Here is a thread of highlight clips from the documentary “In the Sky’s Wild Noise” about Walter Rodney.
In these clips, Rodney rails against authoritarianism, censorship, and state capitalist policies of a Guyana led by Forbes Burnham, who’d have Rodney killed a few years later.
In these clips, Rodney rails against authoritarianism, censorship, and state capitalist policies of a Guyana led by Forbes Burnham, who’d have Rodney killed a few years later.
It is worth noting that Burnham was first backed by the U.S. and the British, but started forming strong bonds with Cuba, the USSR, North Korea, and their allies around 1970, around a decade before Walter Rodney would be assassinated for galvanizing people to challenge his power.
“... as people begin to recognize that many of these authoritarian traits and repressive institutions can [emerge] and are emerging in our society, I feel that there is a growing awareness of the need to attempt to combat this repression.”
“We find that since the government has taken over the papers, it has ostensibly nationalized these newspapers, meaning in the interest of the nation, but in practice, it is specifically in the interests of the ruling party.”
“... since the government ... has taken over so many facets of economic life ... it has taken up a position as ... largest single employer in the country.
Consequently, the ground is really set for the utilization of ... political control by means of denying the right to work.”
Consequently, the ground is really set for the utilization of ... political control by means of denying the right to work.”
“What we find ... is a very marginal shift ... towards an expansion of trade ... and a nominal takeover of large sectors of [the] economy, but not based on a firm commitment to break the ties by which our working classes [are] continually exporting surplus to foreign capital.”
“The government has put the whole nation in a position in which it has to pay in order that foreign capital, or foreign, multinational interests, should still continue to draw surplus from our economy [through] indirect means.”
Pay attention to what he says directly after this.
Pay attention to what he says directly after this.
“... the regime in power makes certain claims ... produces ... fancy brochures, which would suggest that there is no such thing as malnutrition ... starvation, debilitation, shortages, and the like, when a glance at the country as it were ... would show all of this to be false.”
“And of course, the government in power claims that since they came to power ... racialism has, more or less, been dismissed in Guyana, [that] the problem has been resolved.
...
We say that, far from being resolved, racism has simply been manipulated by the party in power...”
...
We say that, far from being resolved, racism has simply been manipulated by the party in power...”
“[WPA] sees it as one of the principal tasks of our generation ... to break the division in the ranks of the working class, to overcome that division, to create a unity based on struggle. Not a hypothetical unity, not a theoretical unity, but a unity based on struggle.”
