John Pilger
John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News Reporter of the Year and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA the Royal Television Society prize and the Sydney Peace Prize. His ‘Cambodia Year Zero’ is named as one of the ten most important films of the 20th century.
John's recent articles
14 November 2023
"We Are Spartacus": Resistance and the unmoving shadow of war
War today is an unmoving shadow. The bravery of David McBride and Julian Assange 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, our self respect, if we prefer freedom and decency to compliance and collusion. In this, we are all Spartacus.
10 March 2023
The betrayers of Julian Assange
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 revolution in journalism.
28 September 2022
John Pilger's 2014 warning about Ukraine
A silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules.
9 September 2022
Silencing the lambs. How propaganda works in the West
Isnt it time that writers who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency is greater than ever.
23 August 2022
The war you don't see
In The War You Don't See, John Pilger returns to the subject of war reporting and its critical role in the making of wars. This drum beat was the theme of Pilger's 1983 documentary Frontline: The Search for Truth in Wartime, a history of war journalism from the Crimea in the 19th century (the last British war without censorship) to Margaret Thatcher's Falklands War in 1982.
10 August 2022
Diego Garcia: Stealing a nation and how 'international rules' don't apply if it is the US or UK
One of John Pilgers most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.
28 July 2022
An interview with John Pilger: Assange is the courageous embodiment of a struggle against the most oppressive forces in our world
In an interview with theWorld Socialist Web Site, renowned Australian investigative journalist John Pilger has warned that the US is close to getting its hands on the courageous WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
19 February 2022
War in Europe and the rise of raw propaganda
Marshall McLuhans 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. From John Pilger in London.
18 February 2022
The Coming War on China
The Coming War on China is John Pilger's most recent film his 60th documentary and arguably his most prescient. Completed in the month Donald Trump was elected US President, the film investigates the manufacture of a threat and the beckoning of a nuclear confrontation.
11 December 2021
Justice denied: the judicial kidnapping of Julian Assange
If Julian Assange is extradited to the US, his life is at stake and, if we remain silent, so is our very humanity, John Pilger writes.
2 November 2021
In the shameful persecution of Julian Assange, justice for one is justice for us all
The High Court ruling on Assange's extradition will determine whether the British judiciary has trashed the last vestiges of its vaunted reputation.
25 August 2021
The Great Game of smashing countries
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their allies destroyed.
15 August 2021
ASSANGE: A Day in the Death of British Justice
I sat in Court 4 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday with Stella Moris, Julian Assanges partner. I have known Stella for as long as I have known Julian. She, too, is a voice of freedom, coming from a family that fought the fascism of Apartheid. Today, her name was uttered in court by a barrister and a judge, forgettable people were it not for the power of their endowed privilege.
17 December 2020
The Most Lethal Virus is Not COVID. It is War
My personal Oscar goes to Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald,whose unrelenting rousing drivel about the existential threat (of China/Russia, mostly China) was illustrated by a smiling Scott Morrison, the PR man who is Australias prime minister.
9 September 2020
The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange (CounterPunch Sep 7, 2020)
Having reported the long, epic ordeal of Julian Assange, John Pilger gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on September 7 as the WikiLeaks Editors extradition hearing entered its final stage.
8 August 2020
Another Hiroshima is ComingUnless We Stop It Now (Counterpunch August 4, 2020)
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.`