India is displaying classic signs that foreshadow fascism
qz.com
qz.com
Calling RSS alt-right, completely makes the whole article laughable. RSS was the Right, BJP was the Right, Jan Sangh (BJP's predecessor) was the Right and they were the only game in town, in a mostly Fabian socialist India.
Please go read some History.
Here is a nugget. In Hyderabad riots only happened in INC regime, when TDP was in power no riots. Now both are Centre-Left populist parties.
Rejection of Neo-liberalism is not fascism and the Harvard-Soviet fragilistas of the world, summoning ghosts of Hitler when a country like India is not ONE race is amusing but also horrifying because these morons actually have a platform for their "fake news".
RSS is alt-right of India even if you think it isn't. Anyone who claims otherwise simply because INC or TDP jokers did something wrong elsewhere is either stupid or simply insane. RSS is and always will be an alt-right outfit even if every other political party like INC/TDP/BJP cease to exist.
Go read the some history yourself. I can meanwhile eat some beef nuggets on the side. ;)
Actually this is largely an outcome of scarcity. Not culture.
As somebody whose three generation have lived in Bangalore, the situation wasn't exactly the same. At least with a lot less intensity.
Before all this IT craze started the city was pretty normal to live in.
With the crowd comes competition.
As for the actual subject matter, I don't know enough about India's domestic politics to comment - it's about all I can do most days to keep up with those of my own nation. But, as general bromides go, I think one might do worse than the suggestion that labeling any political change or strain one finds unsatisfactory as "fascist" does neither oneself nor anyone else any good - it increases blood pressure and strains credibility.
That said, the current party is in power rules only 7 states directly and another 5 indirectly (through their allies). For reference, India has 30 states.
Any unpopular, drastic change from this government is going to be met with a lot of resistance.
The term "alt-right" was coined by Richard Spencer and initially referred specifically to his paleoconservative brand of ethno-nationalism. Now it is a broader term, yes, but it's meaning is generally intact.
edit: India is some how a fascist country for having a democratically elected right-wing party, but countries with Official state religions are not. I will drink your down votes, please keep them coming.
Therefore, sitting inside India, it's really funny to see outside columnists trying to paint broad generalizations of Indian politics.
It is anything but funny. In ways similar to the rhetoric "Should everyone else go to Pakistan?".
"Protesting students?- Anti-nationalist". Yeah except the student was protesting against the hanging of a cruel terrorist. "Appeal to social frustration" - makes no sense. India is special in this case in no way. "Craves heroic death" - We do make a big deal when someone dies doing a heroic action. This is fascism?
The whole article is just pointless rant. I think Modi is one of the most smart and active Prime Ministers that India has had and I'm in no way a supporter of BJP (his political party)
[citation needed] (considering his involvement in Gujrat riots and Babari Masjid issues.).
He has said that Islam had ‘many good aspects’ but, ‘when one community says that my community is different from yours, it is higher than yours, and that until you take refuge in mine you cannot get Moksha [salvation], you cannot get Allah, you cannot get Jesus – then conflict starts’. Hinduism taught "truth is one in different ways", and there would be no conflict if it was accepted that ‘all religions are the same’.
[citation needed] (Considering Supreme Court Judgement on Mr. Modi)
>> [citation needed] (considering his involvement in Gujrat riots and Babari Masjid issues.).
What about those Hindus burnt alive in a train by muslim terrorists? Do you support them?
.. and that's exactly what people should do to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Ignoring the seemingly small things is what leads to much bigger issues. History has taught us this again and again.
It's not a pointless rant but a careful warning of what can happen. Let me guess. Whatever dangers the author exposes here are not applicable directly to you. You feel safe and that is why you don't see what is wrong with India today.
For supporters of BJP, the best thing to do is to make sure India doesn't turn to Fascism by keeping the government they elected in check instead of blindly defending it at every corner. Only way to prove the author wrong.
P.S. I don't think those are small things for a democracy like India.
And the author does not 'expose' anything that is threatening to any 'communities' in India. He's just calling the citizens of India fascists in his high-on-vocabulary rant. He is also twisting and distorting Eco's points to suit what India is now.
I wasn't addressing the author's claims of a fascist India, I was merely pointing out how he falsely pictured Modi (who, in my opinion, is a great leader, atleast relative to the previous 5).
I'm fairly certain that you'll also fail to accept the fact that Modi was the mastermind of a series of murders including that of his own cabinet minister Haren Pandya following the events in 2002.
Umberto Eco is a smart guy but that essay is pretty silly. Fascism: anywhere, everywhere, and you can tell it's coming by any number of contradictory and non-definite phenomena.
Sure, he's describing major features of the category of political thinking that he calls fascism - but with the purpose of seeing it coming and doing something about it. He says: "Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world." His article is a rubric for identifying its features. Yet to say that fascism may have any of the enumerated features, in almost any combination, with drastically varying applications and manifestations, is to construct a category so broad that it is practically useless. It's a recipe for calling, and perceiving, almost everything as being nascently fascistic. We need to make better distinctions than this, I feel.
If I were to try to grasp fascism from a different angle and how it relates to other totalitarian tendencies I would characterize it by the social class that puts it into power. The middle class has been the historical base of power for fascism. The points Eco makes are quite resonant amongst middle class people in many countries in particular the downwardly mobile middle class who feel like they are being cheated out of something they are entitled to. That is the mechanism by which fascism takes hold.
In contrast, Marxism-Leninism is primarily concerned with the proletariat and intelligentsia. Maoism is primarily concerned with the peasantry. Really, you can identify a political ideology without looking too closely at its details by examining how it goes about class struggle: its implementation as an actual political movement and not an abstract set of ideas.
I find the "social class" analysis just as unsatisfactory. You might usefully characterze these different tendencies by their rhetoric, but if you insist on looking at them as an "actual implementation", I tend to find that they're just the same side of the same coin - a small state political class enormously empowered, and all other "classes" being simply categories measuring the loyalty and proximity to the state class.
This is a bit of a red herring. The way that verse is explained is not "doing for the sake of doing" but "doing GOOD for the sake of doing GOOD". In no way does it imply not choosing the right action before performing it. It is about not getting attached to a particular expected outcome.
I take a bit of comfort in the fact that India is diverse beyond imagination (languages, religion, caste, states, political leanings, geography etc). Trying to impose any single point of view on such chaos is practically impossible.
I'm sure that if they had not been trying to hard to paint slaves not as people, but as chattel, the slave owners in the past would have called abolition 'identity politics' too - why focus so much on one group?!
The reality is the progress from the left benefits us all. These are never policies that specifically benefit one group, they just end up benefiting groups more because they are so disadvantaged right now.
Again, it feels like another way in which the right seems to believe that freedom and rights for others come at their expense.
It is a shameless exploitation that the left has championed for many decades. Pitting one group against another and laying the bigot/racist card on anyone who suggest special rights for a particular class/identity are not warranted.
For the most part, the identity politics of the right have evolved from an explicit racism and sexism to an implicit one. The argument goes "as long as we don't explicitly mention race, sex, or ethnicity, we're ok," which isn't true. Voter ID laws are perfect example of this: they deny citizens of their constitutional right to vote without due process, in the absence of evidence for any systematic problems, and disenfranchise people based on socioeconomic status, and implicitly by race, but then complain when they're called on it, whining that the left has somehow shifted the goalposts. It's a sort of Bart Simpson defense ("I'm just walking around swinging my arms and if anyone happens to be in my way, it's their fault").
The essence of the Trump phenomenon to me seems to be the right getting tired of playing this game, of hiding the racism and identity politics they play. Trump just came out with it unapologetically, "saying it like it is" according to some of his supporters. I'm not saying everyone who voted for Trump did it for those reasons, but it was certainly a big part of it, especially during the primaries. I believe much of the mainstream right was not truly appalled by what he said, just the fact that he was so open about it. They distanced themselves from him when they believed it was politically harmful, and now are cozying up to him again when they realized it wasn't.
Who's playing identity politics again?
People can, and do, discuss these issues without being called bigots or racists, people can, and do, attack minority candidates for their policies.
That said, if you disagree that people, regardless of race, religion (or lack thereof), sex, orientation, etc... deserve the same basic rights, damn straight the left will call that out.
This attempt to push this idea that the left is wrong for pointing out discrimination is an attempt to push fear into the hearts of the privileged. I am one of those classic straight while males that should apparently be so fearful - but I'm not, because I don't see this attack. We want to allow people the same rights we already have! How is that an attack? How is that 'special rights'?
There are no 'special rights' being granted - just the same rights you and I have. That isn't a cost to us, it lifts us all up.
Yes, there are the minority few who will claim any attack on a black person is because they are black - and that is wrong and gets called out in the rare case it happens. It is not a common or powerful viewpoint.
Yes, the right does try to disadvantage groups. Look at the voter suppression by closing polling stations in areas with high minority populations, look at the fight against marriage equality, against the right to choose. All of these are aimed at pushing certain groups (minorities, LGTBQ, women) down. Pointing this out and trying to help those people get or maintain the rights we already have (I can get out and vote, I can marry who I want) is not 'identity politics'.
Either you are buying into this fear - which you shouldn't, because this is a positive thing, or you just don't want your ability to discriminate to get taken away.
I'm not saying there are not people wrong on the left, or people who don't understand the issues and propose poor solutions - speaking out against those people doesn't make you a bigot. Discussing these things to understand them doesn't make you a bigot. We don't want people to be bigots, we are not pushing for that, but we can't tolerate the denial of people's basic rights. That's unacceptable, and we will not be 'shamed' by this crazy fear.
"Identity politics on the left eventually triggers identity politics on the right".
In a very real sense, it is identity politics on the right that produced identity politics on the left, as the franchise spread such that the groups benefitting from the egalitarian impulses of the left actually became even paetially enfranchised and thus meaningful subjects of identity politics.
Imagine if we had not abolished slavery simply because it could (and did) cause some people to become more racist.
Arguing that the left should simply let some people have their rights denied, because the right will throw a hissy fit is unconscionable.
The right labelling the left's attempts to give everyone equal rights as 'identity politics' is the political equivalent of 'stop hitting yourself' as they grab your hand and force it into your face. They are the ones denying people their rights based on identity, fighting that is not wrong, whatever doublethink you want to apply.
Just because you support fascism doesn't mean you want to genocide people. Yes, it's happened in the past, but so has it happened with democracy, communism, and any other political ideology you can think of.
Fascism in some places has been very effective, for example Park Chung-hee. You might disagree with some of the things he did, but he made South Korea very prosperous.
I have thought a lot about this. And I think that the western media seems have a genetic dislike for popular leaders. I guess the UK/US media expects their country's leaders to be Eton/Harvard boys who maintain an air of separation from the common population. Anytime a leader tries to get close to the public opinion, they are roasted for being populist/jingoistic etc.
Narendra Modi has been an extremely popular leader, even before he became the Prime Minister. He was re-elected twice for the post of the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat (and this was after the opposition tried to brand him as the key perpetrator in the 2002 riots.). Under him Gujarat became the fastest growing state of the country, and a lucrative destination for industries. His inclination towards industrialization was later used against him as an argument for his collusion with the "crony capitalists".
But Modi has ignored all the rubbish against him and carried on working. He works 18 hours every day. The greatest change in his rule has been the focus on making the bureaucracy to work instead of sleep, as it has been doing for the last 40 years.
I am not a huge supporter of his party, and I hate fascists with all my heart, and I can say that Modi has been good for the country. His policies have broken through a lot of bad fungus that had settled on the country in the multiple decades of INC lead rule. And it is refreshing to witness.
Western media can go court their Trumps and Farages. We are fine here.
TRIED? He may not have started it, but he let riots run for three days.
"Under him Gujarat became the fastest growing state of the country," Any facts here? I keep hearing this "Gujarat Model", but statistics put it in the same range as Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_and_unio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_and_unio...
"He works 18 hours every day." please recognize propoganda when you see one.
"The greatest change in his rule has been the focus on making the bureaucracy to work instead of sleep, as it has been doing for the last 40 years." We'll talk when we see actual results.
"and I can say that Modi has been good for the country". To some extent, I'd agree, atleast it has spirited people up.
However, as compared to Trump ? jeez not even the leader of India's right wing quasi-religious party could ever say "ban muslims" in India.
I have a feeling that we are going to see a lot more of these articles... the liberal media in the US is trying to make sense of what just happened. And the closest available model is the Indian democracy.
Modi was held directly held responsible for 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom, though he was later cleared of all wrongdoing( politicians almost never get convicted of any crime in India, they are noble class that hovers over the democracy but never directly participates in it.)
I am actually laughing at the article and many of the comments here.
Trump and Brexit aren't isolated symptoms: it really does seem to be Springtime for Hitler wannabes this year.
People called Farage a fascist, but there was very little overlap if any at all between what he believes and advocates, and what fascists do. Farage doesn't want a strong government, it's questionable if he wants any sort of functioning government at all, he's closer to an anarchist than a fascist. Same with Trump, he doesn't believe what fascists believe or want what fascists want. Now a lot of people don't like them, and fair enough - but if words are to mean anything at all let's retire "fascist" as a general purpose pejorative for any badman...
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come
The fact that people abuse the word fascist, especially its use by the Soviets who used it describe anything Anti-Soviet when they grew bored of calling things imperialist, does not mean that no coherent phenomena exists which has been consistently described as fascist.
A closer reading of your Orwell essay shows that Orwell does believe that fascism is meaningful, mostly he is just complaining that people often abuse the word:
>But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. - George Orwell, What is Fascism (1944) [0]
Furthermore note that Orwell wrote this in 1944, the world war hasn't even ended, the histories and analysis we now have access to haven't yet been written. The perspective Orwell has when writing this is fairly limited, as Orwell himself says it is too early to say what fascism is (while admitting it is a political system):
>But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword. - George Orwell, What is Fascism (1944) [0]
Eco on the other hand grew up in Fascist and post-Fascist Italy and then studied it for many years. With the distance of time, personal experience and access to the work of historians, it is not surprising Eco has more to say about fascism that Orwell.
[0]: http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc