Dear Editor,
I thought about ignoring Mr Rajendra Bissessar’s response to my letter which he captioned ‘The press is used to impose cultural hegemony over the minds of the working class’ SN May 26). However, his call for my linking his criticism of imperialist and colonialist historical control of the means of information with the current hegemony over certain aspects of media in Guyana to invoke criticism is childish, petulant, and utterly ridiculous. In the first place Mr Bissessar is an individual, not a group of people. Further, his letter broadly criticized the control of information as a means of controlling the thinking of people. It matters not to what degree that occurs, the theatre in which it occurs, or the actors involved in the drama. Like injustice, political hegemony over the sources of information anywhere amounts to a threat to the freedom of information everywhere. I reiterate, you cannot cherry pick the theatres of wrongdoing at which the ethical finger of disapproval should be pointed.
Mr Bissessar asserted in his initial letter: “We do know however the history of the oppressor class as they own and control the media, the publishing houses, the TV stations etc, etc, and which they use to disseminate their ideas. In this way they exercise hegemony over our minds, over our thought processes and so we see through their eyes, hear through their ears, speak through their mouths conscious of only their world and their perspective.” How does drawing a thin line of similarity between the control of media by his defined “oppressor class” with its domestic replica amount to evidence of wanting to ignore the class issues? It would seem to me that he is engaging here in exactly that of which he accuses me. That is, he seems fractiously bent on steering the salient issue of domestic information control into competitive debate on political ideology. And frankly I have personally had it up to my neck with arguments that divert attention from what is immediately affecting the lives of people on the ground, while engaging in dialectics designed to promote one ideological set of beliefs and values over another. This argument has been ongoing for decades while the manifestations in every nation present indisputable evidence that regardless of enunciated ideologies, it is the hubris and power greed of the hands on power that are responsible for the oppression of the working class. The theory of dialectical materialism emanating from Pradoville or similar posh housing development in Guyana amounts to egotistical self-serving rhetoric in a social environment where the gap between ‘who gat’ and ‘who ain’t gat,’ continue to widen exponentially.
Mr Bissessar asserts that “the press is used to impose cultural hegemony over the minds of the working class, and many of us are victims and do not realize it.” My question is, of course, in terms of Guyana is this critique exclusive, or does it apply across the board in respect of all press entities? Because the solution is the freeing up of the channels and instruments of information, thus enabling and increasing the choices of the working class. And further, an independent press entity involved in this kind of activity is far less dangerous to the working class than a press entity with the power and resources of the state behind it, engaging in shaping public opinion with the motive of political opportunism. Regardless of how far back we go in history, the discovery is that it is the power of state aligned with private business and media entities that have represented the primary obstacles to freedom and justice for the masses. From Southern Africa to Selma, Alabama, the revolution and activism of peoples of conscience were in response to oppression in which the state was the major player, not the private press. The oppressor class has never been a distinct bunch of private entities. The oppressor class has always been a conglomerate of state and private interests engaging in symbiotic politics. Mr Bissessar seems to be walking us down a road while carefully making every effort to avoid stepping on sacred cows.
When a poor Indian champions the state’s oppression of a poor African, or vice versa, I would advance the argument that the issue of class has become submerged in a deluge of cultural dispositions that are seemingly, at the moment, quite intractable. And that is where Guyana is at this point in time. Neither of the main political parties have a message that resonates with the vast majority or even a significant minority of its opponent’s constituency. Waxing eloquently about the class vicissitudes shared by all sectors of the working class population without a resolution of the ethnic operant that shapes our attitudes and behaviours, to me of course, amounts to an exercise in futility. And the reluctance to accept what has become a serious dilemma in the social and political construct of Guyana by some, causes one to wonder whether they are indeed interested in bringing the collective bottom upward, or whether they are setting down conditions to ensure that such movement must only occur under a distinct set of circumstances favourable to one political side of the equation.
The freedom of people to choose their sources of information should be as important and as inviolable as their freedom to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice. Engaging in a macro-argument that examines these issues in an international or historical context, without relating it to local experience, is a trifle disingenuous I believe. The blatant monopolizing of the state-owned media apparatus and discrimination in media ownership in Guyana, especially as it relates to print and audio media, would amount to a grave injustice anywhere on this planet. And paraphrasing Martin Luther King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. If we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied up in a single garment of destiny, then whatever affects one of us directly should affect all of us indirectly.” We should not cherry-pick democratic and human rights values, and express indignation over press indoctrination by private interests while ignoring its replica by state interests. They are inseparable as issues that limit the freedom of the working class to information. In addition, when the sense of empathy manifested by the working class is weighted towards shared physical connections rather than shared social and economic interest, that dilemma should not be casually shunted aside.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
