REWRITING HISTORY 101

Aug 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Today we shall examine how to rewrite history by engaging in revisionism. Revisionism involves at least some amount of research and the presentation of alternative considerations.
It is much easier and serves other objectives if, instead, we simply make some statements and hope that without regard to their veracity, they are accepted as facts without investigation or study. This is our goal today, to turn history not on its head, but simply to bend it in the direction to serve a more general purpose.
We begin with the notion that Guyana’s ethnic security dilemmas are the products of a specific, though not unique, history of colonization, a process which entailed certain forms of divide and rule and settlement which in themselves laid the groundwork for a highly fractured society. Now this is too complex a notion for ordinary minds and certainly does not serve the objective of blaming the present PPP government for the divisions within our society.
Burnham and his party may have been bad but it is the PPP which, for other purposes, must be held culpable for the ethnic security dilemmas. Thus it is necessary to reshape history so as to lay the blame for the ethnic security dilemmas at the feet of the PPP and the government – for it is only by so doing that we can achieve the ultimate goal of having a one-sided version of the crime wave and the subsequent emergence of the phantom squads.
Only through this lop-sided version can we negate the theory that there was a criminal insurrection, with Buxton at its epicentre, and instead allow the Guyanese people at this time to forget this fact and focus almost exclusively on the alleged links between the government and the spy equipment, which despite being in the hands of the phantom was unable to record the telephone conversation of a top official, so much so that it became necessary to hardwire that official’s phone. So much for the functionality of the equipment.
The notion that the PPP and the government is to blame for the ethnic security dilemmas ensures that there is only one guilty party and one guilty race. This is the notion that must now be emphasized so as to avoid a common responsibility (of all) to removing, or at least reducing, the impact of these security dilemmas.
In order to reshape our history to conform to this notion that it is the PPP and the government that is to be blamed for the ethnic security dilemmas we need to do a few things. The first of these is to suffer a convenient amnesia about the historic settlement patterns that occurred during colonialism and the separation and distrust that these bred between the various ethnic groups.
The second major factor is that most of these groups during the pre-independence period sought to advance their political and social rights through almost exclusive ethnic organizations. By ignoring the value of this vehicle of social and political mobilization, we can underwrite and peripherialize the emergence of similar organizations in the post-independence period.
The third form of redesigning which we must ignore is also related to our history. If the PPP is to be burdened with the full blame for the ethnic security dilemmas which presently afflict our society, it is necessary that we forget that the early PPP, before the split in 1955, united Guyanese of all races and, to its eventual demise, all classes in a nationalist struggle for independence.
We also have an obligation of understating the significance of personal ambition in the split of 1955 and the divisions that it wrought within the working class. And while we are it, we must not forget to flatter those middle class petit bourgeoise elements (not class) who even today still bask in their self-importance to the independence struggle by converting their alienation and ostracism from the PPP, by deeming this process as a second split.
We must forget also that there was general political mobilization after the split across ethnic lines by both of the two main political parties, but we must emphasize that it was the PPP that was the real villain in this process and this is what widened the gap between the races in Guyana.
Finally, we must remember that the PPP has been in power for seventeen years and thus has the sole responsibility for what exists today, which we must remember had no links to the past. The PPP must take full responsibility for what has taken place. The past must be left in the past. The present bears no link with that past. History starts anew each moment and this is also how it is rewritten: by severing the present from its roots.

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REWRITING HISTORY 101

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