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Indian Press on Lessons for India of Siege of Capitol in Washington DC, American Democracy, and Temple Demolition in Pakistan: New Age Islam's Selection, 12 January 2021


By New Age Islam Edit Desk

12 January 2021

• Why Siege of Capitol in Washington DC Resonates Closer Home, Carries Lessons for Us All

By Suhas Palshikar

• To Heal Itself, American Democracy Will Need More Than Just the Replacing Of Trump with Biden

By Peter Ronald Desouza

• Another Temple Bites The Dust in Pakistan

By Tilak Devasher

• Dragon And Kabul

By Bhopinder Singh

• Tracing the Roots of an American Brand of Extremism

By Kabir Taneja and Prithvi Iyer

• At Stake, the Future of Democracy

By Binayak Dasgupta

• The Time Has Come For All Democrats across the World to Unite

By Shashi Shekhar

• Trump Is Not Yet Over And Done With

By V Sudarshan

• Drama in the US Is Not Over Yet

By Kalyani Shankar

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Why Siege Of Capitol In Washington DC Resonates Closer Home, Carries Lessons For Us All

By Suhas Palshikar

January 12, 2021


The attempted mob takeover of the Capitol will probably remain a rare development. Rare, because political ingenuity often finds more sophisticated versions of conceit. Setbacks to democracy are not new, nor are megalomania and orchestrated outrage unknown as its causes. Trump’s rhetoric had all these elements. While the US has currently managed to stall the takeover, the ghost of that takeover should teach larger lessons.

The most elementary lesson is about the fragility of democracy. The US experience indicates that democracy requires continuous caution. Just as there is nothing like a naturally pro-democratic social environment, there is also nothing like a natural assurance of democracy’s sustenance. Both are matters of collective social will and effort. The second lesson is that executive coups are likely to be the norm rather than exception. As the American presidency transformed into the imperial presidency and parliamentary systems transformed into prime ministerial systems, executives became the repositories of state power and came to represent the might of the state. This has paved the way for silent or noisy coups by the executives. As Hungary has shown, the pandemic only expedited this process and as this writer warned last year, India’s “successful” lockdown inaugurated the template for turning the public sphere into a silence zone.

But perhaps the least learned lesson at home in India is about the comparative pathology of such autarchy lurking in our midst. So, while looking from a distance as to where Trump failed and why, let us better focus on where even Indira Gandhi’s infamous “emergency” dictatorship too differs from the slow death of democracy we might be witnessing. Because the basic Trump takeaway is that one should not wait till the crowds actually occupy the democratic space.

Executive coups are a product of a triad: Constructing a constituency of willing mobs, corrosion of institutions and producing a political establishment unconcerned with democratic norms. Trump could arouse the mobs but that was only at the final moment of a long drawn bitter contestation over the election outcome. American democracy may still claim that the culture of such mob outrage is not “normal”. Trump made every effort to demean institutions but did not succeed in his hope of a complete takeover. Third, he had limited success in waylaying the Republican party but both parties finally agreed on rescuing American democracy from his assault and, along with the legislature, the other important part of the political establishment, the media, too, did not yield. In a sense, therefore, Trump failed and his attempt remained desperate and amateur.

In India, whenever any discussion of assault on democracy ensues, the story of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency is obviously remembered as the first brazen, but short-lived, executive coup. The Emergency story continues to attract derision from her critics and careful academic memorialisation by students of Indian politics (the latest is the new book, India’s First Dictatorship by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil). But it is necessary not to allow the light of memory to blind us to the present. In comparison to the Emergency of 1975, the current moment is far better equipped for an executive coup and even while Indians mocked the US for January 6, much worse signals of a more serious takeover have dotted the political landscape. The footsteps of the current coup are so soft that most analysts and observers are unwilling to even recognise its shadow, leave aside the actual darkness it has brought.

So, where do India’s executive coups differ from Trump’s? Indira Gandhi’s coup used institutions more effectively than Trump, but despite all her populism, her resort to mobs as instruments of takeover was very limited. While she could easily rein in her own party, she had to face an uncompromising Opposition and take recourse to preventive detention. So, in comparison to Trump, hers was a more determined and somewhat systematic coup, barring announcing elections.

With the experience of Indira Gandhi, it was thought that India could not have another executive coup — firstly, because she was politically punished and, secondly, because collective memory would enhance a public reason more cautious about such takeovers. But the current phase of Indian politics might be recorded in history as the second executive coup India has had — and a much more successful and durable one.

In terms of constructing a constituency of the mob, the present moment is probably more dangerous than what India has seen so far for two reasons: There is a carefully orchestrated and sustained use of mobs which are excited prior to being unleashed and, two, a network of ideologically motivated organisations systematically whips up mob mentality among sections that are emotionally pushed to the precipice. Thus, the “science” of mob politics is employed in a nuanced manner with a rhetorical discourse legitimating the mob as the people.

Secondly, the present moment is characterised by an unprecedented institutional collapse. Executive coups are dependent on bureaucracies for their operational competence and on courts for the constitutional location of political chicanery. The ease with which both these institutional safeguards have crumbled has only made it easier for the coup to become viable and respectable.

Three, the vigour of the political establishment to fight against the coup is completely lacking. With the media as cheerleader, the coup has marched on. The ruling party and the legislature have been easily set aside — much as Indira Gandhi did. But what is even more striking is the way in which the so-called Opposition has caved in. The failure of the Opposition is not merely in its inability to fight back but more in its inability to grasp the severity of the moment and its willingness to share the same traits of autarchy.

Trump relied on megalomania; Indira Gandhi, too, was carried away by her own image. But in the present moment, we have a combination of megalomania with systemic ingredients ensuring that in an Orwellian fashion, democracy will not be defined by what ought to be, but on the basis of what is claimed as democracy. His vote share notwithstanding, Trump could muster only a handful and only for a few hours to claim that they constitute the people of the US. In India’s case, with much less vote share, a large section is willing to keep their faith in the new idea of democracy constituted by victimhood and dominance as entitlements of majority.

So, laugh as we may at the situation America finds itself in, it is as well that we are aware of our own willingness to sustain an executive coup.

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Suhas Palshikar, based at Pune, taught political science and is currently chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/us-capitol-trump-mob-siege-democracy-india-7142473/

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To Heal Itself, American Democracy Will Need More Than Just the Replacing Of Trump with Biden

By Peter Ronald Desouza

January 11, 2021



One is tempted to see the bizarre rioting in the US Capitol by thousands of Donald Trump supporters seeking to stall President-elect Joe Biden’s certification by Congress as a one-off event, a unique descent into madness by an essentially robust democracy. Such a reading is fundamentally wrong. The mobs storming the hallowed precincts of American democracy, on January 6, were not an exceptional lapse but were, in fact, a symptom of a sick democracy. American democracy is critically ill. It suffers from five disorders.

The first malady, and perhaps the one most difficult to treat, is the breakdown in the culture of bipartisanship that was so intrinsic to American politics. It kept the system working. Difference and consensus, intense competition and compromise, all produced a political pragmatism that was at the heart of American democracy. This has now been abandoned. The speeches delivered by Republican senators on the floor of the house, minutes after the assault on the Capitol, were hostile and unyielding. Instead of closing ranks and accepting the logic of defeat, of embracing the national interest which their leader Mitch McConnell had earlier in the day articulated, a large number of Republican Congressmen chose to pander to the President’s narcissistic delusion of a stolen election. Partisan interest got morphed with the national interest. For them, the enemy was the Democratic party and not the mobs, the electoral system and not the hooligans who were undermining it. Bipartisanship in America is dead, killed by an ideological chauvinism that sees competitors as the enemy within. This is a mindset that is difficult to treat. It is built on a psychology of hate that resides deep in the soul of its proponents. It is incapable of compromise and challenging to cure.

The second malady feeding the first, and perhaps dependent on it, is the rise of the plebiscitary leader. The more appropriate term is to see Trump not as a populist leader but as a plebiscitary one. A plebiscitary leader speaks directly to his followers over the heads of institutions that are supposed to constrain him but have, as shown, little power to do so. A relationship of devotion develops between the leader and followers that is unmediated by the institution’s tempering logic. The leader provides the followers with meaning, with a view of the world that speaks to their anxieties and insecurities. This is essentially Max Weber’s thesis on the charismatic personality. Trump fits it to a T. He built his constituency with phrases and slogans such as “make America great again”, “drain the swamp”, “lock her up”, “stop the steal”, that created a partisan constituency both in the street and within the elected chambers. It was willing to walk with him to the ends of the earth. Social media aided the process of partisan constituency formation. It exaggerated the feeling of grievance and promised that the leader would address the problem. Trump was playing for a “winner takes all” stake since defeat is for losers. In such a politics, institutions get enfeebled, democratic conventions get ignored, and the locus of power shifts from the office to the political leader. Officials, seen as Wilhelm Reich’s “little men”, develop an attitude of complicity with the leader. In Trump’s America, the little men have come to the centre of government.

The third political illness, which thrives in tandem with the above two, is the debilitation of institutions. Institutions are the life and soul of a democracy. They check the excesses of power, socialise elected representatives into the do’s and don’ts of democratic politics. They embody the rules and conventions that maintain the balance between private and public interests. Trump tore into these checks and balances. When his chiefs of staff, and several of his secretaries opposed his views, he just replaced them. When the mainstream media, such as CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, wrote about his transgressions, he mocked them describing them as purveyors of “fake news”. In his drive to dominate institutions, Attorney General William Barr became his bulldog. The leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, became his praetorian guard and Lindsey Graham his dancing cheerleader. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who accompanied Trump for a photo-op to a church in Washington, after it had been forcibly cleared of protesters, apologised for this compromise.

One has, over the last four years, watched with horror and disbelief as the custodians of America’s democratic institutions succumbed to the narcissism of their plebiscitary leader. Even small conventions, although symbolically significant, that established the principle of conflict of interest were cast aside by Trump when he appointed family members to high office and refused to release his income tax returns as had been the convention with previous presidents. Trump took a sledgehammer to institutions. They were unable to corral him. He exposed the fragility of their checks and balances. Biden will have to work hard to repair them.

The fourth malaise is the elite capture of not just institutions but of the political discourse. Much has been written about elite capture of institutions, so let me dwell here on the capture of discourse. Gaetano Mosca, the Italian theorist of elites, referred to it as “political formulas”. These are arguments and explanations used by elites to get those over whom they rule to accept their ideas and arguments. Political formulas give legitimacy to elite rule. American democracy today is a textbook illustration of how the political formula of neo-liberalism has been used by capitalist elites to not just accumulate wealth but to make the non-elite feel that such accumulation is in the public interest. From the World Economic Forum to the humble corridors of Niti Aayog, the “political formulas” of neo-liberalism economics rule. As Jean Paul Satre would have said, Davos speaks and Niti Aayog provides the echo. Trump is neo-liberalism’s loudest spokesperson.

The above maladies have gained a life, and become possible, because of the fifth malaise in American society — its increasing inequality. It provides the soil for Trumpian mobilisation. This increasing inequality of American capitalism needed a spokesman and a cover, to convert a lie into a truth. Trump provided both. He changed the vocabulary of politics, making it respectable to mock, deride, denounce and heap scorn on one’s political adversaries. Attention had to be distracted from the real challenge of increasing equality. Trump made vigilante politics, especially of the White supremacist variety, a legitimate aspect of American politics. It is worrisome that his model of politics is now available for other plebiscitary leaders. With his politics of hate, in this climate of inequality, it is little wonder that the master of vituperative social media posts brought the Capitol under siege. To heal itself, American democracy will need more than just the replacing of Trump with Biden. It will need to examine why a narcissistic leader, with plebiscitary power, was able to expose the fragility of its institutions and push them to the brink.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/us-capitol-hill-protesters-siege-donald-trump-joe-biden-7141097/

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Another Temple Bites The Dust In Pakistan

By Tilak Devasher

Jan 11, 2021

On December 30, 2020, more than 1,000 people led by a local cleric belonging to the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) attacked, looted valuables and demolished the Krishna Dawara temple and the samadhi of Shri Paramhans Ji Maharaj in Teri of KPK’s Karak district. The Pakistan Hindu Council (PHC) had alerted the local administration about a protest and possible attack on the temple against the renovation work and resumption of visits by pilgrims. The administration had assured that such attempts would be stopped.

After the demolition, the police claimed that permission had been given for a peaceful protest, but the people had “taken the law into their own hands” after incendiary speeches riled up the crowds. This criminal negligence of the local administration led to the violent mob being able to demolish the historic temple and samadhi.

According to the FIR, the JUIF leader Maulana Mohammad Sharif incited the mob, saying that they would neither allow a Hindu shrine on the soil of Teri nor visits by Hindus; he encouraged the participants to destroy the shrine, saying, “Whoever dies while demolishing the shrine would be a martyr.”

Teri is a hill settlement in the Karak district of KPK, inhabited largely by the Khattak tribe. It houses the shrine of Shri Paramhans Ji Maharaj, a Hindu mystic who went to Teri a hundred years ago. During his lifetime, he had built a temple at Teri. Following his death in 1919, his followers added a room to house his samadhi. The Partition led to the migration of the Hindus from Teri, as from other parts of the province, but the shrine continues to have great significance for the Hindus as a place of pilgrimage. Two major festivals are held there and around 300-400 Hindus visit it every month.

In 1997, the temple was attacked by a mob led by the same Maulana Sharif who then occupied the temple, prevented access to the shrine and built a house in front. From 1997 to 2014, the temple remained closed, but was restored in 2015 on the direction of the Supreme Court. The court also ruled that the temple could be renovated and partially expanded to accommodate Hindus who came for worship. Consequently, the Hindu community rebuilt the temple through its own funds after the Evacuee Property Trust Board (EPTB) could not.

The destruction of the Karak temple is not an isolated example. In the past two years, several temples in Pakistan have been attacked and vandalised. Some examples include a Hindu temple that was demolished in Karachi’s Lyari; Shri Ram Mandir in Sindh’s Nagarparkar that was vandalised; an arson attack on the Sham Sundar Shewa Mandli temple at Kumb in Sindh’s Khairpur district. In July 2020, Islamic extremists blocked the construction of the Shri Krishna Mandir Hindu temple in Islamabad.

The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has now ruled that there is nothing in the constitution or sharia to bar the provision of a place of worship for a minority group. However, it remains to be seen whether the government would have the spine to stand up against the religious parties that opposed its construction earlier and demolished the boundary wall.

In the case of the Karak temple and shrine, Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed took suo motu notice and called for an immediate report from the administration. Based on this, the Supreme Court, on January 5, 2020, ordered the EPTB to reconstruct the temple and recover the cost from Maulana Sharif.

On several occasions, Imran Khan has boasted that he would show the Narendra Modi government ‘how to treat the minorities’. On April 10, 2019, his government had pledged to restore over 400 Hindu temples. The PTI's election manifesto promised protection for the Hindus, including their religious rights, and places of worship.

These tall promises have remained only on paper. Hatred against the minorities, especially Hindus, is deeply ingrained in Pakistan. The two-nation theory — that Hindus and Muslims constitute two nations, the basis for the creation of Pakistan — continues to be a part of the ‘ideology of Pakistan’. It is not only reinforced by the plethora of religious parties but also by the school curricula, wherein children are taught that Hindus, Christians and Jews are the natural enemies of Muslims. Not surprisingly, the US has designated Pakistan as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ for engaging in or tolerating “systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

There is also the larger issue about the Pashtuns and the societal transformation that has taken place over the decades. In the pre-Partition days, the samadhi was a symbol of interfaith harmony and religious freedom. During the Partition, there were hardly any communal riots in the then NWFP. The towering personality of Ghaffar Khan and Congress government in the province ensured that the Hindu migration to India was more or less without violence.

Yet, in the past two decades especially, there has been a spate of attacks on Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus. The Pashtun society would have to introspect why this has happened and where they have gone wrong.

The demolition of the Karak temple and of others again highlights the widespread bigotry and intolerance in Pakistan towards religious minorities and the inability or unwillingness of the government to do anything about it. Even if the temple and shrine are reconstructed on the directions of the Supreme Court, as it was in 2015, they will continue to be defenceless against future attacks by mobs led by the likes of Maulana Sharif.

For the minorities to feel secure, the Pakistan society will have to accept that they are as much a part of the state as are Muslims. Till that happens, the minorities will continue to be vulnerable and the white band in the Pakistan flag representing them will be meaningless.

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Tilak Devasher is a Member, National Security Advisory Board

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/another-temple-bites-the-dust-in-pakistan-196706

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Dragon and Kabul

By Bhopinder Sing

January 11, 2021

Chinese leadership tends to spike the stilted and tedious domain of diplomatese and geopolitics with well-aimed aphorisms from its ancient and civilizational wisdom. In 2014, when President Xi Jinping was barely a couple of years into the top job, he had alluded to dangers of cross-border terrorism at the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. He had said, “As the proverb goes, ‘Strength does not come from the muscle of the arms, but from the unison of the heart.’ We should engage in sincere and in-depth dialogue and communication to increase strategic mutual trust, reduce mutual misgivings, seek common ground while resolving differences and live in harmony with each other.”

Even though Xi Jinping did not mention it then, he could have added ‘cheque-book diplomacy’, ‘debt-traps’ or plain ‘coercion’, to the alternative strategies deployed by China subsequently, besides the proverbial ‘muscle of the arms’ and the ‘unison of the heart’. However, there is yet another sophisticated Chinese philosophy at play, that is deliberately low key and seeks invisibility ~ rooted in its Daoist strategic tradition that is based on five key pillars i.e. rationalism, aloofness, optimisation, restraint and flexibility.

The hallmarks of this elusive approach were visible in Beijing’s handling of Afghanistan, with which it shares a 76-kilometrelong land border. China’s historical appreciation of Afghanistan as the ‘graveyard of empires’, has spared it the expansionist eye that governs, militarily or economically, all its other neighbours under the ‘going out’ stratagem. The singular aspiration that China harbours for Afghanistan is ‘stability’; this breeds complicated, contradictory and unmentionable moves distinct from the usual Chinese tact, which warrants a constant hawk eye and subtle manipulations, but without getting dragged into the nowin swamp of Afghanistan.

China has historically tiptoed gingerly around Afghanistan by tacitly supporting the Afghan Mujahedeen in the Soviet-Afghan war owing to Beijing’s own competitive rift with Moscow ~ though the subsequent experience of the rule in the 1990s would scar Beijing’s outlook towards dispensations in Kabul, very counterintuitively, from the preferences of its ‘all-weather friend’ in Islamabad. Contrary to the expected hullabaloo of having American troops in its ‘backyard’, China would rather punt on Afghan ‘stability’ with American soldiers-on-ground, rather than hope for the same through a puritanical dispensation like the Taliban. The primary motivation for China to seek ‘stability’ in Kabul is premised on a moderate Afghan dispensation’s ability to rein-in Chinese Islamist insurgents like Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) or East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which seek to establish an Islamic state of East Turkestan in China’s contiguous Xinjiang province. These China-facing Islamist groups had been given active support, training and afforded bases by the Taliban- Al Qaida groups, prior to the disruption of that eco-system by the current pro-West Afghan dispensation, in conjunction with the American/NATO troops. So, while Pakistan continuously pinned its hope on ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan via the return of the Taliban, the Chinese would realistically not have the Taliban.

The Chinese have a very pessimistic outlook about the fate of ongoing US-Taliban peace talks. China remains convinced about the imminent rupture to the delicate equilibrium in Afghanistan right now and is sure that the return of the Taliban or even an indecisive civil war between rival factions is to the net detriment of Chinese interests. Beijing views the American urgency to ‘pullout’ troops from Afghanistan as imprudent, as that is sure to lead to chaos and a bloodshed in the region, with vulnerable neighbours like China left to face consequences and spillovers. China is paranoid about religious radicalisation and violence on its side, especially given its ongoing purge against its own Uyghur populace. China picked on the possibilities of this awkward development early and shifted gears from ‘calculated indifference’ to ‘strategic engagement’. China has since made strategic moves in Afghanistan in terms of mediation across the board, flaunting its ostensible ‘neutrality’. It has opened talks with Taliban directly, facilitated joint dialogues (e.g. through Shanghai Cooperation Organization) as key participant, as also invested in building a military base in Badakhshan province, for the current Ashraf Ghani government. Last week in a curious development, the Afghan National Security Adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, met the Chinese special envoy for Afghanistan, Liu Jian, to discuss issues of ‘cooperation on peace and security’! Clearly, the Chinese haven’t forsaken the incumbent and beleaguered Ashraf Ghani government yet.

For once and uniquely so, the Chinese preference for a government in Afghanistan would be more aligned to the preferences of New Delhi, than to those of Islamabad.

The comparative delta of upsetting the applecart as it is cast now (as opposed to a Pakistan- supported Taliban government), is a net loss to Beijing. Despite covert assurances by Taliban leadership to Chinese mediators to not target its investments and assets, the Chinese know that the Taliban are not a monolithic, disciplined and trustworthy entity. The current faciliatory game of the Chinese is very tentative and they have not put their weight behind the Taliban, as done by the Pakistanis.

The Chinese would ideally seek a status-quo situation that keeps the moderate government in Kabul on perennial tenterhooks, desperate for more international investments (where it can outplay, ‘outfund’ and control Indian influence), but without risking having a lawless Taliban- like revisionist government. Even the CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) assets in Pakistan are susceptible to attacks from China’s own Islamist insurgent groups, and while it can exert formal pressure on the Pakistani Military to squeeze them in Pakistan, the same may not be possible with a Taliban government in Kabul.

Pursuing a unilateral role in the ‘graveyard of empires’ is a clear no-no, and Beijing’s international credibility in mustering a multilateral force (beyond Pakistan, which has its own complicated angularities), would prove challenging.

The Dragon is confused and persisting with engagement in the interim to salvage the situation in Afghanistan, betting that the incoming Biden dispensation does a rethink on the proposed ‘pull-out’, which will be inadvertently preferable to both Beijing and Delhi.

https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/dragon-and-kabul-1502945739.html

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Tracing The Roots Of An American Brand Of Extremism

By Kabir Taneja and Prithvi Iyer

Jan 11, 2021

In September 2020, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher A Wray, warned that the most pressing threat facing the United States (US) was from anti-government and far-Right groups. The security breach on Capitol Hill in Washington DC last week revealed the dangers of these movements to America’s democratic traditions. There are many far-Right ecosystems in the US, but recently the likes of QAnon, Boogaloo Boys and Proud Boys, among others, have become the driving examples of quasi-cult like movements developed on conspiracy theories and ideologies, often beginning their lives online.

QAnon is an internet conspiracy theory that has its cult-like followers believe that Donald Trump is leading a war against a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and media. Q, the anonymous leader of the movement, claims to be a top-level military official who is intimately familiar with the deviousness of this “deep state”. No matter how bizarre QAnon beliefs may sound, reportedly at least 24 US congressional candidates had pledged allegiance to Q and Trump even deemed these followers to be people “who love our country”. Such words of encouragement from the president allowed these fringe ideologies to gain mainstream appeal.

Unlike QAnon, the Boogaloo Boys have an alternative take on an alternative reality. The origin of this movement is murky, further complicated by the fact that it has both white supremacist and libertarian factions. Named after a breakdancing movie from the 1980s, it’s a loosely organised Right-leaning movement with members that favour gun rights, oppose police brutality and fantasise about a second Civil War in America. This movement left online chat rooms and caused real world damage after police officers in California and guards at the Oakland courthouse were killed, compelling people to consider the group recognised by their Hawaiian floral shirts to be a legitimate terror threat.

Despite ideological differences, both movements have commonalities. They prey on white male grievances and the dissatisfaction with the so-called elite. Moreover, both groups gained a following on 4Chan, an online image board which equips users with anonymity and freedom to operate without checks and balances. So, for QAnon, it meant an avenue to spread fake news on the lines that 9/11 was a hoax or that Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 on the deep state’s orders. Similarly, the Boogaloo Boys were able to freely discuss their desire for more guns, civil unrest and undermining the US government’s authority. While online platforms such as 4Chan do not cause these movements, they have enabled and sustained them.

These movements also rely on mobilising support against a common enemy, using fake news and unsubstantiated rumours to widen divides between “Us” and “Them”. QAnon manages spreading such misinformation through “Q drops” — the name given to the cryptic messages posted by Q. For example, last year, Q posted a picture of an unnamed island chain and soon after, QAnon followers took this post as proof that the picture was taken on Air Force One and went on to claim that Q must be travelling with Trump.

To the outside world, “Q drops” may seem bizarre and illogical but, to QAnon adherents, these cryptic and misleading messages are like sermons. Q’s followers have acted on this by inciting offline violence. Instances such as an armed standoff at Hoover Dam, breaking into the Canadian prime minister’s residence and an infamous shoot-out at a pizza parlour are all products of followers believing or misinterpreting the fictional narrative put out in QAnon chat rooms.

With the attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters, some of whom wore QAnon shirts and brandished confederate flags, the far-Right’s threat to American liberal democracy is more visible than ever. Trump’s ambivalence towards such groups have emboldened them and with these groups now being increasingly cornered as social media platforms banned Trump and his ecosystem, the threat of Right-wing extremism may assume a different form but will persist.

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Kabir Taneja is fellow and Prithvi Iyer is research assistant, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation

https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion

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At Stake, the Future of Democracy

By Binayak Dasgupta

January 10, 2021

The first chapter in the plot that culminated with the siege of the United States (US) Capitol by Donald Trump‘s supporters on January 6, 2021 was written over four years ago when, on December 4, 2016, a young man armed with an assault rifle walked into a pizza joint in Washington DC. He was led to believe that the basement was home to a paedophilia ring, run by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief.

This was the first time the US had come face to face in real life with a virtual cult of conspiracy theorists who believed that Trump was secretly waging a war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. This would later evolve into what is known as QAnon. The followers of QAnon now believe that the 2020 election was rigged to stop Trump. In almost every media and social media video from the Capitol building, it is clear that the mob was made up of people who shared this conviction, and that they, ultimately, thought they were being patriotic.

What unfolded then was the manifestation of an epistemic crisis. In a November 2017 piece in the Vox, journalist David Roberts described this problem as “a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening”.

This dangerous split in the perception of facts has continued to spread and grow through the digital veins and nodes of not just the underground internet but mainstream social media. None of the networks are untouched, whether it is Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, and their interventions have — as evidenced by the scenes that played out during the congressional confirmation of the election result — achieved nothing.

Many studies have shown that Trump’s rise to popularity has in part fuelled, as well as having been fuelled by, a rise in white nationalism. Racial fault lines have historically run deep within the US. But they appear to have widened during the closing years of the country’s first black President’s term. It was during this time — roughly 2008 to 2014 — when most of the social media platforms crossed the inflexion point in user base to be able to influence physical world conversation. Facebook crossed 200 million users in 2009 and the same year, YouTube reported the billionth time a video was watched on its website. This was not just an American phenomenon — the world went through a digital revolution, with computers being collapsed into smartphones and internet becoming cheaper and faster.

On the face of it, this digital revolution has been free of cost for the individual, while becoming one of the most profitable businesses in the history of mankind. Behind this success is the wonder of the algorithm — computer code that is designed to make sure you spend more time on a service, helping maximise advertising revenue. Algorithms do this by exposing users to people and content that they are most likely to engage with, invariably creating echo chambers of thought. A notable example of this is YouTube’s now-abandoned recommendations feature that, the company admitted, could have directed people to “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”.

These echo chambers have grown, trapping more and more people in a perpetual state of misinformation that often instead makes them feel empowered by reinforcing their biases. Once again, this is not new. The 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum revealed how ideological and political divisions were becoming harder to bridge. But what is now coming into view is the threat that selective perception of knowledge and belief may pose for the world.

Today, Holocaust deniers defy a past that unarguably took place, anti-vaxxers threaten a present consumed by a pandemic, and groups such as QAnon jeopardise the future of democracy. Common among the them is the diminishing of knowledge, institutional disciplines and experience — of history, which has chronicled the Holocaust in painful detail; of science, which has stopped diseases with vaccines that today require painstaking safeguards; and of democratic theory, that has evolved over centuries to find a delicate balance between the State and the people. The erosion of epistemic authority extends also to the press, the law and the legal profession and academia.

Conspiracy theories are, to be sure, a part of what motivated the mob at the US Capitol. But it was a large part and, while belief in conspiracy theories is not new and has existed for centuries, technology has helped bridge the distance between the fringe and the centre-stage. This has now triggered previously unseen interventions by tech companies. Trump has now been banned from Twitter and Facebook services. Amazon Web Services has kicked off conspiracy theory hotbed and QAnon den Parler from its cloud servers.

These steps are likely to have a noticeable impact in the immediate. But whether they will help stem the larger spread of alternate facts as reality is uncertain. At stake is the nature of modern democracy, which, at the very least, requires a shared perception of facts.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/at-stake-the-future-of-democracy-101610294069371.html

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The Time Has Come For All Democrats across the World to Unite

By Shashi Shekhar

JAN 10, 2021

It is an image that will haunt anyone invested in democracy for a long time to come. A miscreant sitting in the chair of the speaker of the United States (US) House of Representatives, his foot on the desk, mocking the institution.

During the revolutions in France and Russia, palaces were looted and monarchs, along with the aristocracy, were overthrown. In Afghanistan, after president Mohammed Najibullah was publicly hanged, fundamentalists were seen dancing. In Iraq, American soldiers demolished fallen dictator Saddam Hussein’s palaces. But the difference in the US is that the violence was instigated by the President himself.

The problem with many politicians is that they think that power, once won, is a fundamental entitlement. Donald Trump came to power by challenging existing traditions. His slogans such as America First and Make America Great Again, with the accompanying exclusionary rhetoric, went against the liberal grain of the US. He chose to overlook, and often demonise, those who came from different places, including native Americans, African Americans and Hispanics.

Most people in the US recognise that it is diversity which makes the country a beacon of hope. This is why a deep sense of regret has now set in among many sections. A number of Trump’s colleagues have resigned. But there are some difficult questions that need to be answered. Now, at the end of his tenure, there is pressure on Trump to resign. Even his own party leaders are upset with his behaviour. Much of social media has banned him. Many are wondering about what further havoc he would wreak before he steps down. There is a demand, and rightfully so, that he should be kept away from the nuclear button. And Trump has no one to blame for all this but himself.

Trump will leave the White House, but Trumpism will not go away quite so quickly. It is something that the nation will have to grapple with for a long time to come.

The US is not alone in facing a crisis of democracy. On the same day that the Capitol incident took place, in faraway Istanbul, thousands of unemployed and disheartened students took to the streets. They were dispersed by the police using disproportionate force. January 7 was the sixth anniversary of the attack on the office of the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. That marked the beginning of sweeping changes in the liberal ethos of modern France.

One of the biggest contributory factors to all this is the misuse of social media. When Trump chalked out his election strategy back in 2016, he used professionals to map the predilections of people through Facebook and Twitter. This enabled him to formulate misleading slogans and promises for his campaign. Great leaders in the past were able to gauge the popular pulse through their own instincts and their movements were constructive and peaceful. Today, many politicians want instant gratification, instant results. For this, they have armed themselves with the often false information generated on social media.

There are some examples such as the Arab Spring where social media was not used to spread hatred. On the other hand, a planned conspiracy was executed to create distrust among the citizens of many pluralistic countries. This destructive trend has to be reversed both in the US and elsewhere. Those in charge must be held accountable.

Politicians across the world need to realise that the genie released by false social media information is out of the bottle. The US must lead by example given the resilience of its democratic institutions in battling this scourge. Karl Marx once called for workers of the world to unite. The time has now come for all those who espouse democracy across the world to unite. Democratic systems are only as good as the people who uphold them.

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Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan

https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/the-time-has-come-for-all-democrats-across-the-world-to-unite-101610294009920.html

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Trump Is Not Yet Over And Done With

By V Sudarshan

Jan 12, 2021

It is a tricky question, but everyone is asking it: how much damage can Donald Trump do in the few days that he has in the White House? Well, Trump is unpredictable, has the nuclear button and when President-Elect Joe Biden was putting on record that he was not getting cooperation from the Defence Department for the transition, he was putting it mildly.

The trickier question is: how much damage could Trump have done had he managed to get himself about seven million more votes or had he perverted the electoral college verdict?

Just think of the way Trump bullied and armtwisted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to manufacture dirt on Biden by threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid. Donald Trump Mark II would have run amok in truly breathtaking ways. There can be no understating it: a loose cannon like Trump in the White House poses as big a danger to America, its allies, and the world, as the myriad inheritors of Osama bin Laden.

We are not even talking here about the way he tried to bully the Georgia State Secretary Republican Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough ballots for him to overturn the election, 11,780 of them to be precise or face action. Or, the way he pushed his Vice-President Mike Pence to reverse and undermine the results of the November 3, 2020, elections. Or, the way he goaded his ragtag army of White supremacist supporters to overrun the Capitol, giving a new, twisted currency to the word ‘coup’, usually an illegal attempt to unseat an incumbent. Not even the way he has deliberately obstructed the transition in every way he could.

But the real question to ask is: how much damage can Trump do once he is out of the White House and what can be done to prevent it?

It is slightly ridiculous to talk of the elections in 2024 even before the winner of the 2020 election has had a chance to change the furnishings of the Trump White House. But some straws are already swinging in the wind. Trump has let it be known in stage whispers, that he is so good at, that he is going to give the White House, to use a phrase once hugely popular with African dictators and Pakistani Generals and Bolivian presidential hopefuls, ‘another shot’ in 2024.

Trump and his entourage have already declared they will go after those Republicans who do not stand with Trump and it is not an idle threat, considering that many will be up for re-election.

Trump’s dilemma right now is that he cannot say he is running in 2024 while he is still waging a war with the 2020 results. Those gloves could come off after January 20.

It should be a concern. Consider the Republicans. They are not fleeing en masse from Donald Trump. They are hedging their bets. True, there are incipient rifts and tentative resignations, but they are not for impeaching Trump again. At least, not openly for it. In conclaves after the storming of the Capitol Hill by Trump’s putschists, barring the odd dissonance here and there, Republicans en bloc have not uttered even a squeak of a formal disapproval for Trump’s bizarre excesses and systematic and blatant subversion of the democratic processes.

On the contrary, some have even written to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seeking that she discontinue her marshalling a movement towards impeachment. Joe Biden has not embraced the impeachment movement in any significant measure. He wouldn’t want his hard-won presidency to be bogged down by battling ghosts Trump has let loose to inhabit the White House.

Biden has other problems waiting in the White House wings. In two years, for instance, when the term of a third of the senators is up, there is no saying if the all-too-slender majority the Democrats hold will evaporate. Biden has two years to do what he wants, and the impeachment of Trump is not a priority for the 78-year-old who may not be in a position to run again.

Trump, on the other hand will be 78 in 2024, as old as Biden is now. The question is: will Trump be in a physically better shape than his dismantled twitter handle by then? Will he have found another social media bullhorn to corral, egg on, and incite his 88 million following he had on twitter? And will he still have a strangehold on the GOP?

On January 20, we will probably see some more brassy jarring noises from Trump-eteers.

Pelosi’s probably aiming to have Trump rendered incapable from running again in 2024. That can happen if the impeachment sticks. It doesn’t need to stick in the next eight days, though. The House can probably come up with a resolution and pass it by then, but the Senate has to consider it and it requires two-thirds of the members signing on for conviction, a bit of a tall order right now, although a simple majority could also cut it.

The current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that the earliest the Senate can meet on any impeachment motion is probably January 19, Trump’s last day as the 45th President of the United States. On that day, he exits the White House, stage left, pursued by howls of derision and relief and yells of protests of the 75 million who voted for him and are convinced that the election has been stolen and could still vote Trump back into the White House as the 47th incumbent.

Theoretically, theoretically. If he is not impeached again by then, that is, and he quietly fades away to fulminate in his memoirs, which will no doubt be stocked in the ‘fiction’ section of bookstores and will make for a racy reading.

Practically, it could be a different story. It would depend on how much of a hold Trump would still have on the Republicans, but a stronger articulation of his promise to contest 2024 will have a blunting effect on the field of Republican presidential hopefuls, like Mike Pence. Getting Trump to vacate the White House has proven tough enough. Preventing another person like Trump getting anywhere near the White House as President is what America needs to figure out.

Joe Biden has too few numbers, too many other battles to fight, and probably no stomach to work for measures to reduce the scope of the interpretation of the election results, for a smoother handover of the White House, or to reduce the transition time, for instance.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/trump-is-not-yet-over-and-done-with-197187

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Drama In The US Is Not Over Yet

By Kalyani Shankar

12 January 2021

US President Donald Trump might make some more attempts to subvert democracy till January 20, when President-elect Joe Biden takes over

There is a WhatsApp message doing the rounds: “Americans recently found out that it’s much easier for them to change presidents in other countries than in their own nation.” So, how does the largest democracy, India, compare with the oldest one, the US, on practising democracy?

All through the presidential campaign, outgoing US President Donald Trump had declared that he would not move out of the White House even if he were defeated. His rival, President-elect Joe Biden, retorted that he (Trump) would be escorted out by the military. But no one expected an attack on the Capitol Hill, which is regarded as the temple of democracy in the US. Trump has spent the last two months refusing to concede defeat and claiming mass voter fraud. But the worst was his instigation of the Capitol Hill riots. According to the US media, Trump began his most infamous Wednesday morning making a last-ditch effort to hold on to power with a tweet, asking his Vice-President Mike Pence to intervene and overturn Joe Biden’s election. Pence publicly issued a letter in the afternoon declaring that he would not illegally intervene in the Congress, minutes before convening the joint session of the US Congress to certify the Electoral College. Trump addressed his supporters about 1 PM and declared: “We will never give up, we will never concede,” and announced “We’re going to the Capitol.” Trump drove his supporters into a frenzy. However, he did not join them in the riots that followed in the Capitol Hill and went back to the White House and watched the destruction on television. At the end of Wednesday, after the US Congress confirmed Biden’s victory, Trump declared:  “Even though I disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless, there will be an orderly transition on January 20.”

There are many reasons for Trump’s atrocious behaviour. First of all, he is a bad loser and reluctant to admit defeat. Even in 2016, Trump had declared that he would accept the poll results only if he won or else he would resort to legal action. Second, now that he has lost the presidency, he would lose all federal protection against prosecution. Third, he needs his followers to be his support base in case he makes a presidential bid in 2024. He is also depending on the 73 million who voted for him this time. It is speculated that Trump has made up his mind to contest the next elections and wants to play the role of a martyr. Fourth, he also has to keep the section of Republicans who support him in the party, happy. This contemptible attack on the US democracy makes one compare it to the largest democracy, India, that has gone through many trials and tribulations in the last 73 years. India has seen a smooth transfer of power 17 times. The electorate, too, has become mature over the decades since Independence and has punished authoritarian rulers. Even late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who imposed an Emergency in 1975 worked within the system, which bears little direct parallels to the current situation in the US.

After declaring an Emergency under Article 352 of the Indian Constitution, Indira blamed the “hidden hand” of the Central Intelligence Agency for internal unrest. The late President Pranab Mukherjee, who had been a Congressman all his life, talked about the Emergency period in his book ‘The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years.’ He described the period thus: “Suspension of fundamental rights and political activity (including trade union activity), large-scale arrests of political leaders and activists, Press censorship and extending the life of legislatures by not conducting elections were some instances of Emergency adversely affecting the interests of the people. Congress and Indira Gandhi had to pay a heavy price for this misadventure.” The Emergency officially ended on March 23, 1977. The Congress came down from 352 seats to just 189 seats in the Lok Sabha in the 1977 elections. The Janata Party came to power. However, once the people’s anger subsided a subdued Indira came back to power in 1980 when the Janata Government collapsed. Since then, her successors have confined themselves to the boundaries of the Constitution. Even in States where cult leaders like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa or RJD leader Lalu Prasad ruled in an authoritarian manner, they did so within the confines of the Constitution. So, to that extent, India has been lucky that democracy survives unhindered.

The US democracy got a major jolt on Wednesday and it is not over yet as Trump might make some more attempts to subvert democracy till January 20, when Biden takes over. The framers of the US Constitution would never have expected such shameful behaviour by a sitting President. In the words of Bob Woodward: “When history is written, Trump’s failure to heed the warnings he was given is going to be probably the story of the failure of the American presidency and the American system to nominate and elect someone who responsibly would carry out the duties of President.”

https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/columnists/drama-in-the-us-is-not-over-yet.html

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