TODAY is Youman Nabi, a national holiday in Guyana for more than 50 years. It is an occasion wherein Muslims celebrate and rejoice at the birth of Prophet Muhammad. Muslims will gather at their local masjids today and tomorrow to observe the event, which corresponds to the 12th day of Rabi’a Al-Awwal, the third month in the Islamic lunar calendar.

It is not strange to find representatives from the Christian and Hindu communities attending and participating in these gatherings. Guyanese are perhaps some of the most culturally-aware people in the world. I’ve been fortunate to have listened to pastors, priests and pandits deliver positive and uplifting remarks at Muslim religious events. Likewise, imams, too, would usually attend and deliver a message at Christian and Hindu celebrations.

The German-Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth observed that robust pluralistic societies have diverse ethnic and cultural groups living side-by-side within the same political unit, and engaging in a kind of ecological interdependence while working collectively for their own economic prosperity and effective governance. Yet their interdependence and intersections do not infringe on their unique values and traditions, which remain intact.

I am not saying xenophobia, bigotry and racism are absent in Guyana, but having visited over 30 countries on four continents, I can safely say that the level of interconnectedness between distinct ethnic and cultural groups that we experience is truly remarkable.

We should be proud, but also vigilant and on guard against the incursions of the purveyors of hate that are now threatening to unravel even the sturdiest of democracies. Fake news is the most insidious driver of Online hate. The recent marriage between fake news and free Online AI apps means that a well-crafted lie can rip apart the foundations of law and order, and send society into a tailspin.

There is absolutely no truth that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of people in Ohio, but it made its way into the heart of a presidential debate that was viewed by millions of people. Even though news outlets dedicated countless hours to debunking the fake meme, it persisted.

In 2016, Edgar Welch, a 28-year-old father of two from North Carolina ingested a viral fake-news story that a pizzeria in Washington was the headquarters of a child trafficking ring led by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. So convinced it was true, Welch drove six hours from his home, and opened fire with his assault AR-15 rifle at the pizzeria before police subdued him. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The purveyors of the ‘Pizzagate’ hoax didn’t fold up and go away; they invented a fake story that Welch was an actor used to cover up an elite paedophilia ring.

Following the stabbing deaths in July of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, large-scale riots erupted in the United Kingdom and Ireland. A fake news story blamed the murders on a Muslim asylum seeker, when, in fact, the attacker was a 17-year-old individual born in Cardiff, Wales.

In June 2022, a fake news story ignited protestors to make their way from Golden Grove on the East Coast corridor past 15 villages to Mon Repo where they attacked, looted and burned stalls and vehicles of mostly East Indian vendors, causing millions of dollars in damage.

In September 2020, following a failed attempt by APNU+AFC to steal the elections, Online trolls began spreading a narrative that racism had inspired the brutal murders of Afro-Guyanese teens and cousins, Isiah and Joel Henry. Three days later, Haresh Singh, an East Indian teen was found murdered at Number Two Village Backdam.

Fake news intends to unleash violence. I’ve produced investigative documentaries and feature stories on men like Alexander Bissonnette, who shot and killed six worshippers at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada in 2017; Nathaniel Veltman rammed his pickup truck into the Afzal family in London, Ontario, Canada in 2021, killing five; and Patrik Mathews, a member of the Canadian military, joined a neo-Nazi group and conspired to violently undermine civil society. He was arrested and sentenced to eight years behind bars.

Bissonnette, Veltman and Mathews believed that Anglo-Saxon society was being ‘replaced’ by dark-skinned immigrants, followers of strange customs and traditions, and that their duty was to “accelerate”, by violent means, the inevitable collapse of Western capitalist society. From the ashes of its decay, they reasoned, would come the birth of a pure Anglo-Saxon nation.

Individuals like Rickford Burke, a darling of APNU+AFC, would have us believe that President Irfaan Ali, V.P. Bharrat Jagdeo and other east-Indian members of the PPP/C government, are orchestrating a genocide against Afro-Guyanese. The absence of a single credible piece of evidence does little to break the back of his venomous lie.

Make no mistake, the intent of this “batshit crazy” narrative is to inspire violent attacks targetting the President, the V.P., and the east-Indian members of their government.

It is aimed at undermining our democracy and subverting our institutions. When the stakes are this high there is only one path left open for us – denounce the purveyors of lies with a loud and collective voice – or suffer the consequences of our silence. And on that note, I wish everyone a very joyous and celebratory Youman Nabi holiday.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.