Gilbert Mercier is a is a French journalist, photojournalist and filmmaker. He founded the News Junkie Post in 2009 and is its Co-Editor-in-Chief. Over the years, he has been a guest analyst on television and radio programs for RT, BBC World News, the Progressive Radio Network, Sputnik, Al Hurra TV, CounterPunch Radio, and Radio Islam. Mercier’s articles have been republished by Alternet, Truthout, CounterPunch, Z Communications, Signs of the Times, Popular Resistance, and others. He authored the book, “The Orwellian Empire.” He is a member of the National Press Photographers Association and the Art Directors Guild of America.
Gilbert and I spoke on May 5th, and covered a variety of political and environmental topics, many of them in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. What follows is an excerpt.
Listen to complete interview here:
Or watch on Youtube here
Kollibri: We’re at a point now with this pandemic where Capitalism is facing a crisis, perhaps an existential crisis.
Gilbert: To me, this is excellent and it’s an opportunity for people like you and I and a bunch of other people worldwide to raise the consciousness level of the population…
What people do not realize in Europe, is that within the US — as revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic, because of the level of victims — that there is a third world country within what is supposed to be the number one power in the world. Which is only the number one power in the world because [it’s an] empire, and because of its military.
So what we need to do is some serious thinking. The economy is completely shot. It’s only surviving because there was a massive injection of money that doesn’t exist. Money that is printed. Money that is not backed by anything…
The US is in the hole another 6 trillion. To be added on to what was already 22 trillion. Now that’s some serious money. China is doing the same thing. Japan is doing the same thing. Europe just announced that they’re going to go up to the tune of of two trillion euros. That is a lot of money. And it’s money that’s not there…
[There is] the billionaire class, and they are very specific people. The list is given every year by Forbes and Fortune Magazines. Right now, maybe it has changed, maybe some of them have lost some of their money. It’s 2019 people worldwide. Those are the people that are holding 60% of the wealth of humanity. So people in the middle class or slightly upper middle class, unfortunately for them have their retirement in the stock market, as a 401k–and there are countries that have their pension plans on the stock market, like the UK and Canada and other countries–they are going to be the victim. But they still think that it’s a good system. Why? It’s completely irrational.
Kollibri: It is completely irrational. And it sounds like you what you’ve described to me are three different classes: the billionaire class, the middle class–what could be called the managerial class–and then you talked about a third world within the US, which would be another class. Did I get that right?
Gilbert: Yes, absolutely. The thing is, with that third class: There is always–and you know this because you are American–there is always the color divide. Even thought this country who had a black president for eight years, it’s still a racist country.
In 2016, I witnessed a little conversation between a hillbilly redneck in the Trumpistan part of the country where I live at the moment. The conversation went as follows: They were laughing, and they said, well, we wouldn’t want that b-word, Clinton, to win, but at least we will not have an n-word president in the White House anymore. And they thought that was hilarious.
There’s a lot of very very poor white folks that in order to make ends meet, they need to have two or three minimum wage jobs. So you see, to me, it’s a subterfuge. To me, there’s a lot more in common between Barrack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Jeff Bezos, than between ordinary people, in terms of wealth. The real divide is really wealth. It’s a Capitalist divide.
There’s something very stale, unfortunately, about Marx. But there’s something extremely valid in a Socialist approach to things, in terms of social organization, which of course has to be organized in terms of the climate crisis, which is still very much around.
April was the warmest April on record worldwide. The ice caps are still melting. We have the COVID crisis but that’s only one aspect of things. To me, what is very valuable about this COVID19 problem and the lockdown, is it give people time to reflect, to reflect on the way they want their life to go, the kind of world that their children might have to deal with. It’s very very interesting and hopefully some good thing will come out of it.
Kollibri: I think about this partly in terms of, for example, the physical equipment of our system, too. An oil well is not something you can just shut down and then start up again. If you shut an oil well down, it might not be able to get started again. That’s just how these things work. So it strikes me that the longer our system is down, or disabled at least partially, the less of a chance there is that it’s going to be able to start fully up again, and that would be good news.
Gilbert: Absolutely. The thing is, oil has become more or less worthless as a commodity, and maybe it’s time for people to realize that the oil should be left underground, where it belongs. And that all the corn that is used to add to gas, to make ethanol, that should be polyculture, which is obviously the way to go. It’s always been the way to go.
But again, the massive origin of the problem is the Industrial Revolution. That got Capitalism going at the speed that has been so destructive…
Kollibri: I want to read a quick sentence out of one your recent essays here. You wrote: “The COVID-19 Great Depression upon us might be Capitalism’s end game and the birth of a new global eco-socialist era, based on social equality, real democracy with sound governance, zero economic growth, zero global military spending and respectful harmony with what is left of the natural world.”
Gilbert: This is meant to be a kind of [call] for what could be a global eco-socialist manifesto…
The “Green New Deal” is completely bogus. It mimics the New Deal of WWII. FDR was no socialist. Also, it echoes the absurdity of Jeremy Corbyn who is supposed to be a Marxist, but he is not. He talks about a “Green Industrial Revolution.” Talk about an oxymoron. It cannot be industrial…
We need a global movement… We need a combination of red — which is socialist — and green — which is ecological — as a real green movement. The principles are really simple, and as a matter of fact, the motto of the French Revolution of 1789, is “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” which is easy to understand in English: It is is “liberty, equality, brotherhood.” To me, those three principles are completely valid.
Kollibri: That would have to be at the heart of however we move forward and it seems as those values are, I would dare to say, instinctual to humans.
Gilbert: Completely. But the way that government is reacting to this crisis is very disturbing… Why can’t everybody get tested? Why can’t we divest in all the military in the world and invest in health care and give fre health care to all? Why can’t we invest money in education? Not only high school level, but university education? Free, like it is in France? Why can’t we do that?
Kollibri: In the United States, the military is the biggest expense on our books that prevents us from doing anything sensible.
Gilbert: Between the Pentagon and the hidden budgets like the CIA, it sucks away one trillion a year. The US is not alone. Russia is bad, China is getting there. It’s bad everywhere…
What does get manufactured in the US? Weapons systems and what else? Oh, some poison, like Round-up. That’s what gets manufactured in the US. The other stuff that is manufactured that profits US companies like Apple and so on, is manufactured where labor costs less: China, India, Vietnam. This is the problem with Globalization and global Capitalism. But the good news is, right now, COVID-19 has put a really nasty wrench into this.
