…and Burnham’s history
Now, “revising” history can’t always be a bad thing, right? Maybe the historian didn’t have access to all the facts? So a revision is just correction, no?? But that’s “revising”, not “revisionism” – which is a horse of a whole other colour. And coming out of the interminable arguments about what Marx meant – even when the fella was alive – with each side denouncing the other as “revisionists!!” It was the worst insult possible!!
Remember Burnham and Jagan arguing who was the “real Marxist”? Marx himself, upon hearing one (French) interpretation of what he was supposed to’ve meant, responded, “Guess I’m not a Marxist!”
Now, folks MAY get away with revisionist history when they’re merely INTERPRETING events – but they can’t just throw facts out the window. Even in this “post truth” era of revisionism, we still have “fact checking”!! These thoughts flashed through your Eyewitness’s mind as he listened to one revisionist rant about how racist and dictatorial the PPP has been to African Guyanese from the moment they appeared on the scene.
As apposed, the WPA fella insisted, to Burnham and the PNC to Indian Guyanese during the time he ruled illegally by rigging the elections. Never mind he thus denied them their fundamental right to choose their Government! Maybe that was “good”, because – as was explained recently by a young PNC leader – PPP followers – read Indian Guyanese – are “intellectually lazy”, and thus Burnham was doing them a favour by voting for them!! Luckily, some FACTS on some other revisionisms had been published last Sunday by Ravi Dev in this newspaper, which your Eyewitness will now use!
Burnham, the fella insisted, was also a mensch to Indian Guyanese, because he worked for “the good of rice and sugar, where Indian Guyanese dominate!! So, the levy he imposed when sugar prices went through the roof – and which scooped up the “profit sharing” that would’ve made each sugar worker a millionaire – was for the Indian Guyanese good?? Well, they wouldn’t have known how to spend all that money, having gotten used to living in poverty, right?!! Ditto when Burnham mandated all rice farmers HAD to sell their paddy for next to nothing to the Government! Burnham, after all, hired his own supporters to run the new rice mills; exported the rice at a huge profit, so he could pay the Disciplined Forces he’d increased by 10 TIMES! The rice farmers, like the sugar workers, were just being kept at the subsistence level they’d gotten used to.
Why have them worry about money and such problems? Wasn’t it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven?
“Revisionized” Burnham was all heart to Indian Guyanese!!
…on Buxton Bandits
The way the revisionists are carrying on, you’d never think “the troubles” – as David Granger dubbed the killing fields between 1998 and 2008 – had anything even remotely connected to “African Freedom Fighters” launching a frontal attack on the state!! Nah!! It was the dictatorial and nasty PPP who, without any rhyme or reason, sent out Phantom Squads along with members of the Disciplined Forces to kill young African Guyanese men.
So what about poor Mr Eusi Kwayana and the late Andaiye, who denounced the gunmen’s attacks on Indian Guyanese on behalf of African Guyanese in a letter captioned, “Not in my name”?? No mention in this revisionist account!! And what about Mr Kwayana being forced to flee the village – and eventually the country – in his old age by the gunmen and their handlers, whom Mr Kwayana mocked sarcastically as “political sophisticates”? Revised out of history!!
And that’s the problem with revisionism. Once you start playing fast and loose with facts, you distort even your own history!!
…and a future peace
The problem with these revisionists using an exaggerated caricature of “their story” is they alienate those who may be neutral, or even inclined to the PPP.
Do they think they can return to power all by their lonesome?
