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When elections stop giving the results you want, why not turn to fascism? In 2014, the Indian electorate rose in revolt against the old elite. In 2019, they looked the elite in the eye and screamed out their verdict with even greater force.

How do you get back at common people who refuse to vote your way? You find the weakest, most vulnerable and you go after them. Its the liberal way.

So there are millions of common Indians working in the Gulf. Those are theocratic countries ruled by religious law. Many apply the death penalty for blasphemy, for apostasy, for homosexuality and so on.

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But Indians being Indians, they carry within themselves a bit of the democratic spirit wherever they go. A spark of the open minded, free society where they come from. They are used to speaking their mind. Sometimes they forget where they are and commit crimes of speech and thought. It was only a matter of time before Indian liberals realized these people were vulnerable and decided to go after them.

Right now, the Indian liberal corner of social media is on a dangerous power trip. They are scanning the online footprint of common Indians who work in the Middle East, flagging any sign of disobedience to ultra conservative religion. They have become the online eyes and ears of the religious police, which then picks up these hapless victims for prosecution under conservative religious law.

In trying to smear India, liberals had so far used some pretenses, spreading their message to America, Europe, Canada, Australia and the like. In doing so, they could hold up the fig leaf that these are all free societies. They could hide behind noble ideals such as human rights, liberty and free expression.

Not any more. Liberals have crossed the big red line and approached theocratic regimes in the Middle East. The other day, Communist trolls gleefully handed over to prosecution a man who had dared to say that the gleaming skyscrapers of the Middle East were built by the sweat of Indian workers.

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The irony is think on that one. Communists on the side of the king and not the worker. By the way, the workers strike, the most sacred of all Communist rituals, is illegal in the Middle East.

What do you make of it when prominent journalists, who publish in mainstream outlets, say openly that Indias internal matters are not internal any more? Instead they are trying to get foreign Islamic governments involved in our affairs. Where does this stop? Now they are approaching theocratic Islamic states to interfere in our politics.

Well, Pakistan is an Islamic state. Will Indian liberals approach them as well for support? Have they already done so? Who is next in line to be approached by Indian liberals against the Indian government? China? North Korea? Territories controlled by ISIS or Taliban or Al-Shabab?

By reaching out to Islamic countries, liberals have dropped all pretense that this is about human rights or free expression. This is now about religion. And tapping into transnational loyalties to impose their will on common Indians.

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Imagine this scenario. An Indian in a Middle Eastern theocracy comes home after a hard day at work and pulls out a chilled beer. The next moment, there is a loud banging on the door. The religious police is here. They have been alerted by Indian liberals who noticed the photo he had casually posted on Facebook. Caught with alcohol, he now faces an uncertain and brutal future. Years or even decades in jail, mutilation, possibly even death.

Tomorrow, these online liberal vigilantes could report an Indian to thIslamists e religious police for being gay. Or perhaps an Indian Muslim, who decides to leave the religion or convert to a different religion. Or perhaps even a single woman, who posted pictures of herself taking a casual walk without a male guardian.

At the moment, Indian liberals have started out with reporting thought and speech crimes of a political nature to the religious police. This can only get more intrusive. Online vigilantes will soon prey on anyone who breaks any rules of ultra conservative orthodoxy.

Life isnt fair. Despite all our outrage over the hypocrisy of Indian liberalism, we have to accept the bitter reality that they win this round. We know that these theocratic countries arent likely to change their ways. Theres no use going against their customs, whether knowingly or otherwise.

So, it is up to Indians working in such places to police themselves and observe extreme caution. They have to give up the freedom to express themselves in thought, speech, sexuality, everything.

For people who are used to liberty, this is not an easy transition. But this is the price we must pay for incorporating undemocratic regimes into the global supply chain. A bit like China. Think of existence in a theocratic Middle Eastern country as a permanent state of mental lockdown.

Depressing, but true.

If it is any comfort, understand that the power of these theocratic regimes is transient. And soon to be done to dust. Why?

Quite simply, because the world will pass them by. Right now, they have a single resource and they live off those lottery winnings.

But think about it. They must have had that resource for thousands of years. It didnt bring them any prosperity. Until human knowledge advanced to the point that we figured out how to use that resource. And just like that, human knowledge will move past them, discovering newer and better resources.

These theocratic regimes have not used their windfall gains to invest in the knowledge economy. And sooner or later, nations that do not produce new knowledge will be left nowhere. In the long game, the open mind, which welcomes knowledge, will always win over the closed mind.

See the rest here:
Indian liberals joining hands with theocratic regimes is a terrifying development for India - OpIndia

Andrew Stiles ( Washington Free Beacon )

The only Democratic voters significantly bothered by Joe Bidens race and gender are white liberals with graduate degrees, according to a Pew survey published this week.

According to the poll, a majority of Democratic voters are not concerned that their partys presumptive nominee for president is an elderly white man. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said Bidens age and race do not bother them. Among black voters, 72 percent said they werent bothered by Bidens race and gender, while 70 percent of Hispanic voters said the same.

Concern over Bidens whiteness was considerably higher among white Democrats, nearly half of whom said they were bothered that their partys nominee was not a minority. A majority of liberal Democrats reported being bothered by Bidens whiteness, as did 58 percent of Democrats with a postgraduate education. Among Democrats with a high school education or less, 76 percent said they didnt care about Bidens race or gender, the highest result among any of the demographics measured.

Pew even broke down the numbers by which candidate each voter supported in the early stages of the Democratic primary. The results were not surprising. Early Biden supporters were the least likely to care about the former vice presidents race and gender, while 73 percent of Elizabeth Warren supporters were bothered by the fact that the likely Democratic nominee was not at least going to be an elderly white woman.

Warren was one of the first Democratic primary candidates to use the term Latinx on the campaign trail. The non-gendered alternative to Latino and Latina is most popular among white liberals with graduate degrees and left-wing activists. A 2019pollof Hispanic voters found that just 2 percent prefer the politically correct Latinx, while 68 percent said they preferred Latino/Latina or Hispanic.

Biden will be the Democratic Partys first white male nominee since John Kerry in 2004 and the first Democratic nominee without an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale in 1984.

More here:
POLL: White Liberals Most Bothered by Joe Biden's Whiteness - The Jewish Voice

OTTAWA The idea that crises bring opportunity as well as danger is becoming trite.

But it doesnt make it less true.

Canadian officials are intrigued by what is happening in France and Australia, where governments have moved with alacrity to take measures aimed at forcing Google and Facebook to share advertising dollars generated locally with domestic publishers.

Competition authorities in both countries are devising a new payment for content regime, so that the social media giants pay for the news stories that help drive traffic on their sites.

One Canadian government source said the measures are being studied to see if they could work here.

The Liberals should stiffen their spines and follow the lead of the French and Aussies.

The consequence of not doing so could be no less than the demise of the Canadian news industry.

Google and Facebook consume around 70 per cent of advertising revenue, yet provide little in terms of news content.

The government passed on the option of taxing the tech giants two years ago, preferring to introduce a $600-million media bailout fund that offers publishers a 25 per cent refundable tax credit on the salaries of eligible reporters. It also included a 15 per cent tax credit on digital subscriptions.

But this was nothing more than a Band-Aid and it has taken the 30-40 per cent drop in revenues experienced by some publishers during the COVID crisis to bring the issue back onto the agenda.

A more lasting solution was offered by the Public Policy Forum in its Shattered Mirror report in 2017. It suggested using the Income Tax Act as a means of encouraging Canadian advertisers to use local media or more accurately, to discourage them from using foreign companies. The act currently restricts the deduction of business expenses to advertisements that appear in Canadian-owned media.

Nobody is more aware of how unpalatable it is to rely on the government than news organizations themselves

The Policy Forum proposed to extend that idea to the online sphere. However, to avoid abrogating trade and income tax agreements, the government would introduce a withholding tax to be paid by companies that advertise through foreign social media companies money that would be funneled into a journalism fund.

Some contribution to the system that provides content that benefit their enterprises seems reasonable, the report concluded.

That wasnt how the government saw it when it rejected the idea. It argued there was a public interest argument for supporting the media, which justified backing the fund with money from general revenues.

There were concerns that Google and Facebook would simply pass on the cost to advertisers who did not see local publishers as a viable online alternative to the dominant social media channels.

Officials looking at the issue today are further concerned about the reaction from the White House, should Canada go down the same road as the French and Australians.

But, make no mistake, this is not an industry that is warning of an imaginary danger. Print organizations were already at the cliffs edge, despite incremental gains in online advertising.

The deteriorating state of media puts at risk the health of our democracy. As the Forum summarized: Sources of opinion are proliferating, but sources of facts on which opinions are based is shrinking.

Nobody is more aware of how unpalatable it is to rely on the government than news organizations themselves.

With so many other demands on Ottawas coffers post-COVID, reliance on a fund paid for from general revenues is not sustainable.

Even increasing the subscription tax credit to 50 per cent is not a long-term solution.

But some form of payment for content by companies that have been freeloading for years is simple fairness.

The whole debate foreshadows a far larger discussion about the role of government when we all finally emerge from this impasse.

There is growing opinion that the Washington consensus of trade agreements, financial deregulation and offshore production is dead and that new rules will govern the economy of the near-future.

The idea that Canada can rely on traditional market forces to remain competitive, while everyone else adopts more active industrial strategies is foolhardy, wrote Sean Speer, a former adviser to Stephen Harper, and Robert Asselin, a former adviser to Justin Trudeau, recently.

The debate about open and closed economies is as old as Canada.

The country has veered between the poles of protectionism and free trade, never fully embracing either one.

But it seems we are at a point in our history where actions that hint at mercantilism are in the ascendancy.

Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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John Ivison: Liberals should follow the French lead and force tech giants to pay for news content - National Post

Republic TVs Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami was attacked by two bike-borne assailants little after midnight on 23 April, 2020 near his residence in Mumbai. Soon after, he released a video wherein he said that the two men belonged to Yuva Congress and had attacked him to teach him a lesson after he had questioned Congress President Sonia Gandhis silence on Palghar sadhu lynching.

However, soon after the attack on Goswami, the liberals and the defendants of freedom of press implicitly justified and defended the attacks on Goswami.

Taseers Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card was recently revoked as he had concealed that his father was a Pakistani citizen. He has regularly displayed Hinduphobia and spoken the same language of the Islamists who killed his father in Pakistan.

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NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan slyly referred to Goswami as the pandemic India is facing.

Meanwhile, Congress supporters on social media have started trending DramaBandKarArnab hashtag.

Earlier, Lamba had hailed Yuva Congress after Goswami released a video stating that the two men who had attacked him were Yuva Congress workers.

In the intervening night of 22nd and 23rd April, after his regular edit call post the 10 PM debate, Arnab Goswami and his wife were driving back home when two bike-borne assailants attacked their car. According to our sources, the assailants parked their bike in front of Arnab Goswamis car in order to get him to stop the car and then attacked it. Arnab Goswami and his wife have escaped unhurt. The assailants, after attacking the car and trying to break the windows, also threw ink at the car. According to Republic TV, the goons confessed that they were from Congress and the attack took place only 500 meters away from Goswamis residence, according to Republic TV.

Read more from the original source:
Liberals and custodians of free speech come together to justify attack on Arnab Goswami and his wife by Congress goons - OpIndia

An article in the Indian Express, written by the Vice-Chancellor of NALSAR University, Hyderabad, Faizan Mustafa states that the Indian minorities are too fed up of the facade of secularism.

Mustafa argues that if Indians are done with the Nehruvian model of secularism (without pointing out its flaws), they should declare the country a Hindu rashtra, giving Hinduism the status of the dominant spiritual heritage.

He is right in saying that the Hindu rashtra will not be entirely different from the current secular state, because it is not in Hinduisms character to do what Pakistan or other Islamic countries do to religious minorities.

We also agree with him that a Hindu rashtra must bring with it genuine liberalism.

However, there is a catch, and those who are not well-prepared, will be left bewildered by Mustafas proposal.

One, its an ultimatum to intellectuals to work hard to save the Left-Islamist marriage

The proposal is a warning to the Left compatriots that unless they get a grip of the narrative and strike the enemy harder, the regressive Left-Islamist marriage is in trouble.

It signals that the Muslims intellectuals are keeping the option open, instead, to negotiate with more benign right-wing elements.

Two, it is a veiled threat imperial forces are too powerful to be pushed out of the game

The message is that we can change things on paper as much as we want, but the functioning of the Christian and Islamic imperial structures in India will remain intact.

The reason simply is that they already function with minimal dependence on other communities or indigenous political, social and economic structures. In a globalised world, they hold an organisational, political and financial clout that the Hindus can hardly match.

It is important to recognise that these imperial forces have a utilitarian approach towards the Left.

Indian Left exists thanks to the the alliance with imperial forces, not the other way around.

Left is quite expendable for the imperialists. Its only utility comes from the hegemony in the intellectual ecosystem.

If that comes under threat, the imperial forces can also directly negotiate with the non-Left forces to come to a new arrangement where they are, as before, left alone to work, just, say, at a higher price.

Even the political parties vilified as saffron have shown eagerness to maintain a functioning partnership with the Christian and Islamic supremacist forces.

The tallest Christian cross coming up in Mizoram, illegal church construction on Sattra land in Majuli, Assam, the Tablighi Jamaat-Covid-19 fiasco, and the (lack of) reaction to the recent mob lynching of two saffron-clad sadhus in the Christian missionary hotbed Palghar, Maharashtra are but a few examples.

Given the ideological straitjacket, even in the case where the right wing becomes the new ally of the imperial forces, the Left can only push the narrative of "Hindu fascism as it does now.

In fact, a Hindu rashtra will offer an unprecedented convenience to imperial forces a complacent right-wing and an ineffective Left.

Three, it assumes right wing cant achieve anything beyond winning a few elections

Mustafa seems to be banking on the assumption that a lot of left-wing intellectuals have that the Indian right wing simply doesnt have a coherent constructive ideology or strategy beyond criticising Congress and the Left. It can change the name, but it has no alternative to Nehruvian secularism in practice.

The Left has always assumed that the emergence of a political Hindu is impossible due to the internal contradictions of the Hindu society.

Not that the Left cant see that there is real anger among Hindus based on genuine grievances, but it is sure that given the lack of intellectual leadership, it will never be channelised into anything concrete.

The Left-wing intellectuals themselves proudly proclaim that there are almost no right wing intellectuals in India. So the best the right-wing can do is win some elections, but in the intellectual domain, it will always remain on the fringe.

That means, while some ad hoc innocuous measures like CAA can crop up here and there, the right-wing wont ever have any real, long term productive power.

It also means that the right-wing movement will be limited to one political party all eggs in one basket; and right-wingers will never amount to anything more than IT cell and bhakts.

Fourth, the surety that a Hindu rashtra will fail and its failure will sound death the knell of the Hindu movement

The proposal also has an underlying sadism if India becomes a Hindu rashtra, it will only end up the way Nazi Germany did beaten, disgraced and untouchable.

The Germans were rescued by their fellow white men but the guilt of a failed Hindu rashtra would be so immense that the Hindus won't dare become political again, and retire to a permanent passiveness.

It would sound the death knell of the Hindu culture and philosophy that survived centuries of persecution.

The same fear is visible in the older generation of the right-wing intellectuals who, as a result, restrained the movement tightly.

The likes of Arun Shourie did a great job exposing the left cabal but always maintained a suspicion of the right-wing politics.

All the four points discussed above pose substantial challenge for the right-wing, and must be taken seriously.

The movement definitely has a long way to go, be it organising and educating the masses in Indic politics, or having a voice loud-enough to penetrate the intellectual ivory towers.

However, at the same time, the recent trends suggest that the days of Hindu movement being defined by the Left are over.

One, a Hindu political being is already here

The Left banking on the internal contradictions of Hindu society for divide and rule hasnt noticed that pan-Hindu unity and a Hindu political being is already on the scene.

Research shows that contrary to the claims that it is an upper-caste party, the BJPs social base is now broad-based and mirrors the Hindu society.

The shift of the poor, rural and lower caste voters to BJP is ideological, and those who identify with BJP arent swayed by short-term considerations.

This shouldnt come as a surprise to intellectuals. It is a logical outcome of the path our political and intellectual leaders took and the choices they made after independence.

Also read: New Research, Old Findings: Rural, Poor And Lower Caste Voters Are Behind Phenomenal Rise Of BJP

Two, Intellectuals can exist outside the ecosystem

Imperialists-financed incentive structure means the Left dominates the knowledge ecosystem, and attracts more career-minded ambitious folks.

But the humanities and social sciences arent such specialised disciplines that the people not trained in them for years cannot penetrate.

.As much expertise the intellectuals like to credit to themselves, its not very hard to master the English language and explain things in it.

The Hindu movement does not have to depend on the mercy of the ecosystem for intellectual leadership.

Three, young right-wingers today are very different from the older generation

The Left incentive structure is controlled by a few oldies at the top. While this means better organisation, it also means lesser intelligence and flexibility to respond to changes on ground.

On the other hand, right-wing isnt as organised, but is filled with and driven by young minds.

These young people born post-liberalisation can imagine a life without a maai-baap state. They dont toe the line that the Left has set for them by marking no go zones with the labels of fascism, bhakt, troll, saffron etc.

The Left has so far managed Indians by fear and intimidation.

But young Indians today think for themselves, fiercely protect their autonomy and dont cow-down to moral shaming.

Unlike the older generation of right-wing intellectuals, they are neither reluctant nor ashamed to assert own existence with full force.

Sure, they are a little rough around the edges, but its a minor problem that can be solved by little guidance.

Four, Hindus arent clueless fanatics. They know what they are fighting, and what is it that they want

The Left threatens Indians into submitting to the imperial forces lest multiple identities regarding caste, language, region pull apart the nation.

Too bad it cannot see that hundreds of right-wing groups with young people from a variety of backgrounds are a continuing experiment of respectful co-existence which is neither marred by Lefts victimology-driven over-sensitivity, nor oppressive caste hierarchy or cowbelt dominance.

Mustafa says Hindutva fanatics will be hugely disappointed to know that the Hindu rashtra will not be entirely different from the current secular state.

Professor Mustafa will be disappointed to know that that the Hindus are no more fooled by a superficial change, like that of the Nehru surname to Gandhi.

What Hindus are demanding is a rigorous evaluation of the past crimes against them, the ideas that propelled it, and breaking the structures that continue to push the same ideas. Fight is not against certain groups, but certain ideas.

For the sake of brevity, we wont go in the details of what Indic thought is, and how the Indic movement is tackling the long-term challenges of caste discrimination, communalism, etc.

Suffice to say that both the diagnoses and solutions are more accurate and effective than the Lefts oppressor-oppressed binary.

Five, the current Hindu movement has same creative power as the Indian National Movement

In the real-world outside Leftist fantasies, the right-wing is not composed of just some street-level clueless fanatics. It is not an aberration of history, a high tide that is destined to go down.

The aberration in Indian history is the hegemony of Left in independent India that, in alliance with global capitalists and imperialists, made the legacy of the freedom movement stand on its head.

Also read: Indian Lefts Fall From Grace: Those Who Criticised Global Capitalism Are Now Taking Orders From Foreign Masters

Its time to bring out Gandhi, Bose, Tagore and others mummified and neatly arranged in the museum of Indian Left; breathe a new life into their ideas, and build upon the foundation laid by them.

The current Indic movement situates itself as a successor of the Indian national movement. Its a river that slowly but steadily cuts its way.

It is the continuation of the fight for the ideals of the freedom fighters, be it Tagores atmasakti; Ghoshs reawakening of Indias ancient spirit ; Vivekanandas idea of service, Ambedkars organise, Tilaks swaraj, Boses India is calling or Gandhis Ram Rajya.

Continue reading here:
Some Liberals Are Warming Up To The Idea Of Hindu Rashtra Over Nehruvian Secularism, Whats The Catch? - Swarajya