my mind.” He was gaunt and emaciated, his eyes hollow and the thinness of his arms was emphasised by a yellow identifying cloth tied around his left arm, an evocative symbol of

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