War in Guyana between ‘good’ and ‘evil’

Dec 19, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

It is interesting to listen to the narratives spewed over social media nowadays. They are part of a whole welter of formal and informal processes, language and performance – dubbed  “discourses” – that serve to fix the acceptable meaning of a given notion and literally “hail” it into being. Identity and social action – including political action – are key features fixed largely by narratives and discourses: “How are we made in our culture?” asked Foucault.

While not denying the importance of structural features, discourses are most crucial because they sanction certain kinds of action and not others for most people. In times of heightened tension and conflict, narratives and discourses link individual and group identity producing a sense of linked fate among groups. When violence is in the air, the fears also include concern for physical security and fears of extinction of self, family, and the group and its culture. Political actions – and reactions – are therefore highly influenced by the dominant discourses circulating at any given time.  The power of discourse lies in its ability to naturalise a particular way of interpreting something – be it an ethnic group or a strategy for political struggle. There are two parts to the construction of identity within discourse: firstly the creation of the ‘other’ – with all negative qualities and secondly the comparison of that ‘other’ to the self – the antithesis imbued with all the “good” qualities. The archetypal binary hegemonic discourse owed its success to its divisive framing of the identities in play, as well as to the ‘truthful’ nature it attributed to that framing.

After a brief moment of “us” (all Guyanese) against “them” (the British) the struggle for independence introduced complications into the narrative. Between 1958-1964, it was “coolie-rice” PPP government locking Africans out development (African narrative constructed by the PNC) or a “communist” government determined to deliver B.G. into Moscow’s arms (the narrative of the West). During the PNC regime of 1964-1992 – ushered in after a virtual civil war between Indians and Africans – the Indian narrative was of marginalisation through “racial” policies of a government dominated by their African political opponents. Between 1993-2011, the discourse was sharpened by PNC claims of “ethnic cleansing” and other anti-African Guyanese excesses of the PPP. These precipitated anti-Indian riots after alleging the 1997 elections were rigged that segued into a decade-long full-scale assault against the state and perceived supporters of the PPP by violent terroristic gunmen. The latter were dubbed “Resistance Fighters”.

The fundamental process in the construction and reproduction of terroristic violence is the deliberate creation by critics and political entrepreneurs of a totalizing and hegemonic social and political discourse that builds on the previous discourse of hatred, fear, and the justified use of extreme violence. After 2020, the discourse was given a new twist. The PPP – the “them/other” – was now defined as creating an “emerging apartheid state” – the most extreme modern manifestation of the initial White-Black binary othering. The Opposition define themselves as fighting for “democracy, freedom of speech, justice, workers’ rights and presumably, motherhood (good qualities). In contrast, in virtually every speech and article about the PPP, they are declared to be committing “economic genocide” against African-Guyanese.  Millions genocidally murdered in Rwanda are invoked and placed on the heads of Indian-Guyanese who, of course, are responsible for “installing” the PPP. In this discourse, Guyana is in mortal conflict between good and evil and that evil is real, and must be opposed.

Critically, this framing locates evil in the nature of the PPP – and by extension, their supporters –  thereby stigmatizing a whole category of people. Not to mention putting them at risk in an atmosphere dominated by a discourse of “us” against “them” and a history of political violence. It is a compelling discourse and an act of demagoguery that vitiates the actions of the PPP and their supporters of any political content by de-contextualizing and de-historicizing them. They are simultaneously de-humanized and de-personalize.  What justification, ultimately, can be offered for ‘acts of evil’?  The wages of sin, I am told, is death. In other words, holding that the PPP and their supporters are by nature evil (and racist to boot) rather than ordinary people, it is not difficult to see how attacks against them – a la Mon Repos – can become normalized.

Sincerely,

Ravi Dev

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