AS a political activist, a UG student then, a UG lecturer and a media operative, I had to read everything Cheddi Jagan published. I believe I have done such. From reading the voluminous output from Jagan, I found out that he had a theory about ultra-Marxist radicals who frowned on the moderate left-wing politics of the PPP.
Jagan, looking back at late 19th century and early 20th century European ultra-radical Marxists, argued that these ultra-leftist Marxists eventually find solace in right-wing politics. Jagan posited that ultra-left radicals and ultra-right anti-Marxists eventually end up scratching each other’s back.
In a brilliant piece in the PPP’s theoretical journal, “Thunder,” of July-December 1971, volume three, number three, pages nine-nineteen, Jagan belaboured this point. Unfortunately, Jagan did not live to see how fascinatingly accurate his theory became in Guyana. I am doing this column here as an autobiographical snippet.
I witnessed first-hand how those whom I had struggled with in the 1970s onwards for the advancement radical Marxism in Guyana ended up at the present moment endorsing potent imperialist narratives. I look at some of these people today and I get cold and numb. I also get pessimistic about the human condition as I see what they have become. I have to confess that I have bouts of depression when I see how regressive the political changes are in these people.
These people were my comrades, some of my personal friends and we had one thing in common that bounded us together – we were anti-imperialist leftists who were guided by Karl Marx, Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney and so many others too numerous to list.
How does political theory explain what Bonita Bone, Clive Thomas, Nigel Westmaas, Tacuma Ogunseye, Rupert Roopnaraine, Danuta Radzik, Vanda Radzik, Eusi Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, David Hinds, Karen De Souza and so many others like them that I struggled with from the 1970s, have become what they are today.
Three memories are vivid. One is a letter Vanda wrote me in 1976 when she and I refused to do compulsory National Service. She went into the interior and from there she communicated with me. Today that is not the anti-imperialist spokesperson I knew back then.
Vanda is one of the strongest embracer of the imperialist message that Third World countries must leave their oil in the sand so these countries can ensure a clean climate in which the world would be a better place to live in. But these poor countries in leaving the oil in the ground get poorer while those who destroyed the global environment in the first place get richer so they can spend billions. Whenever I think of the brainwashing of Vanda, I think about that letter which I kept all these years. I am willing to return it to Vanda.
Next is Dr. Nigel Westmaas. If anybody was anti-imperialist and Marxist it was Nigel. I always remember him because I met him in the days when I was courting my wife-to-be and she was very fond of “this little boy.” It is beyond comprehension that this little radical Marxist boy I knew has become a leading proponent of imperialist exploitation of the Global South.
Both Vanda and Westmaas are two of Guyana’s strongest supporters of the theory that Guyana must leave the oil in the ground, a sermon that the imperialist world frenetically bombard the Global South with because in leaving the oil in the ground, climate protection is achieved at the expense of eliminating poverty in the countries that leave the oil in the ground.
Next is Bonita Bone. Although she has not written on oil, her political transformation has saddened me. I always remember her lying on our couch in my student apartment when a delegation of WPA visited Toronto. My wife and I had Bonita over. Whenever I think of Bonita’s colossal retreat from the left-wing, radical politics of the seventies, I think of that day she visited me at my home in Toronto.
How can people who once espoused the politics of class struggle in which the battle was for working class liberation, today so openly and shamelessly (not Bone; I don’t know her position on oil) buy wholesale the imperialist doctrine that the least oil pump the better for climate protection, so Guyana should leave the oil in the ground.
Finally, some of the names listed above have a very good working relation with the Stabroek News, a newspaper that refuses to highlight genocide in Gaza, interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, but did not interview two Palestinian Ambassadors that came to Guyana. This is an openly pro-Western newspaper that enjoys the company of people who were once anti-imperialist but today sing the songs of imperialism. If God exists, where is he?

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.