THE other day I had given Mr. Christopher Ram a friendly caution about how we in the Global South should be careful about the subliminal effects of the Western media.
This was in relation to Mr. Ram referring to the Hungarian Prime Minister as a strongman. I do not disagree that the Hungarian gentleman has disturbing instincts. My point was there are others like the Hungarian leader in the so-called democratic sea of the West that deserve the use of the terminology of strongman.

Mr. Ram is at it again. Yesterday (Sunday), he referred to Freedom House’s description of India as party free. In the same article, Mr. Ram made reference to a Swedish institution that judges the existence of democracy in all the countries of the world.
Here is the list of institutions that many intellectuals in Guyana (but not only in Guyana) use as their standard bearer for judging democracy in Guyana. They are Varieties of Democracy (Sweden), Reporters Without Borders (France), Transparency International; and Freedom House (New York).

Some intellectuals in each country arrogated to themselves the right to judge the world and they employ their cultural and ideological conceptualisations in arriving at judgement. That is how these organisations were born. What is important to note is that they make analysis of countries in the Global South that they know nothing about and we don’t know the people in the nations of the Global South that feed them their information.

If you examine the output of all these organisations, the Western countries are always way on top of their ranking. It doesn’t matter if they are formidable democratic slides in the famous democracies in the West. By what logic is India party free and not Germany? The past year, there have been more violations of rights in Germany than in India.

For the third time, let’s quote the Guyanese daughter of a famous Guyanese entrepreneur, Ashma John. She lives in Germany. About her adopted land, she wrote: “Over the past year, as democratic as Germany pledges itself to be, we have seen excessive police brutality involving protesters, censorship, raids and outright harassment. We have heard of discussions surrounding Nazi-style deportation policies.”

Emphasis should be on the words, “Nazi-style deportation policies.” Imagine 91 years after the Nazis came to power, in today’s Germany, it is using Nazi-style harassment methodologies. Transparency International based on Germany has not written one single line about the autocratic face of governance in Germany.

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) outfit operates out of the University of Gottenburg in Sweden. 90 per cent of the peoples of the world do not know where this university is. But a group of academics from this university arrogated to itself the right to tell the peoples of the world which country is democratic, party democratic and not democratic at all.

Presidential adviser, Dr. Randy Persaud wrote that he inquired from V-Dem who the intellectuals are from Guyana that transmit analyses to them. They told him they cannot give out that information. Yet V-Dem works closely with Transparency International. V-Dem cannot divulge that information because if they do it would devastate their credibility because some of their Guyanese contacts are openly racist and anti-government activists.

We come now to Reporters Without Borders. Read their 2024 index on press freedom. It is simply an exercise in moral repugnancy. All the Western countries are at the top of list. Ukraine and Israel, which should be last on the list, are way above dozens and dozens of Third World countries.

You would think that after the descent into the most unprofessional manifestations of journalism by all the Western media houses the past year because of shamelessly atrocious and misleading reporting on Gaza, all Western countries would be last on the index of Reporters Without Borders. But no! Not at all; all the Western nations top the list.

Gaza has revealed the most sickening functionalism of Western journalism. It was the New York Times (NYT) that first reported that when Hamas freedom-fighters went into Israel, they cut off babies’ heads and rape women. The Western media throughout the Western world ran with the story given to the NYT by a former intelligence officer in the Israeli air force. We are taught from day one when we start working at a newspaper that fact-checking is a priceless gem we must wear on our shirt-sleeve.

I conclude three things to know. NYT’s editor-in-chief is Jewish who owns a stationery store in Israel and who sits on the board of a media organisation to monitor ant-Jewish bias in the American media. Secondly, the Guardian (UK) dismissed its cartoonist after 40 years for drawing Netanyahu. Finally, all Western reporters are instructed not to refer to genocide in Gaza.
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