Everyone needs to see Earth’s Greatest Enemy, if only to see how monstrous U.S. empire is for humanity and for our ecosystems. Without exaggeration, the costs of furthering the U.S. imperial chokehold on the rest of the planet is one no society can afford.
This doc is wide-spanning as it covers twenty countries, exploring the manifest ways U.S. empire renders environmental catastrophe and how local communities work to disrupt these harms and dismantle the systems responsible. Abby Martin acknowledges the sheer scale of these issues, but she reliably centers those bearing the brunt of it all, the impacted communities choosing to resist.
It’s inherently deeply upsetting stuff, which is why I admire Abby’s apparently stalwart capacity to stay on mission. Just in small part, she exposes a rash of infant deaths from contaminated water, annihilation of indigenous lands, flagrant pollution of our oceans and U.S. forces' unfathomable degree of fossil fuel consumption. For Abby, the horror is a reason to look toward, not to look away; otherwise, how else could you possibly hope to bring an end to this destruction? This is all actually happening, has been happening, and - unless we organize against it - it’ll continue to wreak havoc.
The human and environmental impacts are all so apocalyptic in effect, it's almost impressive it isn’t this way by design. The flummoxed manner in which these public figures respond to Abby Martin’s probing questions belies some cherubic innocence or quixotic naïveté. But the ease with which this facade crumbles is as embarrassing as it is alarming, frankly.
It doesn’t take much for the political class here - as in, mostly U.S. politicians, military officials and private military contractors - either fall back defensively on doublespeak word salad or completely nope out of further questioning.* Seeing this, I had to wonder why: Are these folks genuinely true believers in the system, willfully ignorant, or actually psychopathic?
Even then, it just becomes a fruitless thought exercise once you realize - as Abby laments - these people are simply not used to being meaningfully questioned or challenged. As decision-makers they operate within a sociopolitical context where what they do is simply the norm, a space someone like Abby may enter with the specter of ideology, as if what they do isn’t similarly driven by their own ideology of empire, extraction and subjugation. They’re insulated and necessarily ignorant of the direct impacts of their own actions; they’re comfortable, content, hence they don’t question (and why should they?).
The thing is, too, Abby Martin is just asking questions, and she’s not some asshole about it. But as Americans, for someone to observe the nationalist mythos scaffolding our imperialist military occupations, to perceive those contradictions between the mythos of the colonizer and the realities of the colonized, and then to have the gall to ask even the obvious questions - all this will make you a pariah. Americans hatebeing confronted with the knowledge that we exist to the detriment of everyone else, and they’ll go so far to evade it.
Folks who have not yet deprogrammed, who take the mere existence of something as evidence for its own legitimacy, will find the cognitive dissonance deeply uncomfortable. So even as I say earnestly that everyone should see this film, I know it won’t be received by just anyone, especially those who consume propaganda with ease.** Yet this is what I admire most about Abby’s work, why I find myself increasingly radicalized the deeper I get into her investigative reporting and the work of other independent journalists like her. (I’m admittedly weird like that, though: however forlorn I might end up learning about human rights abuses, this shit energizes me. If not from hope, then from outrage or necessity.)
I was lucky enough to catch Earth’s Greatest Enemy on Abby’s now-ongoing Director’s Tour in D.C. last month, and I plan to catch it again when she comes 'round to Baltimore in January. I’d encourage everyone to see this and support the film if you want the benefit of sobering investigative work into the actual tangible impacts of the U.S. military on the planet, blemishes and all (mostly blemishes, as it turns out).
Purchase tickets for upcoming screenings here: earthsgreatestenemy.com/
* At times, you really do see these folks retreat in bald-faced exasperation, as if Abby were approaching with katana in hand. In light of everything else this aspect feels a bit underrated, but the doc is funny, too! And given how grim so much subject matter can get, things like the clever sound editing really are to the film’s benefit.
** In 2025, I no longer underestimate the capacity of the liberal mind to do the mental gymnastics sufficient to skirt radical critiques of the system. Yes, I’m aware how condescending this sounds and how much saying this makes me sound like a fucking asshole. But hey, did you hear there’s a genocide going on?
