The narrative of a particular mind-set

Dec 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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It was bound to happen but few, if any, believed it would have. When the PNC lost power in 1992, a certain mind-set arose. This conceptualization centered on the right of East Indians to rule Guyana because the Africans had their time.
Even among those East Indians who participated in the broad multi-racial politics against both the Burnham and Hoyte presidencies, they embraced the ideology that it was the turn of Indians to control state power in Guyana
Important to note that as the PPP’s governorship grew older and as the PPP’s moral and political bankruptcy got nastier, many among this mind-set lost respect for the PPP leaders but the overall philosophy of Indians’ right to rule remained.
The particular nuance of this mind-set is its racist emblem. It has moved from its initial mundane paradigm of “Indian time has come” to shameless apology of Indian domination.
At this point the infamy of oxymoron emerged. Many in this mindset don’t care for the PPP but the PPP rule is nevertheless apologized for and protected because the PPP is the only Indian game in town. A love/hate process now characterizes this mind-set.
Some people hate the absolute miasma in which the PPP is swimming but the PPP Government must not be confronted because Indian power could be lost.
This mindset underwent a transformation after the society’s initial embrace of the PPP evaporated. As opposition parties, trade unions, radical NGOs and human rights groups attack the elected dictatorship of the PPP, this mind-set began a new narrative. It moved from protection of the PPP Government to an ideology of them versus us. Opposition parties and other critical organization were collapsed into one – a perceived bandwagon of racial attacks on the PPP with the intention of taking back power.
In other words, there was a conspiracy of African Guyanese to once more deny Indians the right to rule.
The “them versus us” narrative became shameless. Deliberately distorting the works of great thinkers as what fascism did to the brilliant European philosophers, this mind-set built an edifice of good guys versus bad guys by constantly making use of quotes from great writers to justify the degeneracy of elected dictatorship in present day Guyana.
The bad guys are the PNC who want back Black domination and critics of the Guyana Government. But how are they bad guys?
Here is how the mind-set operates. Commentators like me, trade unions like Lincoln Lewis, activists like Mark Benschop, and political parties like the AFC are using a narrative that is latently violent.
The trap devised by this mind-set is that once you attack the Government, you are entering the realm of destabilization because after all, the PPP Government is an elected one and the ultimate goal should be peace and reconciliation. By the language used, the bad guys are encouraging violence against the state.
Missing from the narrative of this mindset is any recognition at all of the epistemology of violence coming from state actors. Gross acts of racial discrimination never seen before in this country, horrible levels of torture that violates international laws, massive corruption that puts the PPP in the league of the worst offenders world-wide, unprecedented political incestuousness that the PNC Government never dreamt of practising are completely obfuscated in the narrative of this mindset.
Instead, this mind-set is not concerned with these pathologies, and logically so, because to deal with them might weaken the Indian-based Government and allow the return of a Black-dominated administration.
One way of protecting the Indian-based Government is to paint the narrative into the “us versus them” binary.
The “us” is we whose time has come to rule and the “them” is those critics who are not prepared to accept Indian control so they resort to the semantics and language of incitement.
The mindset then digs deep into the philosophy of epistemology. It comes up with positive narrative versus negative narrative, positive revisionism versus negative revisionism.
This arbitrary distinction is given the term, “objectivity.” The “them” are subjective writers, trying to incite violence against “us”, the democratically elected government. We can end with a few examples of the so-called objectivity of this mind-set. According to our “objective” mind-set, the evidence abound that the detractors of the Government are out to harm the social peace.
On the other hand, the most graphic evidence of state terrorism is denied by this mindset. We are told there is an alleged connection between a cruel drug lord and the Government.
Compelling proof in a US court room is put down to an allegation. Finally, the police commit human rights violations not the Government.
This mindset is a funny group of people.

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