Demagogue:
a
political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and
prejudices rather than by using rational argument.
Racist: a person who believes that a particular race is
superior to another
Dog whistle: political messaging employing coded language
that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional,
different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.
On September 20th
2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, President George W Bush addressed the
joint session of the Congress where he spoke the words, which became a legend
for demagogues all over the world “If you are not with us, you are against us!”
. I do not imagine POTUS would have seen the utility beyond making a forceful
argument to clamp down on personal freedoms for the security of the nation, but
leaders around the world found many a racist utility for these magical words.
There are several instances where these words were repeated – mostly during
election stumps to vilify a community / race which are co-incidentally a
minority and by a person who is co-incidentally from a majority community/
race. Not long, before this became a code to browbeat minorities into
submission to the will of the majority. Today, when Donald Trump wants to “Make
America Great Again” by deporting Mexican immigrants and banning Muslims, we
hear the underlying spirit as – “If you are not with us, you are against us”.
In India, we are not
foreign to demagogues. In the past, we used to hear political leaders speak in euphemisms
which were a dog whistle. Today, in Modi-fied India, all pretenses are dropped
and there is open call to target individuals from minority communities – esp. Muslims
and Dalits. Demagogue racism is the new flavor in India. Hindus in India have
long been wary of Muslims because foreign Muslim leaders plundered India for
long and more recently becasue Pakistan was formed on the theory that Muslims
didn’t wish to live in Hindu-India. Today, leaders like Modi openly fan these hidden
–yet deep seated fears and make a case that voting a Hindu strongman is an
effective way to thwart Muslim designs to take over India again. Modi has won 2
terms as a Chief Minister (head of Government at State level) of Gujarat
(western state of India) and one term (thus far) as the Prime Minister of
India. India has seen the worst racist demagoguery over the past 2 years, sadly
there has been only a little governance.
“Make America Great Again”
is very similar to “Secularism means India first” as used by Modi in 2014. Its
classic demagoguery because nobody would openly challenge these polemic
statements, however, it is a dog whistle to supporters to brand people / races
/ communities who can be termed as trying to stop the nation from being great
by their mere existence. So then, the self-style moral police are let loose to
curb sale and consumption of beef (a source of sustenance for many poor Dailt
and Muslim families) by randomly equating cow as sacred animal to the nation. Dalit
scholars pursuing PhD on fellowships are targeted as anti-nationals because now
Government is the nation state and anyone critical of it are anti-nationals.
Fake cases are foisted on individuals / organizations (Teesta Setalvad / Ford
foundation) to make them run from pillar to post defending themselves so that
they have little time left to do their jobs effectively. NGOs get banned for receiving
foreign funds while political parties do it openly and stay functional.
In India, development has
become a code word for targeting communities and spreading communal discord
with a single notion – Hindu supremacy. The fact that Donald Trump and Narendra
Modi use the same playbook with so many similar plays would have been
horrifying had people been listening. The other thing about demagogues is that
they have a knack to be fork tongued. They always speak what you like to hear
and when elected, pursue their own agenda because they know for sure you have
been lulled into a coma of feeling safe in the hands of a strong leader. One
last play, tarnish the opposition to you as corrupt and dangerous and more importantly
as someone who does not have the nation’s best interests in the mind. This is a
heady cocktail which lulls you into inaction and euphoria but has a serious hangover
once you sober up. So the choice for America is simple, do you want to make the
choice India made 2 years ago? If yes,
soon your media will be like ours and North Korea’s – paying glowing tributes
to the supreme leader and hanging on to his every word. If not, you would have
dodged a bullet for now, but demagogues don’t go away, they just find a
different dog whistle the next time around.
The solution is simple, be
alert all the time. An age old adage said “If something is too good to be true,
it probably isn’t “. Demagoguery has a rule – it is always good to hear.
Beware!
So long…..
