NO matter how much you try to use political theory to understand who is anti-imperialist and who is pro-imperialist in Guyana, analytical cobwebs get in your way. The thing is either comical or confusing.
Let’s start with David Hinds and Henry Jeffrey, who appeared on Hinds’ podcast called ‘Politics 101’.
When you look at these two men, you can’t help feeling sorry for the PNC. They are both attached to the PNC. Jeffrey is Guyana’s leading advocate of an imperialist invention named liberal democracy. No post-colonial social scientist accepts that there is a theory called liberal democracy. This is a colonial narrative that the imperialists invented to show ‘Third World’ people what type of governmental behaviour they should adopt.
Jeffrey, almost each week, tells newspaper readers and listeners on David Hinds’ podcast that Guyana lacks the features of a liberal democracy. But he never and will not dare outline the requirements of liberal democracy. He also avoids naming any country that has a liberal democracy.
Jeffrey will not do that because if and when he does, he will appear as a comic in the eyes of most teenagers in Guyana who know a little bit of the outside world. If a country is a liberal democracy (whatever that is), then it cannot conspire with a fascist nation to perpetuate genocide against a harmless race of people.
How can a country be a liberal democracy and support genocide? That is equivalent to a pastor telling his parishioners there is no God.
Hinds, on the other hand, is a huge aficionado of Forbes Burnham and Walter Rodney, both of whom would deride the existence of liberal democracy in any Western country. Now it is comical to watch Jeffrey telling Hinds, who says he is both a Burnhamite and Rodneyite, that liberal democracy as it exists in the Western world is what Guyana needs. Hinds just listens and refuses to tell Jeffrey that he, Jeffrey, is an imperialist sycophant.
Then there are The Usual Suspects (TUS). They have now formed themselves into a group with the name Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS). This is an effort directed against Israel. I joined a march and, on another occasion, I joined a picket exercise sponsored by BDS because I support any effort to expose genocide in Gaza. But I am not a fan of BDS. While it is true that denouncing genocide in Gaza is anti-imperialist in nature, the BDS people are also pro-imperialist.
The BDS group has embraced a narrative invented by imperialist nations to keep the Third World in neo-colonial subjection. The West has financed climate groups in the Global South to push the discussion of fossil fuels being an enemy of the global future. The TUS in Guyana is the purveyor of this imperialist strategy.
They say Guyana and other developing countries must eschew the fossil fuel industry because it damages the environment, but it was the fossil fuel industry that made these countries rich beyond imagination and their phenomenal wealth they refuse to share with the Global South.
So, while they remain rich, we in Guyana and the rest of the post-colonial world must save Planet Earth by living in poverty. The West gets richer and continues to damage the global ecosystem through the financing of wars, of which Ukraine and Gaza stand out. There has been more damage to the climate by three years of European-supported war in Ukraine than by 20 years of oil production in Guyana.
The anti-imperialist scenario gets more confusing because anti-imperialist activists are not supposed to be racist. TUS and BDS can be accused of practising racism in Guyana. They wrote a letter to President Ali in November 2022 demanding that Guyana, with immediate effect, stop oil production. They informed the President that oil production harms the climate and kills African people.
Only one race was mentioned. Now, why if greenhouse effects kill humans, TUS only mentioned one race? The definition of racism includes the assertion of the superiority of one race over another. By mentioning Africans only, is TUS preaching racial superiority?
Finally, BDS is calling for a boycott of products from Israel in Guyana and the products of Guyanese companies that are associated with Israel. But BDS has refused to call for a boycott of the pro-imperialist newspaper in Guyana that takes the side of Israel – the Stabroek News (SN). The SN, unlike the Kaieteur News and Chronicle, does not carry news about Gaza.
To date, it has not interviewed any international Palestinian personality, but the paper interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to the UN in what was clearly a pro-Israel interview. So, who in Guyana is anti-imperialist and who is pro-imperialist?
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.