Interview
Aris Chatzistefanou is a journalist and author. He has worked for BBC World Service in London and Istanbul and for several newspapers and radio stations in Greece and abroad. He is editor-in-chief of Thepressproject.gr and author of three books on current affairs. In an interview with Open Citizenship, Chatzistefanou spoke with us about his work co-directing Debtocracy and Catastroika, two recent documentaries related to the Greek sovereign-debt crisis and the privatisation of state assets, respectively.
The website for the film says it was co-produced by the public. Could you explain how that happened and what it means?
We started an experiment. At least for Greece, this was a big experiment, because we wanted to make a documentary on the debt crisis in Greece and in the European periphery in general. But after a few months, we found ourselves in debt, so we created a website. We presented a short trailer showing what we wanted to do and certain parts of the interviews that we would have. We said to the people, if you want the documentary, you can help by donating any amount you like, and you will be a co-producer of the documentary. Your name will be at the end of the documentary. We said that we would not accept money from any political parties, corporations or corporate media.
So it was mainly Greek citizens, but also from other countries, and some small student or worker organisations who wanted to help. That was for Debtocracy. For our second documentary, called Catastroika, we followed exactly the same procedure. And that is what we are going to do for the third documentary. I can tell you now that we are planning to have it available around September. I am not sure if we have said that officially to anyone else.
How would you say Debtocracy fits into a civil-society response to the European financial crisis? What role does it play trying to effect change?
It was very interesting that when we uploaded the video (because that is what we are doing) – we just upload it on the internet and then it is free for anyone to do whatever he wants with it. It was shown in the Greek Indignados movement, where almost all squares in big and smaller cities in Greece were occupied, so there were hundreds of public screenings. And I can say now that millions of people have watched it online.
We do not say that the documentary can change the situation. It just describes the situation. But it was amazing to see the people’s thirst for knowledge, for alternative points of view, with which they may have disagreed. They wanted to listen to something else from what the government or the mainstream media were saying. So in a sense, I would say that we opened up a new dialogue about what the debt is, and if we are morally obliged to repay it. Because we were explaining to the people that the public debt is not the same thing as a private debt for which you are morally obliged to repay. Many countries never repaid their debts, and they had the right to do that. We explain in the documentary why that was.
The film showed major public protests in both Ecuador and Greece regarding debt problems. From your experience, what strategies have been successful for civil-society actors and social movements to attract media attention on these issues and mobilise public support for the protesters?
You know, during times of crisis, it becomes almost impossible to attract media attention in the way that you would like to have it. That is what Avi Lewis, the journalist, was saying to us when we had an interview with him. He was talking about the example of Argentina, where the mainstream media totally ignored the huge demonstrations in the streets of Buenos Aires. People decided to demonstrate outside the buildings of the media. And that was the first time they attracted media attention, which was of course in a negative way. Because the media will always present these demonstrations as the kind of violent attack against the status quo or capitalism.
It is funny that while we are talking, today we have one of the few demonstrations organised – I do not know if we will succeed – outside Mega Channel, which is the biggest right-wing channel in Greece. And it is very interesting that people will go and demonstrate against how the media are covering the crisis.
So, to answer your question, it is because during a time of crisis, you have to attract attention. You have to find alternative ways of expressing your views, and this is what we were trying to do with our documentary.
Do you see your audience as primarily Greeks and those in other debtor nations? What do you have to say to people in lender countries such as Germany?
It was interesting. It started with a Greek audience, almost 95%, but very soon people from Portugal, Spain and other countries of the European periphery were interested in the documentary. Because they realised they are facing exactly the same problem, at exactly the same period of time. And I think the governments and the media in all these countries were saying, look, this is your fault; this is because of the way you have handled economics for the last few years. By watching the documentary and realising that they are facing exactly the same problems, they are discovering that it is a structural problem of the financial system and the euro zone. And that was the most interesting thing to see for Debtocracy, because for Catastroika, our second documentary, Europe already knew about our first film. So we already had a 50-50 audience in terms of people from Greece and abroad. For the third documentary, even more people outside Greece.
I think with Germany and other countries of what we call the European core – the big Europe – people should understand that by helping countries like Greece, they are actually destroying not only these countries but many in general. They have to realise that the dividing line between nations is not between Germany and Greece, for example. It is between people and economies. Perhaps people in Germany will realise through our documentary that they were the first victims, because the government managed to freeze salaries for ten years and that created a climate of competitiveness with the European periphery. When you have this gap in competitiveness, you make loans and you create this deficit which will accumulate. So if they realise that we are all victims of the same economic system and the same banks, then we can find a solution. Otherwise we will just have the new rise of nationalism, which in Greece we see happening right now.
The message of the film seems primarily to support the efforts of the Greek Audit Committee in making sure the Greek sovereign debt is legitimate and not odious. What progress has the audit committee made in Greece since the documentary was released? How are you currently involved in supporting its work?
First of all, we were saying in the documentary that an audit committee is an instrument in a greater battle against the economic system and the debt crisis in general. It is not a solution by itself, but something that can help. It was interesting to see that in [one] state, the political parties – even from the left – attacked the documentary because of the proposal for an audit committee. They found different reasons to attack it, and it was obvious that if we had an audit commission, the whole political system that was created in Greece after the end of the dictatorship in 1974 would collapse, because people would realise who stole the money and why it was not right to repay this debt. So it was not only about finding the solution to the debt crisis. It was about the structure of the political system and the economic system in Greece and in other countries.
Unfortunately, if you do not have access to official information, you cannot create an audit committee. In Ecuador, which is the most successful example, there the president gave access to the information that they have in the ministry of economics. He did that. And even though it is obvious that parts of the debt are illegal or odious, we do not have access to the official information. That is something that can happen only with a massive movement to impose its will on the politicians and the government.
In the film, you suggest that neoliberalism generally caused the debt crisis in Greece. If neoliberalism is the problem, then what is the solution? How can civil society work towards this?
We want to explain that even though neoliberalism is a crime against humanity, as people in the documentary are saying, neoliberalism is just the last step of a structural crisis of the world financial system in general, and I am talking here about capitalism. What I want to explain is that the crisis did not start in 2008 or 2009. It started in the late 1960s or 1970s, when the system showed that it did not have any more capacity for the growth that it needed in order to stay alive. And neoliberalism was a temporary solution for three decades to this problem. And then of course we had the crisis in 2008. So we understand the actual problems of capitalism, one of which is neoliberalism, and try to find alternative ways of producing and distributing goods. It is a zombie system. And unfortunately the same thing happened in the 1970s, and we saw the world-war distraction and then the economy would restart from scratch. We do not need a third world war to find alternative economic models.
But how can civil-society actors and social movements work towards these solutions? What kind of actions would make sense right now?
That is the problem, because it is difficult when we are talking about alternative models of production to have Greece as your only target. And that is the real problem of some social movements. They are talking about revolution, but you have to survive, and that is the first thing. The main idea is to realise that people are more important than debts and banks and financial institutions. It is saying that, for the countries of the European periphery… we will default on this debt, and probably we should nationalise the banks and take the economy, the monetary policy into their own hands. And the solution, in my personal opinion, would be to leave the euro zone. We believe that the euro zone created the debt crisis, so leaving it might be a solution.
These might sound technocratic or like not-small steps, but you will not find the final solution with me. But you have to start somewhere, and we have lost so many battles – the people of Europe – for the last decade that we should at least protect ourselves from financial institutions and then we can discuss alternative models.
What has been the response to Debtocracy? Anything particularly surprising?
The most-surprising thing was the number of people who watched it online. We were expecting to have something like 10,000 viewers and we had 50,000 viewers in the first hour. Now we have had more than 2 million – probably 3 million viewers. That came as a surprise when we released the documentary.
As far as reactions from politicians, it was interesting to see that it was first left-wing movements that criticised things in the film, saying that this is revisionism and it is not revolutionary now. And all these things were surprising for us. It was the neoliberal commentators who attacked us after that, with very angry articles in big newspapers. So the left realised that we are not the enemy and we are with them and we can fight it together.
It created a discussion. People who attacked us realised afterwards that fighting us was a kind of advertisement for the documentary. So they stopped. After the second documentary, they did not want to say anything, even though we know that they disagreed. They realised it would do us good to hold these attacks. It was interesting the way that the media handled the criticism.
Image: Emory
Tags: Interview