Having just come out of the Easter season, one of the recent reflections was on the tremendous power exercised by the Jewish mob howling for Jesus’ crucifixion. In the end, not Roman rule nor Sanhedrin suasion, but the voice / vote of the people put Jesus on the cross, even forcing the arm of mighty colonial Rome to ransom a notorious rebel insurrectionist while doing so.
That doctrine that proposes all power on earth to reside (by God’s own design) in the collective will and unified action of its people is as old as the hills and as popular as rain, regardless of its philosophical, religious, legal, or political language of expression. This explains why the science and study of those factors that shape, influence, alter and affect public opinion has always been a matter of grave importance to those interested in wielding and maintaining power.
According to the biblical narrative, only a week earlier, the polls indicated a unanimous triumph for Jesus. Although there may be rare exceptions, such an extreme swing in the tide of public opinion is generally an indication not of sudden change in conviction, but of successful widespread voter intimidation and suppression. In other words, on the evening of Jesus’ trial, the people with the palms were hiding in their houses. It was clearly not the same crowd that took to the streets shouting “crucify him!”
Not only mighty imperial powers, but also vassal States and subjugated peoples understand clearly in Pilate’s wringing of hands, the naked truth: that in the end, it is not the complex machinery of state; nor constitutions, covenants, treaties and conventions; not even the backing of the most disciplined, equipped and fortified of armies; only the sustained determination of that crowd that angrily takes to the streets in expressing their intent; this is the final arbiter of power on earth, God himself being bound by his own Word from interfering with His own gift to mankind of sovereign choice. (Far be it from the Most High to abase Himself to become another manipulator of mind and matter, who gave each its purpose and instruction.)
There is another path however of public suasion besides intimidation (however expressed, whether nakedly or in the softer forms of subtlety and cooption). This involves a change in the public narrative. Whatever can change the common mindset will also change the common order. Those who would walk this path however must be courageous. The most guarded imperial treasure is information.
Under tyranny, whenever some simpleton, whether a Bogle of Stoney Gut or a Jesus of Nazareth, begins to publish information that challenges the common mindset, (the pejorative word describing such a one is ‘rabble rouser’) their public execution is hoped to dissuade others from following the same path.
Bogle, though no scholar, was sufficiently learned to offer a visceral critique of British Empire, which ultimately cost him his life. Britain, for their part, having learned that they could never again repeat that display of Brutish suppression, must have felt quite self-satisfied to behold, 100 years after Bogle, Jamaican crowds, ogled on by the likes of ‘give-us-Barabbas’ journalist, Wilmot Perkins, adoring Bogle’s murderers as life-givers to Jamaican society, openly reminiscing imagined colonial splendor, longing once again for Britain’s bosom to cradle us from a cruel world.
Bogle’s blood however has given birth to an entire generation whose access to information from Britain’s own ivory towers, parliamentary records and history books qualifies them now to channel Bogle’s righteous indignation with quite a different narrative of the place of British Empire in the annals of human history.
It is undoubtedly disconcerting for the British to have to hear their champions like Churchill and Rhodes publicly disparaged, and compared to Hitler, not by a bellicose rabble (at least not yet), but by statesmen, scholars, and historians of impeccable credentials such as Indian MP Shashi Tharoor, former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations; or to hear Nigeria’s Muhammad Sanusi II, former Emir of Kano and Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, connect the dots between British colonial policy and the rise of Boko Haram, or to have to abide the Caribbean’s Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, giving public lectures on Britain’s ‘perfect Caribbean crime’: ignored genocide, faked emancipation, insincere independence and no reparations.
Those writing tomorrow’s history seem poised to offer a diametrically different perspective to the God-save-our-gracious-queen narrative. Subjugated vassals bear imperial impunity with gracious forbearance, but there is a tide in the affairs of men and nations…
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YeKengalé 