Can replacement theory circulating in the US be applied to Guyana?

May 27, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In an article of mine of Thursday, January 20, 2022 headlined: “Deadly parallel between Guyana and the US in 2022,” I quoted words from one of the world’s famous names in journalism, Carl Berstein. I quote him once more: “The idea that the Trump base is some narrow group of white men with guns? Bullshit. This is a huge movement including misogynistic women, including racists of every kind, but also including all kinds of educated people in cities and suburbs”.
I found those words to be uncannily applicable to Guyana even though I agree that American sociological system is vastly different from ours. But I believe in terms of the ethnic foundations of both societies, this one similarity as contained in my January 20th column has forceful validity.
This column here was motivated by an anonymous letter I saw in the Stabroek News of May 20, attacking the First Lady for holding a cruise outing that carried an expensive price tag. The event was to raise money for charity. This is the second critical outlook on the initiative of the first lady. The first was a Stabroek News editorial to which the columnist Peeping Tom did a trenchant rebuke (see my column of Wednesday, May 18, 2022, headlined, “Peeping Tom on the Stabroek News.”
Peeping Tom described the editorial as nasty. Even nastier was that anonymous letter. My interpretation of that publication was that the First Lady project was simply the occasion to attack the government. Concentration on the event itself was less than 50 percent than on the chastisement of the government.
In my Tuesday piece (Tuesday, May 24, 2022, “This is either sheer PPP bashing, dishonesty or ignorance”) I looked at a guest editorial in the Stabroek News. The writer condemned the outdated marijuana law. But no part of the article discussed the five-year-old, deliberate relegation of the changes to the law to the dust bin by the APNU+AFC regime.
The guest editorialist explained that the changes were not passed by the APNU+AFC government because of foot-dragging. More than 50 percent of the argument was devoted to chastising the present PPP administration for not tabling the necessary amendment and there was a bitter critique of the new proposed amendment by the PPP government. The real purpose of that editorial was to take shots at the present set of rulers.
The letter writer withholding his/her name in the condemnation of the First Lady would make perfect sense so would be the guest editorialist. But who is the writer. That letter-writer either belongs to the usual suspects (TUS), the Creole Middle Class (CMC) and the political nouveau lumpen (PNL). And who are the folks that make up these spheres?
To understand their motives, let’s look at replacement theory which is gaining currency at a fast rate in the US among racist right-wingers. The police found documents that belonged to the killer that shot dead 10 Afro-Americans at a Buffalo supermarket in the US. The papers point to the killer’s acceptance of replacement theory.
Briefly, the thesis espoused by White extremists is that there are concerted efforts by the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment, left-wing forces and non-white Americans to expand the population of the non-white races to minimise the numbers of White people in the United States. The objective is to make White people a minority.
How does replacement theory fit into Guyana’s sociology? I repeat for the umpteen time on this page, such complex theorising and historical outlines cannot fit into a newspaper column. What follows then are just mere mentions so readers can get a little glimpse into the profound transformation taking place in Guyana.
I would isolate six events in this country’s history as the most important. 1- The extension of the franchise that led to the 1957 premiership of Cheddi Jagan. 2- The Wismar massacre including the Sun Chapman disaster. 3- Independence. 4- The 1975 declaration of party paramountcy. 5- The Buxton conspiracy. 6- The five months of election rigging in 2020.
Briefly, the electoral defeat of the PPP in 2015 was a whirlwind reclamation of power by the CMC and their associates including Christian Indians and the Portuguese community. These classes were literally swept away from power by the Indian dominated PPP since 1992. The shock defeat of APNU+AFC and shock return to power by the PPP in 2020 has left those classes in psychological tatters but not mental dormancy.
Since 2020, with support from sections of the national media landscape, those classes have assigned themselves the task of weakening the PPP government. How does replacement theory fit in here? From March 2020, a conglomeration of groups has dedicated themselves to the resuscitation of non-Indian entities with the eventual goal of bringing back non-Indian rule. Read between the line dear readers.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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