- The Guardian
- Issue #2201
Abby Martin, director of Earth’s Greatest Enemy
Progressive filmmaker Abby Martin has been touring Australia with her new film Earth’s Greatest Enemy. An interviewer from Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) caught up with her.
Based on what you’ve seen so far, what is your view on Australia’s role within the US empire?
Abby Martin: As I’ve been travelling around with the film, it’s been really interesting to see the feedback from people outside of the States, because they’re just like, “Why are you here? This is an American problem. This is on your shoulders.”
My response is: actually, no, you are just as complicit. Can you imagine if Australia broke free of this imperialist system? Can you imagine if Australia said, “No, we’re not going to use our bases to spy on Asia. No, we’re not going to use this country to foment and agitate war against the rest of the world”?
So Australia has a really important role in providing the diplomatic cover of collaboration and complicity under the auspices of some sort of internationalism and liberalism.
What do you think the view of the US-Australia relationship is in the United States, if people even think about it at all?
Abby Martin: It’s literally our backyard. That’s what Americans believe about Canada, about Latin America, about Australia. It’s just part of our view of the world. We are the centre. We are the dominant force, and everyone else is just the extension of our power. Americans are so narcissistic and so self-centred that I wouldn’t even say that they think about Australia.
Australian politicians often say that agreements with the US such as AUKUS will not cost Australia our military or political sovereignty and autonomy. What would you say to Australians who hold that view?
Abby Martin: I would say that the US doesn’t do anything in the world in terms of joint partnerships with anyone. We see the NATO allies; they’re willing to throw them under the bus if they aren’t subservient and enslaved to US domination and US impositions of NATO spending and expenditures. I mean, just like Spain: open threats of sanctions and tariffs if you don’t comply 100 per cent.
I would say that this is just the rhetoric that justifies this, that rationalises it to Australians: that it’s a jobs creator, that Australia is going to be completely collaborative with the US and that it’s necessary for national security. I would say it makes you a target. It makes you guys less safe, and it’s completely giving the US free rein to terrorise the land and the people here.
The narrative we hear is that we need the US alliance to keep us safe, because otherwise we’re isolated on our own and China’s going to come for us.
Abby Martin: I mean, I would just ask people – it’s this bizarre thought experiment that people use to rationalise the existence of the global military dictatorship, and it’s that if we weren’t doing it, China or Russia would be doing it. And isn’t it better that we’re on top?
It’s this fantasy that has no roots in reality. When has China ever exerted any sort of imperial ambitions outside of its normal purview? The fact that China exists in the South China Sea, and we think that that’s some sort of aggressive stance to literally exist in their own body of water.
So, no, I think that there’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that China poses any sort of threat to Australia, and it’s just the absurd rationalisation to further militarise and spend more money on irrational things that don’t serve Australian needs whatsoever.
I would add that it makes you guys actually less safe. The fact that you are allowing Australia to give up its independence and sovereignty to basically be a hub for US military domination and aggression across Oceania, across Asia, this is devastating, because who do you think is going to be retaliated against? Who’s being retaliated against when the Iran war pops off? All the bases in these Gulf states. Those are the targets.
Australia is expendable to the US military. They don’t care about Australia. That’s why they’re building all this shit here, because at the end of the day, it’s not the US. So it’s actually putting you guys in danger.
Much focus on the anti-militarism front recently has been on the genocide in Gaza, the wars in the West Asia and domestically here on AUKUS. What made you realise that the environmental aspect of militarism needed to be covered more?
Abby Martin: I mean, it’s so fucking obvious, the ecocidal devastation that’s wrought by US imperialism. It’s been more and more obvious since the genocide in Gaza has been unleashed, because we’ve all been witnessing just the component of ecocide that goes along with the destruction.
Gaza, which is built mostly with this dense, carbon-intensive material, concrete and it’s just completely demolished, all of that is going to be global. It’s going to be generational. You know, the war in Iran, seeing literal fire in the sky, intentional targeting of oil infrastructure. It’s just been proven time and time again that this is the most pressing issue in the world. You cannot even talk about environmentalism unless you are incorporating militarism.
Militarism is not counted when we talk about carbon totals and at all these conferences. The military is not included at all. That’s what made me want to synthesise all the data and just tackle it head-on, because I was just so insulted and I was so sick of being infantilised by the ruling class – that we could solve our environmental problems as individual consumers, and if we just shopped right and composted in our little green bags, that was how we tackle this enormous, gargantuan problem.
When you realise that the military is the largest institutional polluter, you’re like, wait. When you realise that that’s just the oil purchases on paper, it’s so massive and it’s unrelenting. That’s what made me want to do the totality of it instead of just emissions: every stone unturned is another issue of military contamination. I wanted to tie all those together. That’s what the movie does.
Some people would say that other countries have large militaries and are also large emitters, so why, then, the focus on the United States?
Abby Martin: Well, it’s not true that other countries have large militaries. The US military is astronomically larger than any other country’s military. It’s cartoonish. I mean, it’s 10 times bigger.
Look at just the Air Force alone – it’s like seven times bigger than the next seven biggest. I mean, it’s so absurd.
No other country in the world has an empire of bases around the world. China has one base in Djibouti. Russia has arguably seven to nine military installations in former Soviet satellite states. No other country has this sort of military imposition on the world that’s enforcing its dictates under the barrel of a gun.
If you look at emissions, the whole problem that we’re in is because of cumulative emissions in the atmosphere from the Industrial Revolution. That is 25 per cent from the US alone. So if you look at China today, people point to China as the main perpetrator of emissions. Obviously, they have an enormous country. They’ve accumulated and absorbed nearly all of Western manufacturing.
You can’t look at any of this in isolation or in a vacuum without understanding globalisation and the problems with our consumption, and how we still export consumption to Asia. But if you look at the advancement of what China is doing to try to actually tackle climate change, it’s leaps and bounds beyond what we’re doing. So, again, you can’t look at any of these systems in isolation.
You spent a lot of time talking to government officials about the military and its environmental impacts. What stood out to you?
Abby Martin: That’s interesting too. The Republican Party denies climate change, but the military establishment believes in it. They’ve been planning accordingly for climate-change resiliency with their infrastructure, and militarising and securitising the borders because they know that’s going to be the inevitability.
During the Biden administration, you saw a lot of propaganda aimed at climate anxiety, trying to recruit people under the banner of, like, “Let’s tackle this together.” Of course, when Trump’s second term came in, that was all out the window. That doesn’t mean that they’re not preparing. They’ve just basically abandoned any sort of notion that they can stop it. Now they just feel like they are going to fight the worst outcomes of it to protect, you know, their interests.
… and on Cuba
When you were last in Cuba, what was your impression of how the people were coping there with the increasing blockade?
Abby Martin: It’s really hard. Staying is hard. That’s why there are so many people leaving. It’s easy to not live in a country that has blackouts that are lasting a week straight sometimes. I mean, I remember talking to guys who were just sitting in a gas-station line, and they were just like, “This is our life.” I mean, this is what they’ve always dealt with.
They have been living this blockade day in and day out their whole lives. They’ve never known anything else. For the older generations, they kind of know the sacrifices because they remember what it was like. For younger people, they don’t have that anymore. It’s harder, especially with the kind of lure of Western society on Instagram and stuff like that.
But the reason that (the US) hasn’t been successful is because there’s still such a deep-seated understanding of the cultural revolution, of just what has bound them all together, the glue that holds Cuban society together, and all the achievements that were made.
There’s something really beautiful about that. Even if (the US) were to black-bag Miguel Díaz-Canel, you’re not going to be able to destroy the Cuban Revolution unless you were to usher in some sort of bloody, Pinochet-style dictatorship. That’s not to say that they won’t try.
The Cuban people are extremely resilient, and they’re extremely deeply educated. They know exactly what they’re fighting for, what they could lose. Even the most vociferous critics of communism and the revolution, they’ll just say, “Get the fuck out. Yankee, go home. We will deal with our problems ourselves.”
I never met one Cuban who was like, “We want intervention. We want the US to come in and destroy us.” No one wants that. It’s just this completely artificial consensus from Miami and the Cuban diaspora that’s weaponised. Cuban people have one voice, and that’s: get the hell out of our country and leave us alone.
You had the privilege of sitting down with the Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel for your documentary “Cuba After Castro.” What was your impression of him?
Abby Martin: Very personable. A very kind person. Not a politician in any sense of what a Western politician would be like. I can’t imagine sitting down with any congressperson and having the same sort of experience, where it’s three hours of unedited, nothing scripted. He wasn’t given any questions in advance.
I asked him about the pillars of propaganda that are used to justify this horrific, asphyxiating blockade. He answered them with grace and with very articulate, broad examples, turning the questions on their head, which I found really interesting, the way that he was able to do that.
Like, what does democracy actually mean? Does it really mean multiple parties? What does it mean to have democracy? Do you have a free press in the US? Just all these things that are really fascinating.
I mean, another thing about him is that he was a reluctant leader. All the myths that you hear about Cuba, that they banned the Beatles, that they’ve never allowed tattoos, that they hate all that shit, he personifies exactly what Western governments have tried to pretend Cuba is not. I mean, he loves the Beatles. He has tattoos. He loved going to gay clubs when he was growing up. He’s an incredible guy.
The thing is, he can go out in the middle of crowds without bulletproof vests, without a security detail, and just be immersed in the people. That’s never something that you would see from a Western politician, because it would be dangerous. They would be killed because they have so many enemies and so many people want them dead because of how miserable they’ve made their lives.
How do you feel the country is going to manage with the new reforms that have been announced?
Abby Martin: Yeah, that’s really unfortunate. I think any capitulation is not going to stop the US aggression. You know, it was really clear that they felt like they had no choice but to open themselves up to these reforms, the hundreds of economic reforms.
I think that they felt like they had to, to ease the pressure from the US. We saw the response to the reforms – “too little, too late.” They actually sanctioned them in response. I think any inch that you give is an inch too far.
You and the president talked about what is freedom of the press and democracy in response to criticism of the Cuban government. What does democracy look like in Cuba?
Abby Martin: That’s what I keep trying to tell people. There’s just this cartoonish notion that Cuba is some sort of dictatorship. Look: Cuba practises democracy in much more profound ways than I’ve seen Americans practise democracy. They don’t just show up and pull a lever every two to four years. They are practising and engaging in community projects and conversations on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, because it’s all hands on deck.
It’s so tactile. It’s like: what is right in front of your face? How is the blockade impacting the potholes and infrastructure right in your backyard? How can we work together to do that? So it’s small-scale and national, but everyone’s involved. That’s what’s so beautiful. It’s such a beautiful national project. They practise democracy in every capacity that they can within that.
We don’t know what these countries would be like if they didn’t have the boot of the US on their neck. There’s a self-preservation mechanism where it’s like: if they were to open themselves up to another party, what would that party look like? It would be a capitalist party that would be injected with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from the US government. The revolution would be destroyed in a year. Literally, they have no choice.
Look at what happened in Venezuela. Liberals who want democracy brought to Cuba, well, they need to fight against the blockade first and let Cuban people just live and prosper under their own choices.
With Earth’s Greatest Enemy you said that you didn’t want the film, or any of your films, to be pessimistic. You say you want it to be a call to action, to give people hope. What is giving you hope at the moment?
Abby Martin: When I was first getting into politics and movement building, everything was siloed. I remember during the Iraq War buildup being told that pro-Palestine messaging was too controversial. I remember during Occupy Wall Street: “No, we shouldn’t go to Obama’s headquarters, because he doesn’t have anything to do with Wall Street.” It was this very big misunderstanding of our political moment and the material reality of our conditions.
Cuba is simply a case study of what our greatest enemy does.
Every country fits into this kind of perspective once you understand that capitalism is driving this and imperialism is an outgrowth of that. I have hope in just the sustained activism around the world, of people who are putting everything on the line just for the chance, like the elders in Okinawa and the people in Red Hill (US, where there’s a public health crisis due to fuel leaks).
I encourage people who have privilege in our respective countries: we have the privilege and we have the duty. You know, you might not be in the heart of the imperial core like I am in America, but holy shit, you are an imperial asset, and you guys have the duty and the privilege to do everything in your power to stop this madness. I’m very inspired by everyone who is doing that around the world, and it keeps me motivated.
IPAN WA
Abby Martin with the 2026 Independent and Peaceful Australia Network conference in Adelaide.
