Bytes & Bites

17 February 2021

A scam of novelty appears to have burst in the RW firmament. First was a conventional expose of RW Troll army led by an aspiring star Mr Kapil Mishra, against whom a conscience keeper Mr Harsh Mander has gone to the Delhi HC to get the police to register an FIR for his acts in the course of the Delhi riots and hate crimes of last February, where Mr Mishra had recruited some 20000 people and developed ‘toolkits’ for his followers to tweet and hashtag ( trend) on Twitter on cue. When tweets happen in such a fashion, for the unfamiliar but who are now following the Disha Ravi case, it is called Twitter Storm, so essentially these youth are the storm troopers (Sturmabteilung) of the BJP, for without the clear nurture and support of Mr Kapil Mishra, he would not have had these folk sign up for him. The other one is involving a certain Neel who is picking up connections and contacts, getting orders for iPhones, offering them ‘cheaper’ than in India and also in the process, exchanging tweets with Who’s Who of the BJP RW IT firmament, from Mr Agnihotri the Leni Riefenstahl of this Indian RW environment to their Hans Fritzsche equivalent, editor of a digital journal called OpIndia Ms Nupur Sharma.

Now we are more or less in familiar territory, thanks to the exhausting detail with which Holocaust Commission recorded the Nazi Regime in exhausting detail. We know how the case for such a comparison is made by some passages in the works of Mr Golwalkar, the Bhisma Pitamaha of the RSS Pantheon, revered next only to Mr Hegdewar, which offer support of Nazi exclusivity, of its attempt to reclaim all Germany for Germans, driving out outsiders and outsider influences. ( Hitler’s Anschluss in Austria, the initial invasion in Sudetenland and Poland were all tailored for this message of claiming for the Deutsche volk that which was all Deutsche Land.)

What is also documented is how many influencers and instrumentalists in the Nazi regime were actually ‘profiteers’ or ‘skimmers’ who just ran with the rabbits and hunted with the hounds with finesse, making fortunes for them. So we would have all kinds, including this Mr Hitesh Patel aka Neel Patel operating this handle ‘@nto1927’ a ‘blue ticked’ Twitter account, who tweeted about Trump’s ban by Twitter and advised Mr Agnihotri how to beware of a similar situation for Mr Modi in 2024, who is now the exposed scamster of iPhones! You can look up the #ScamviaTwitter for some details, but the world wide web lets us know that this fraudster has been operating for close to two decades, and we are only wiser now in India, after multiple Indian groups abroad on WhatsApp were preyed upon by this person.

Yet, the bigger scams are always lost sight of in the face of such small fish. Just look at Trump’s mopping up of close to a billion dollars after he lost on 3 November 2020, one that ran on the premise that it was stolen! Right now Q Anon is agog with Trump returning as US President on 4 March 2021, because once upon a time, in the US Constitution that was the date when the Presidential Inauguration took place. This was amended only in 1933 and it was only in 1937 that FD Roosevelt was inaugurated on 20 January for the first time! Nations that keep step with the times, do not suffer as the US has suffered, from a mix of anachronism and whataboutery, from dubious precedences and more, which is why schemes like filibuster and gerrymandering, not framed by the Founders and not written into any legislative language, end up being the bedrock of the Republican party and the reason why Trump remains their best bet to stay relevant in 2022! If it were not already having world wide effects, the infractions of the Republican Party through its servitude to President Trump from 2016 to now, would have been a matter of mere amusement. That is why unless a Democrat tide holds a wall against the Republicans, keeping Congress blue and stronger shade of blue at that in 2022, the Biden Administration is likely to not shape the world in the way President Biden seeks to per his inaugural address of 2021! Q Anon will keep churning some new theory or fantasy and the MAGA will keep buying into it. Right now Trump Hotel in DC has actually jacked up rentals for the week leading to and on 4 March 2021! It is just a fleece of the faithful!

Why I feel, that RW in India is not a patch on Nazi Germany, is not because of their lack of intent to so intimidate or cast India in their Thought, but due to their lack of content. Unlike Hitler’s oratory and Nazi subtleness as it went about spreading hate against Jews, taking over media and other public opinion in Germany, the RW has been in India handed over on a platter much of the public space uncontested in the run up to 2014. So in the nearly 7 years, this narrative has been slowly but surely getting unhinged, unhelped by the diffidence in denouncing the obviously flawed Arnab Goswami and his types, when they get exposed. Take the ‘nano chip’ on ₹ 2000, take the current issue of ‘we won like crazy’, both these echo and as one will follow the other, enter popular culture and narrative from ground up, being the butt of jokes and similes. For no fault of Mr Modi who is trying to keep the narrative coherent and focused, his enthusiastic followers are tripping over each other, first they did the Chronology stuff that made Mr Modi rush to delink CAA from NRC and now they have gone the whole hog painting Punjab with the Khalistani brush! We who assume that Mr Modi must be knowing about Journalist Kuppan or Comedian Faruqi or even Disha Ravi would be surprised how even 4G in J&K could have got his attention when POTUS was trying to speak to him! Any person who watched Yes Minister or Yes Prime Minister should if even with smattering familiarity with Indian babudom, know how our adroit IAS ( who are at the receiving end from Mr Modi from time to time) can manage to cover up everything- even a nuclear holocaust can be sold as a Lodi festivity gone awry!

You just see how easily journalists have repeatedly broken into the RW Troll factories, starting from Swati Chaturvedi who wrote a book about it, to now Newslaundry https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/02/15/we-infiltrated-the-telegram-groups-of-the-bjp-leaders-online-network-to-see-what-they-do expose about the Hindu Ecosystem run by Kapil Mishra! So this is not the actual sophistry of a system that wants to enter political subconsciousness on the sly. Take Mr Amit Shah’s address https://twitter.com/imMAK02/status/1361605083041996808?s=20 to cadre on the preparations for WB polls, where he wanted them to create WA groups and humour and also frighten at times the recipients and create narrative dominance. He clearly detailed his blue print. If the INC is only now waking up to recruit social media savvy folk, after prolonged hiatus and sacking their pioneer Actress Ramya aka Divya Spandana after 2019 electoral fiasco, is it the BJP’s fault or Indian voters? If the liberal ecosystem is always busy sorting out its own, seeking a ‘purity’ of thought and action along with spotless antecedents going all the way back to Adam and Eve to qualify for their support, is that the RW problem. Just see how a familiar popular NSUI leader Debashree Bora https://www.insidene.com/bhuban-pegu-debashree-bora-join-bjp-along-with-minority-community-youths/ from Assam was roped in by Hemant Biswal Sarma just the other day. Or even go further back to Ms Mahua Moitra who was once a Youth Congress recruit herself, whose fiery speeches in Parliament have made her a rockstar in liberal circles. Clearly non Congress players, like TMC and naturally the BJP have a far more coherent strategy in social media and in electoral booth management for which the Congress is still cropper, which we cannot colour in our ‘black and white’ world view!

If the RW ecosystem can convince people that INC is anti national, the farmers agitation is an international conspiracy, its counter is coming not from any political party, or news media, but actually only from Mr Ravish. The reason is the condescending attitude of elitist liberal world view. Only the right of centre liberals who are dismayed by how the economy has gone off the rails are now wondering how to confront the looming ultraright ultranationalist loony economic theories, and find soul comfort targeting Rahul Gandhi for failing to defend them sufficiently.
So from ‘suit boot sarkar’ now the slogan is ‘Hum do hamare do’ and with this the Union Budget was sought to be trashed? A 2 minute silence in Lok Sabha was supposed to inform the country why farmers have besieged Delhi and why their cause is just and not conspiratorial?

The only glimmer of hope is how Twitter has seen calls for an exodus to Teetar or Koo, like how WhatsApp saw one to go to Telegram or Signal. It will make RW echochamber more solid but spare them the chaos of the liberal ecosytem. As Disha Ravi said in her mature assessment, Mr Modi’s messaging is the winner, in how it is so linear and uncluttered, when she said “ I think one thing he did right…he was able to make people understand about his aims…My parents support him, I know…He has really convinced people that what he is doing is good…Majority of the population does support him.” She even added for good measure that there were no political parties, ‘definitely not Congress’ that had ecological sustainability as one of their priority areas. As she cools her heels in police custody and thinks about the legal challenges she is faced with, does it provoke in her a reassessment of the Congress which is now the only party to openly oppose the government action against her, led by both Rahul and Ms Vadra personally condemning her arrest? Do the mahapanchayats in UP Haryana Rajasthan Punjab and elsewhere of ‘farmers’ ( rural folk) mean any change on groundswell support from Mr Modi? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuP_HVHUYAA9SNe?format=jpg&name=medium

Between bytes and what bites, do remember, our world is actually far more complex, as this pandemic has shown to us dearly and in upclose and personal manner. As voters and citizens, we need to be more circumspect and less persuaded by hyperbole. If Republicans and MAGA who are now facing criminal charges for 6 January Insurrection on the Capitol reflect on how hyperbole and political rhetoric got them into trouble, if Americans now pause and think how wonderful it is to have a boring Biden Presidency, their lead could have a calming effect across the world. As Bitcoin mining reveals, things of value going forward are complex, energy and focus intensive, and call for us to attend to them with the full of our faculty! If the surfing of bytes is to offer us any insight at all, it must be this! Remember this before your next click bait!