April 2, 2020 • 42 mins
Robert is joined again by Sofiya Alexandra to continue discussing Narendra Modi.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's blowing jobs my party. Thank you. That was wonderful.
Thank you. There's a good lead into part two of
our new so pleased with an intro. I know, I
really now don't wonderful. Thank you. I crave on prep. Yeah,
I think I like it enough to make him treasurer
of the b JP. I got your treasure of the
b j P. Also our guests, if you Alexandra, Hi everyone,
(00:25):
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me back.
Thanks for coming back minutes after we finished the first episode.
But yeah, I mean I almost took off. This has
been a rough one. I mean it's it's not a
lot of dead children. It is, but we don't talk
about all of them. Yeah, that's yeah, we don't detail it.
(00:46):
That's a silver lining, but it stay in just a
silver lining. A lot of dead children, but we don't
have to talk about them specifically. We could just say
two or three thousand dead and not get more specifically
that friend Yeah, sometimes the truest form of friendship is
not going into more detail about horrible ethnic cleansings than
(01:07):
you need to. I mean, it's what I put on
our T shirts. But it's a lot of words. Yeah,
it has to go all the way on the sleeves
and the back, but a lot hop onto behind the bastards.
T public for our new ethnic cleansing is horrible, but
there's only a certain amount of detail that's really necessary
to get across the key facts of what's happening without
(01:27):
getting into you know, uh, what's the word when somebody
like looks at a car crash that sort of thing.
A lot of words on those T shirts, but that
shirt also has you saying of five times in a row,
like it's quoted. Yeah, it's not. We should have edited
the shirt at some point. No, But honestly, we were
going for realism. We were cinema verite. That's what that means.
(01:49):
It's putting ums on a T shirt on fiance miles
and I call that a transparency bonus. Oh nice's intentional. Yeah.
In the wake of the Gujrat riots, Narendra Modi was
shunned and marginalized and broader Indian society both in Gujrat itself,
his popularity grew. Some of this may have had to
do with the fact the Muslim population of the area
(02:10):
had been beaten, murdered and ghettoed into political irrelevance bad
sounds tight we had at most of it had to
do with the fact that violent bigotry is actually super
fun when you're on the side of the majority. See,
Moody is a very intelligent man, and he grasped instinctively
that the most important lesson that any would be tyrant
can ever learn, which is never ever apologize. So instead
(02:33):
of that, he followed up this nightmarish blood letting with
a Hindu pride march across the state. Ranks and ranks
of uniformed RSS members celebrated their violent oppression of the
Muslim minority and were met by cheering crowds. He was
careful in his actual language, always delivering the message that
without exposing too much of his ass, saying things like
if we raise the self respected morale, a fifty million
gujratis the schemes of Ali's, Moli's and Jamali's will not
(02:56):
be able to do us any harm. Those are all
like stereotypical of Muslim names in India. Do you see
what he's saying? I just he doubled down on the genocide.
He sure did, which is a real power move, a
white power move. White power move. You might say Airy
in power. Let's let's get a little more specific. Yeah,
(03:19):
wal Nor Render solidified his base of power. The rest
of the b JP suffered a series of electoral reversals.
This also wound up working out for Moody. The more
liberal wings of the party crumbled in the wake of
these defeats, and while they flailed, Moody pressed forward in
guj Rot and made deals with the biggest businessmen in
the region. He made life easy for them and they
pumped more money into guj Rot's economy, allowing him to
(03:39):
brag that he developed Gugrot into a financial powerhouse during
his time in office. That's a real trump yep boast.
Kind of sounds like they're all working from the same
play book. Over time, Moody seized control of the b
JP and married it's hardline racist, fascist DNA with the
financial interests of the business class. And I'm gonna quote
now from an article in the News Statesman. The turning
(04:01):
point came in October two thousand and eight when Tata
Motors moved its car plant for its much publicized new
budget hatchback the NANO from the leftist dominated West Bengal
to the pro business guz Rot. In two thousand eleven,
Ford invested one billion dollars in setting up another car plant.
Before long, Gugrot started to make headlines not for riots,
but for its new image as an economic powerhouse. From
to that just like mine com really wasn't about no,
(04:24):
it's about business tilling. It was really just a self
help business kind of yeah, exactly. From two thousand three,
Modi began holding an annual summit Vibrant guz Rot, which
cumulatively generated investment pledges of NWY billion. All the prominent, Yeah,
all the most prominent Indian captains of industry, from Matan
Tata to the Ambani's and the Mittal's rallied behind Mody
(04:45):
and declared him India's most business friendly chief Minister. Guzrot
now enjoys double digit growth and there's no question that
Mody has run an economically successful administration. However, his claims
to have made the state's economy and ideal for the
rest of India is disputed by economists to point out
that the gouge Rot model has done little to alleviate
poverty or improve indexes of education, malnutrition, or healthcare because
(05:06):
the money does not people down because Drick gold Down
Thery is not a real thing. But if you can
make the numbers look good on paper, you can get
people to vote for you because they think they'll get
some of that money, and then genocide it gets to happen.
It's cool. It's cool that it always works. When the
wealthiest men and goug Rot saw how good Moody could
(05:26):
be for business, they put their money into making sure
the few thousand people have gotten murdered were forgotten. There
was an investigation, of course, but the Indian Supreme Court
decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge Moody himself of anything.
That's so crazy. It's like, we tried, but like there's
nothing to tie you to the genocide. So it's like
so weird. There's no evidence but you're basically free. That's
(05:47):
so crazy. That's wild. Yeah, some officials within the government
did try to take action against Moody. Hern Pondia, a
can't minister, gave sworn testimony about the riots, claiming that
on the night it all began, he had attended a
meeting at moody home and heard the Chief Minister tell
police officials to allow people to vent their frustration and
not come in the way of the Hindu backlash. Yeah,
(06:07):
it's a good switchblade moment. Sanjiv Bought. A police administrator
also testified to hearing Moody express similar sentiments, discussing his
hope that the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure
that such incidents do not recur. The evidence was there,
but most of Moody's political rivals were too frightened of
the consequences of pursuing him to the fullest extent of
the law. They decided to take their chances with the
(06:27):
electoral system and the hope that you really never should
you never decide not to fully pursue criminal charges against
a fascist because you're worried about the backlash socially and
decided to just trust in voters. Turns out that doesn't
ever work. Yeah, gotta be on the right side of history.
(06:48):
Gotta throw then you can't wait until someone else is
like this is bad. So uh. Meanwhile, Moody and his
followers set to work eliminating the men who test to
fight against them, but was quickly charged with the death
of a suspect and police custody and sentenced to life
in prison. Hira and Pandya was found dead in his
car in two thousand three. His wife insisted this day
(07:10):
that his death was a political murder. So that's cool.
There's allowing to be a lot more of those. Moody
angrily ignored questions about the riots for years. One of
the most direct responses he actually did make came in
two thousand thirteen, when a reporter asked him if he
felt sorry for all the Muslims who'd been murdered by
those mobs he enabled. Moody responded, if someone is driving
a car and we're sitting behind, even then, if a
(07:32):
puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful? Of
course it is. What what if you're sitting by someone
in a car and they hit a puppy? Does it
hurt you to see? Yes, But that's the same as
him enabling this mob that killed three things. Not even
an analogy. It's it's pretty great. That's like sentences that
(07:52):
don't form a whole story. I mean, there's definitely like
some translation makes no sense stuff here like that he
originally said it. I'm guessing and like Karatti or whatever.
So it's like, you know, there's probably maybe it made
more sense than the original language, but like he did
it though, because it doesn't seem to address the fact
it was always a bullshit response. I just think the
phrasing is a little weird, not just mean. There's no
(08:14):
part of it where he's like what he's saying is
that like his role in letting the letting it enabling
these models? Why are the Muslims though the puppy where
and he's like still a human in the analogy, why
are the Muslims? And a good boy is just confusing.
He's like, I am a man, but in this story,
(08:36):
the Muslims are a puppy, and sometimes puppies get hit
by cars and you don't like to see it, so
you don't care driving the car which he's behind. Yeah,
he was totally sense and like, no, you're the driver
and they're not a puppy, they're a man, and you
just ran over the man. So I don't really understand why.
(08:57):
I get what he was trying to make it different
because think of Muslims as people. But it's like that
Simpson's bit where Liona Huts is like, yeah, this judge
doesn't like me because I hit his dog with my car.
Only replaced the word dog with the words son and
replaced the word hit with repeatedly that's a good bit,
oh boy. Moody's popularity was further augmented in two thousand
(09:19):
five when Gut police announced that they had shot dead
a terrorist they believed had been planning to assassinate Neurindra
sa Buddin Chic. The dead man was said to have
been a member of an Islamic terrorist cell collaborating with
the I s I Pakistani intelligence. Gujarati police claimed sar
Buddin had opened fire on them when they had caught him,
and they've been forced to fire back and kill him.
None of this was true, and it soon became clear
(09:41):
that the whole affair had been blatantly orchestrated by the authorities.
And I'm gonna quote now from scroll dot Ian and
Indian News website. Those were the years when Gujat was
scarred by several such encounters. The police killed more than
twenty people claiming they were trying to murder the Chief
Minister or commit other acts of terrorism, and a few
of these cases was the police's version effectively challenged. Shake's
killing would have become just another statistic and forgotten police records,
(10:03):
except for two interventions. First, Rubba Buddin Shaik wrote to
India's Chief Justice that he did not believe the police's
version of his brother's killing and that he was worried
for the safety of kawser B s A Buddin Shake's wife,
who disappeared since her husband's killing. In response, the Supreme
Court told the Gugrot police to find out how Shake
had been killed and what had happened to his wife. Second,
Preshant Daal, a journalist for the Dba Vashgar Paper newspaper,
(10:26):
published a sensational report claiming senior guz Rot police officials
had deliberately killed Shake and then rape and burned alive
his wife. Holy shit, Yeah, it's fucked. So a thorough
investigation would eventually secure the admission of the Gujrat government's
legal counsel that the whole shooting had been a fake encounter.
The motorcycle that police claimed Shake had been writing at
(10:47):
the time of the shootout turned out to be owned
by a relative of one of the cops who killed him.
As the crime was dug into. That's not even a
good cover up, No, it was not a good guy.
You gets someone who's not directly involved with what is
one of the frustrating things about fascism is how lazy
they're allowed to be and can still get away with it. Yeah,
(11:07):
it's very frustrating. So as the crime was dug into
ultimate blame for planning all this eventually settled on the
shoulders of Ahmed Shaw, a government minister in Narendra Moody's
right hand man. The state investigation eventually revealed that Shaw
had been running a massive extortion racket through the Gujrati Police.
Shake had been a part of this racket, and for
one reason or another, Shaw had decided that killing him
would be good for business. And since he was going
(11:28):
to commit murder, he figured he might as well make
the murdered man's death work for his political patron. So
he was like, oh, we'll just say this guy was
planning to kill Moody. It'll buffer Moody's popularity and we'll
get rid of this guy. All of this took years
to properly dig up, though, and the slow drip of
unimpeachable evidence of Moody and Shaw's shameless violent corruption had
no impact on their political futures. Instead, Moody grew more
(11:49):
popular year after year. He was reelected as Chief Minister
of Gujrat in two thousand seven. During his campaign, he
deliberately mocked his political opponents for trying to prosecute him
from murder, saying at one rally, congress people say that
Moody is indulging in encounters, saying that Moody killed Sora Buddin.
You tell me what should I do with Sora Budden.
He asked, kill him. The crowdared killed him, so kill him.
(12:11):
They said, yeah, that's cool. By two twelve, it really
is like Trump rallies. It's very much the same, insanely erie.
All of them are the same person, just in different bodies. Yeah.
By two thousand twelve, this guy had a nicer body
than Trump. It's not a high bar, That's what I
was about. It was like, uh, that body is failing
on every level. It's not doing great. It's like a diaper,
(12:35):
but a person good time. By two thousand twelve, and
a dramody stood at the very top of the b
j P, and the b j P was one of
the most powerful parties in the country, with tens of
millions of members. Moody announced his campaign for Prime Minister
near the end of two thousand thirteen, and I'm gonna
quote again from The New Yorker. Here he sold himself
(12:56):
not as a crusading nationalist, but as a master manager
at the visionary who had presided over an economic boom
in Gujrat. His campaign slogan was the good days are coming.
A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy
had grown no faster under his administration. The dog days
are over and he's saying it, yeah, a little bit yeah.
(13:18):
A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy
had grown no faster under his administration than under previous ones.
The accelerated growth was a fantastically crafted fiction, even so,
many of India's largest businesses flooded his campaign with contributions.
Moody was helped by an overwhelming public perception that the
Congress Party, which had been in power from most of
the past half century, had grown arrogant and corrupt. Its
complacency was personified by the Gandhi family, whose members dominated
(13:41):
the party but appeared diffident and out of touch. Rahul Gandhi,
the head of the party and Nehru's great grandson, was
dubbed the reluctant prince by the Indian media. By contrast,
Moody and his team were disciplined, focused and responsive. The
Gandhi's would keep chief ministers who had traveled across the
country to see them waiting for days. They didn't care.
An Indian plitical commentator who has met with the Gandhi's
(14:01):
as well as Moody, told me, with Moody's people, you
got right in. So, like Moody, number one, access and
availability trumps yep, trumps being an out of touch political
elite who just tells, trust me, I know what I'm doing.
We've been at this for a while. Um yeah, yeah, yeah.
It turns out that works. And also, you know, when
(14:23):
you're trying to get elected for the first time as
a fascist, you you you button down a little bit
on their racism and focused on I'm a good manager.
I'm gonna be good for the economy. I'm a good businessman. Yeah.
A huge amount of the b JP success had to
do with the casual corruption and elitism many Indians perceived
from the Congress Party. Most of their highest officials came
from families who had dominated Indian politics since the nation
(14:46):
got its independence. The actors of power was there's by
right of birth. The men of the b JP, however,
portrayed themselves less as aristocrats and more as humble warrior monks.
They were cheap, simple clothing and avoided displays of wealth.
There and Drew Moody talked regularly about the hour of
yoga he did every day and repeatedly emphasized his simple
life and noble refusal to fuck anybody. So that's good. Yeah,
(15:10):
this may seem odd, but Moody's refusal to have a
family meant that he had no distractions from work, and
that's the image, the hard working, religiously dedicated aesthetic that
played for Indian voters. It's anyone's guess as to whether
or not Moody really is the man he portrays himself
to be, but it's possible that he actually is. One
political commentator told The New Yorker, when you have that
kind of power, that kind of adoration, you don't need romance.
(15:32):
I mean, I just feel like the members of the
b j P should really have exploded on the scene more. Yeah. Sorry,
they should have come into power. Yeah, you're better at
this than me. They should have ejaculated on Parliament no,
(15:52):
that didn't work. They should have really focused on stimulating
the head of their party, stimulating the head and sort
of making a cream pie of the different branches. So
many people, we do, we do? We do? We do?
(16:14):
Where the hell was I here? The b JP won
the popular vote and Moody, it's leader became Prime Minister.
He immediately set to work dealing with problems the prior
government had ignored. Chief among them was public defecation. This
is like this is but the India's like fucking huge.
It's like the biggest, It's one of the biggest countries
on the planet. And like this is not just like
a sort of because of the lack of a lot
(16:35):
of like good plumbing and stuff, it's often a lot
of people consider it cleaner to go out in public,
but like then you wind up like this stuff spreads disease.
Like it was a big problem. And I was mostly
just laughing because I thought that it would be amazing
if that problem only circulated around the b j P headquarters,
because people were like fuck you and just around it
(16:58):
and they're like, we have this really weird public defecation problem,
and like the rest of the city is totally clean.
They're like, yeah, but it's just like ships running in
the streets. People are like, no, no, it's no, it's
not just fortunately not. It was a problem and they
decided to deal with it um and again in the
(17:18):
traditional way that you see with this. They like launched
a thing that looked really good but was less effective
than it actually wound up being, but allowed them to
like publicly claimed that they were making great strides. So
in one of his first speeches in Delhi, Nedromodi promised
to launch a nationwide campaign to build public toilets and
every school. In sixty months, hundred and ten million toilets
were constructed, serving more than sixty million Indians. It was
(17:39):
probably the largest fastest toilet building program in world. Are
just fascist building? It also does that too, yeah, building,
And it's hard to fault Moody on at least the
idea of adding more public toilets to India, but its
execution and its efficacy were distinctly mixed. And I'm gonna
quote now from a Voice of American news right up. Quote.
Critics however, charged that over zealous government workers may have
(18:01):
inflated the number, since a deadline had been set for
declaring India open defecation free by October two hundred, fiftieth
birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India's independent struggle.
The entire movement happened in a mission mode. There were
targets to achieve, according to Nazarka, Lead, a New Delhi
research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a
nonprofit that works on child and sanitation issues in India.
(18:21):
He charges in some places, people were coerced into building
toilets by local authorities who wanted to demonstrate progress. A
study conducted last year by the group and four of
India's biggest states found that access to household toilets increased
from thirty seven percent into this in fourteen to last year. However,
roughly one quarter of people who owned a toilet continued
to defecate in the open. They considered it wholesome and
(18:41):
healthy and an opportunity to get some fresh air or
see their fields. So I thought that was going to
be in see their friends. I was like, damn, just
pooping and talking. That's pretty ann P and T, A
little bit of P and T for the b j P.
That's a that's a merch shirt, that's for sure. We're noticed.
How how good I slice this like you did? You
(19:04):
sliced it great. We're playing with knives when we talk
about fascism, and I really did a great job with mine.
I'm very proud of you. And you know what else,
I'm proud of these goods and services. Absolutely, I am
so proud of these goods and services. I have no children,
but in a way, all of the products and services
that we advertise are my children. And by in a way,
(19:25):
I mean in a literal way, and that I I
have fucked the parent companies in order to produce the
products that you can now buy. So you are purchasing
the spawn of my alloyance when you buy what Sophie,
this is how you sell sofiellos wine. I never needed
to hear this. This podcast is built on freedom time
(19:49):
for ads. We're back. We're back after that flawless ad break,
and so Fia is now holding two knives. The very
ready to continue here. So the toilet building project had
(20:11):
a debatable impact, but it achieved its real purpose, which
was to give Moody a strong out of the gate
win that made him look like a decisive and powerful leader,
and since it was impossible to make more toilets into
a partisan issue, there was nothing his opponents could do
but kind of hand him that win. Uh. And Moody
scored another early victory when he attacked India's massive problem
with gang rape. In two thousand twelve, twenty three year
(20:31):
old woman had been raped and tortured by six men
on a public bus. She died of her Oh yeah,
it was it was this. It was a huge story internationally.
It happened like right before I went there. Um And
it was still like the big topic of discussion in
Delhi at the time. And it was this kind of
like horrible, horrible crime that catalyzed the fact that like
India had a major problem with gang rape. Um. And
(20:52):
so this is like this makes the international news. India
gets like criticized for it worldwide, and like it is
something that has to be addressed. Um. And I hate
to give Moody credit for anything, but his first public
speech on the issue, he actually gave a really good statement.
He told a crowd parents asked their daughters hundreds of questions,
but if any dared to ask their sons where they
are going, which is like kind of the right way
(21:15):
to lean it drop for that fascist. Yeah, one good thing.
Yeah he handles this that he handles talking about that. Well,
I mean, Hiller was a vegetarian. We gotta give him.
He was pretty good. He was anti animal testing too.
So with stories like that coming out of the early
days of Moody's reign, it was hard for the world
to stay mad at him for the minor issue of
helping to orchestrate inside three months of bloody riots that
(21:37):
killed thousands of people and ethnically cleansed large chunks of
a major state. He said, the woke thing. So we're good.
This is the day Moody became Prime minister. Oh Man, Yeah.
According to the New Yorker quote, Moody's effort to transform
his image succeeded in the West as well. In the
United States, newspaper columnists welcome his emphasis on markets and efficiency.
In addition, Moody called on a vast network of Indian
(21:59):
Americans cheered to success at putting India on the world stage.
The Obama administration quietly dropped the visa ban when Moody
meat Obama not long after taking office. The two visited
the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. A man Moody
claimed to admire. During his stay, Moody had a dinner
meeting with Obama, but he presented White House chefs with
a dilemma. He was fasting for Navaratri, a Hindu festival.
At the meeting, he consumed only water, which obviously like
(22:22):
makes him look really good, is very religious bases, like
he's not even going to eat at this this White
House feast and stuff. So pretty awkward to have a
full dinner in front of a man that's just like,
now I'll have water. Thanks. You knew when this meeting
was happening. We could have like a different schedule. We're
not dinner, Like we don't invite a lot of like
the leaders of Muslim countries over during Ramadan, or if
(22:44):
we do, we do like the night thing that you're
supposed to do, Like we could have worked this out,
but could have just done like a tea meeting. He
might not be allowed to consume tea during it kind
of depends like the different levels of fast. Well, never mind,
should have just rescheduled. Yeah, well. Moody's early days were
relatively unproblematic. On the outside. There were numerous clear signs
that he was still exactly as much of a fascist
(23:05):
as he's always been. The trial of his old buddy
I'm at Shaw over the murder of Sora Budin Shake
was still going on at this point, but in two
thousand fourteen, Modi's first full year in power, show just
stopped showing up to court. The judge ordered him to appear,
and in response, the government removed the judge from the case.
So Shaw got a new judge named bridge Go Paul Lawyer,
and this judge also complained about Shah's refusal to come
(23:28):
to court. He confessed to his friends and family that
he'd been offered sixteen million dollars from the Chief Justice
of the Bombay High Court to drop the case. That's
a lot. That is a lot of money. Lawyer refused
because he was a good judge, and then he died
conveniently of a heart attack. The Caravan and Indian News
magazine reported on some peculiarities about how the judge's body
(23:48):
was returned to his family. Rather than the arrangements being
made by government officials like you'd expect for a government employee,
they were handled by the RSS and his corps arrived
back at home covered in blood A lot of equal
suspect maybe it wasn't a heart attack. They didn't even
bother to wipe the blood off saying how they were like, yeah,
(24:08):
we don't give up. It's frustrating because, like I've gotten
to a lot of protests were like thousands of activists
organized for weeks and held like a mostly peaceful event,
but like one kid tosses a rock and that's like
the whole story. Whereas like fascists get to like murder
people and send their bloody corpses back to their family
and everyone's like, yeah, but the economy, it's very frustrating,
very frustrating, cool and good, It's what I meant to say.
(24:32):
Shah's case was given to a third judge named Gosavi,
who dismissed all the charges after about a month. Um,
that's so weird, that's so weird. Did the pittsporaldecessor's bloody
corpse have anything to do with this decision? Might have been?
Might have been? And while all this was going on,
Norindra Moody went ahead and made Amshaw the president of
the b JP, making him the second most powerful man
(24:52):
in the country. Over the next few years, Moody and
his followers consolidated power, killing her, sidelining judges who worked
against them, and or frustrating a vast campaign of suppression
against the press. Good journalists have been the chief enemy
of Narendra Moody from day one, and the b j
P set up a sophisticated cyber harassment campaign to shut
down or scare off anyone who might speak out against them.
Naha Dixit, a reporter, told The New Yorker. Every day
(25:15):
I get three notifications with Dick pis and with conversations
about how they should rape me with a steel rod
or a rose thorn bush or something like that. And
obviously the worst of the abuses saved for female journalists
who have been kind of at the forefront of attacking
modes regime, very brave women reporters in India. Dixit's abuse
does not just come from random Moody bros. Online. Official
(25:36):
representatives of the b JP regularly tweet abuse to her,
suggesting that that this behavior is officially condoned by the party.
The New Yorker continues. Partixin, a former software engineer and
the founder of alt News, which tracks online disinformation, described
a nimble social media operation that works on behalf of
the b JP. In two thou seventeen, his group made
a typical discovery when a pro b JP website called
(25:57):
Hindutva dot info released a video of a gruesome stabbing,
which was passed around on social media as evidence that
Muslims were killing Hindus and Kerala Punic Sharma, an rss Apparachnik,
who Moody follows on Twitter, promoted the video saying that
it should make Hindu's blood boil. But when All News
tracked the video to its source, it turned out to
depict a gang killing in Mexico, which you might recognize
(26:17):
does not have a high Hindu population or Muslim population,
was probably unrelated to any conflicts there. Yeah, it also
seems again pretty lazy. They get to be lazy. It's fine.
Sinaha told me he believed that some of the most
aggressive social media poster instigated by an official I T
cell staffed and funded by b JP loyalists. He said
that people affiliated with the b JP maintained websites that
(26:40):
pushed promodi propaganda and attack his enemies. They were organized
and quick, He said. They got their act down a
long time ago in gug rot pretty cool, that's so
funked up and again so similar to what we have going.
I was going to say completely different from anything that's
ever happened anywhere, but I guesst what you say works
to sixteen, the Moody Adminitis station went after Indie TV,
(27:02):
one of the most prominent and influential critics of their regime.
All government advertising was pulled from the network, and members
of the Moody cabinet pressured business owners and private corporations
to stop buying ads on in d TV as well.
The station was forced to lay off a quarter of
its staff, while good journalists lost their jobs and in
some cases, their lives. Narendra Moody continued to pump money
into his social media operations. In two thousand nineteen, yours
(27:26):
you gotta stay up on the socials, social meds, social meds.
In two thousand nineteen, Moody faced reelection, He spent as
much as five billion dollars on his campaign regular fucking
Bloomberg over here. Yeah, I mean it's a big country,
so you do have to like spread it out more.
Uh yeah, pouring money into his propaganda efforts to mitigate
(27:47):
the fact that India's economy actually took a bit of
a dive under his leadership. It's like fascist starting actually
good at the one thing fascist wild. He was helped
along in this by an attack by a suicide bomber
on Cashmere on February fourteenth, two thousand nineteen, which killed
forty Indian soldiers. Moody's online propaganda machines swung into action.
Video went viral of Moody consoling the widow of a
soldier that recording was actually from two thousand thirteen. But
(28:10):
the truth never gets in the way of spreading a
good meme. They're like, she's a widow. You know, widows.
One widows as good as another. Throw it out there. Uh.
Moody used anger over the attack as an excuse to
ratchet up as anti Muslim rhetoric. He gave speeches claiming
that the blood of the people is boiling, and sent
thousands of troops into Cashmir on the pretext that India's
(28:31):
only semi autonomous Muslim majority state had to be cracked
down on for the safety of the people. Twelve days
after the attack, the Prime Minister ordered a series of
air strikes on what he claimed was a terrorist training
camp in a town called Balakot. Predictably, online Modi supporters
hailed this as a massive success in the battle against terrorism,
claiming that more than three hundred Islamic extremists had been killed.
Viral pictures of smoking corpses spread throughout social media, but
(28:54):
journalists who investigated found only a few holes in the
ground and no evidence that anyone at all had died.
The viral photos were actually just pictures from the aftermath
of a deadly heat wave. Purported video of the air
strikes was actually footage from a video game called Arma Too.
I believe the Russian government has also used to like
fake videos of air strikes. It's very funny and good
and cool. None of this mattered the lies sold I
(29:17):
meet Shaw bragged to a group of election workers that
the b JP social media operations had created an impenetrable
wall of bullshit. Quote do you understand what I'm saying?
We are capable of delivering any message we want to
the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake about
sweet and sour? Am I right? And balance it out?
I got good chicken? Yeah? No. Reindramodi was reelected and
(29:39):
while his first term started with a series of field
good measures almost everyone could support. There was no pretense
at all. The second time around, and I'm going to
quote from the New Yorker again, Moody's government introduced a
series of extraordinary initiatives meant to solidify Hindu dominance. The
most notable of them, along with provoking the special status
of Kashmir, was a measure designed to strip citizenship from
as many as two million resid at the state of Assam,
(30:01):
many of who who had crossed the border from the
Muslim nation of Bangladesh decades before. In September, the government
began constructing detention centers for residents who had become a
legal overnight. Fuck cool and good. I mean again, to
remind me of anything happening where No, not unlike anything
in history or now elsewhere on the planet. As is
always the case in situations like this, the government's open
(30:22):
embraced bigotry acted as a blank check for bigots among
the population, Hindu nationalists and so crazy, how there's a
connection between that. Really it's really weird, right, yeah, I mean,
this is the only time that's happened to a lot
of only time happenings here. The first and only lots
of those, so Hindu nationalists in Northern India, for example,
started to spread rumors that Muslim men had launched a
(30:44):
hidden operation to trick Hindu women into marriage and then
foresaid women into prostitution. These bogus rumors spread like wildfire
on social media and what'sapp and quickly acquired the name
love Jihad. Interfaith couples have been increasingly insulted, assaulted. Edge
is actually the next show from the Love Is Blind
People on Netflix because it is a good title, you know,
(31:07):
the only thing I watch on Netflix. Well, no, they
don't have it on Netflix, so I had to torrent it. Um, yeah,
never mind. Just it's not for you, that's good. The
only thing that's for me is rewatching old episodes of
Star Trek, The Next Generation and Community. So that's that's
basically it for me. I'm I'm a I'm an old man,
(31:28):
and I hate new things. You're wearing an adorable cardian
thank you, thank you, thank you. A tiny, little cute
old man working on it. You know what else I'm
working on these goods and services, I'm working on getting
together making a little love connection with another corporation or two,
just kind of pumping a couple of products out, getting
(31:51):
them to push out a service or two, and then
you can buy them wet and fresh from the womb
or dry because it's gross. No, no, no, no, you
can't trust that it's fresh. All the products are away. Yes,
every product that we sell is damp as hell. That
is our guarantee. Yea bye, and we're back. We were
(32:22):
just talking about how good we are at advertising products
and services. I'm I'm proud of us. I'm I'm. We
were doing a lot of handshaking and popping champagne bottles.
I love that this industry works the way it does.
It's great and good and cool. The years in power
(32:42):
do not seem to have changed Moody. A journalist with
a New Statesman interviewed a number of people who work
closely with the Prime Minister, and they all reported more
or less the same thing. Quote. He is teetotal and
a vegetarian and lives in almost monastic lifestyle. When told
me he is extremely focused when he talks to you,
he really listens. He can focus like a few people
I know. He calls it a day by eleven and
gets up at four in the morning. Another aid told
(33:03):
me he spends the first ninety minutes of the day
happily surfing the internet for articles about himself. His staff
starts getting caused by five thirty latest. He's obsessed with
personal hygienes. Set a third, he changes his clothes at
least four or five times a day, and he always
eats alone, always, which is weird in India. Like eating
together big groups of people is like a really important thing.
That's a very strange fact um. But also if you
(33:25):
look at all the pictures of like even the Democratic
candidates eating, they all look like none of them know
how to eat food like a normal human being. It's bizarre,
Like why can't you? Maybe it's just like being photographed
makes you look weird eating like you just like get
self conscious. I don't know, I've never had to eat
on camera. I was gonna say, happily surfing the internet
for articles about himself. First of all, obviously that is
(33:47):
what Trump does, But happily is a hilarious thing to
insert in there, Like I just picture him like going
like like singing to himself and Mr Blue, Yeah, good times.
It is, of course impossible to say whether or not
all this is true, but it plays well with Indian voters,
particularly young voters who supporting their indraw Moody at unprecedented levels,
(34:10):
and Moody is already hard at work earning the next
generation of young votes. He's written a number of books
that could best be described as dictatorial pop philosophy, and
had even more written about him that sell him as
a management guru, essentially across between Tim Ferris and Adolf Hitler,
who's also a management He was like, he's like Hitler
two point oh, they're so psyched about it. Moody even
(34:30):
wrote a book specifically aimed at school aged children called
Exam Warriors. This book is innocuous enough on the surface,
and mostly focuses on urging children to study hard, look
forward to exams, his way to prove and improve themselves,
and do lots of yoga. Um. It includes an autumount
of militant word play, though not just in the title
Exam Warriors, but in chapters with heads like be a warrior,
(34:51):
not a warrior, and sleep as a great weapon. Sharpen
it gott to sharpen your sleep. I can't can't get
to bed without a nice I mean I never sleep
without a machete. Yeah, I'm holding and I have something
like I get sharp sleep. I get sharp sleep. I
got a machete bayonet for one of my rifles. Sharp.
(35:11):
We should get you a machete. Please. Let's get a
lot of machetes, a lot more machetes, like, oh, great,
dangerous narcissists. Moody saw in radio and podcast the ultimate
opportunity to brainwash the masses. His monthly show mon Kibat
is hugely popular, and he recently launched the Normindra Moody
mobile app to further connection to run a monthly show.
(35:32):
I know, I'm trying to run a monthly show as
a stand up and it's like it's exhausting, hard to
find the time. I mean, I think it might be
easier to be dictator of India than a stands So, yeah,
dictator is actually the wrong word. We'll get to that
in a little bit. While Moody's role in the Gouge
riots saw him condemned by the international community, it seems
as if nothing he does now will be met by
any real condemnation around the world. On February, while President
(35:54):
Donald Trump visited New Delhi, the city was convulsed by
a wave of mass violence that is probably best described
an anti Muslim pagram. It started with protest against the
expansion of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The law MODI used
to remove the citizenship of some two million Muslim citizens.
And I'm going to quote now from coverage by the Print,
an English language Indian news site. This is about how
the riot started off. Quote. The women sitting in ce
(36:16):
lamp Or, a Muslim dominated slum area, rightly felt it
was no use just sitting there. The women decided to
move their protest to a road underneath the jah RaBaD
metro station Saturday night. This blocked a road. Unless you
block a main road, how do you get the attention
of the main stream. This is not the first time
a road has been blocked by a group of protesting people,
but b JPS Kapil Mishra said that the blocking of
a road was somehow a matter serious enough for the
(36:37):
people to take law into their own hands. He demanded
that the road be cleared in both jap RaBaD and
the nearby Chanda Bag. What unfolded them was a clear
diabolical plan make it look like a clash between pro
and anti c a A supporters. The clash goes violent
Muslims provoked and forced to respond in self defense. It
looks like a riot used the violence as an excuse
to clear the protests, the peaceful and democratic protests. When
(37:00):
the Jaffrabod protest site was cleared, a chop b JP
RSS leader declared victory. Bils and Thosh is the b
JPS general secretary a post reserve for the RSS representative.
Here was his tweet just as news came in off
the Jaffrabod site being cleared. Jafferbod Metro protest area totally cleared.
The game starts now. Rioters need to be taught a
lesson or two of Indian laws. Pretty cool that it's
(37:22):
a game. Yeah, and san Fosh deleted the tweet later
and to remove game starts now and replace it with
time to enforce the law in its entire spirit and
a new tweet. The mask was a little bit too
off for him. At least forty two people were killed
during this game, and probably a lot more, but we
don't know yet. The vest majority fun game. Fun game.
(37:42):
I do play a lot of games that kill forty
two people, but everyone everyone knows when we play knife tennis,
you know there's a risk. Sometimes you get you have
people sign the waivers. Sign the waivers with a knife.
It's the only way. Yeah, forty two were killed, the
best majority of the Muslims and once again the police
stood by or actively aided the mobs. It is not
(38:04):
a coincidence. The Delhi Police report directly to the Home
Minister of India one A'mit shaw. As I write this,
the fallout from this program has not fully fallen out.
It took three days for Moody to even make a
statement on the matter. The Delhi police have made a
lot of noise about holding reconciliation meetings to try and
de radicalize people. And it is worth noting that Moody's
(38:26):
muted response a tweet that said we cannot allow vested
interest groups to divide us and create disturbance smacked more
than a little bit of fear and uncertainty and a
mass expulsion of public rage that he and his party
inspired but cannot fully control. Because the frightening reality of
the situation in India today is that while Narendra Moody
enjoys almost unchecked power, he's not really a dictator. It
(38:46):
seems more accurate to say that he and his propaganda
have inflamed a huge chunk of the electorate enough that
they have vested him with unprecedented power, so long as
he uses it to hurt the people. He has worked
to convince them they hate. One of the journalists The
New Yorker talked to guy named Prasad, the editor of
an Indian magazine called Outlook, said this of his country.
It's very different now. The institutions of crumbled universities, investigative agencies,
(39:10):
the courts, the media, the administrative agencies, public services. And
I think there is no rational answer for what has
happened except that we pretended not to be what we
were for fifty sixty years, but we are now reverting
to what we always wanted to be, which is to
pummel minorities, to push them into a corner, to show
them their places, to conquer Kashmir, to ruin the media,
and to make corporation servants of the state, and all
(39:31):
of this under a heavy resurgence of Hinduism. India is
becoming the country it has always wanted to be. That's
eerie and sad. Yeah, hopefully not true. Hopefully not true.
But I do find a lot I identify with in
this fear of life. We're not reverting here in the US,
you know, to the way we were before the civil
(39:52):
rights movement, before the the LGBT rights movement, before all
these gains were made, were becoming the country. A lot
of us always wanted us to be like, that's terrifying, thought.
It is cooling good, Sophia, how you feeling feeling good?
Feeling good as hell? Yeah, stab myself with this, n
don't do that. Don't do that, you know what, keep
(40:14):
it ready for a Nazi. It's true, if I go,
taking at least one Nazi with me, that is what
George orwell, there's a fun quote from Georgie like that.
I said, if I go, if I go, because I
believe believe in the singularity, And I'm like, well, if
we don't all die, I'll be We've got to get
rid of the fascial before the singularity, otherwise we get
(40:36):
fascist robots. Truth. Yeah, I don't want that. That doesn't
sound terrifying. Yeah, I mean fascists are also really inefficient,
So maybe like a machine would be fundamentally anti fascist
because it's just frustrated by the inefficiencies that they generate
and into system they control, or if the machines did
our eyes against us and they were fascists that because
(40:58):
they're so poorly made, there would be like one flaw
that would be very easy to hack and they would
just all die at the same time. Either that or
we'd wind up in like an I have no mouth,
but I must scream sort of situation. Oh no, yeah again,
this is like a ship streak. Yeah, it's let me
have a silver lining, dude, turn into a ship streak
(41:19):
right away. Yeah, I guess the silver lining is really
love love the lead in from Ship Streak. Guys. If
you want to keep the ship streak going, you can
find me on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia s
(41:41):
O f I y A, and you can listen to
me on my two podcasts, one with Miles Gray of
the Daily Zay Guys called for Fiance and the other
one with Courtney Kosak called Private Parts Unknown about love
and sex around the world. So yeah, follow me, follow review,
(42:05):
and uh, we have a dog related problem. Yeah, what
the fuck? There's some dogs barking outside the studio. Hopefully
is not involved. We have to go deal with a
dog related situation. But you all deal with this fascism
related situation, perhaps by stockpiling arms. Perhaps if I just
watch listening to Behind the Bastards, visiting our website Behind
(42:28):
the Bastards dot com, if buying a T shirt and
te pump work, or listening to our political podcast The
Worst Year Ever. See Sophie, I still do it sometimes,
all right, I know, Let's go see if the dogs
are okay. Bye,
What's blowing jobs my party. Thank you. That was wonderful.
Thank you. There's a good lead into part two of
our new so pleased with an intro. I know, I
really now don't wonderful. Thank you. I crave on prep. Yeah,
I think I like it enough to make him treasurer
of the b JP. I got your treasure of the
b j P. Also our guests, if you Alexandra, Hi everyone,
(00:25):
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me back.
Thanks for coming back minutes after we finished the first episode.
But yeah, I mean I almost took off. This has
been a rough one. I mean it's it's not a
lot of dead children. It is, but we don't talk
about all of them. Yeah, that's yeah, we don't detail it.
(00:46):
That's a silver lining, but it stay in just a
silver lining. A lot of dead children, but we don't
have to talk about them specifically. We could just say
two or three thousand dead and not get more specifically
that friend Yeah, sometimes the truest form of friendship is
not going into more detail about horrible ethnic cleansings than
(01:07):
you need to. I mean, it's what I put on
our T shirts. But it's a lot of words. Yeah,
it has to go all the way on the sleeves
and the back, but a lot hop onto behind the bastards.
T public for our new ethnic cleansing is horrible, but
there's only a certain amount of detail that's really necessary
to get across the key facts of what's happening without
(01:27):
getting into you know, uh, what's the word when somebody
like looks at a car crash that sort of thing.
A lot of words on those T shirts, but that
shirt also has you saying of five times in a row,
like it's quoted. Yeah, it's not. We should have edited
the shirt at some point. No, But honestly, we were
going for realism. We were cinema verite. That's what that means.
(01:49):
It's putting ums on a T shirt on fiance miles
and I call that a transparency bonus. Oh nice's intentional. Yeah.
In the wake of the Gujrat riots, Narendra Modi was
shunned and marginalized and broader Indian society both in Gujrat itself,
his popularity grew. Some of this may have had to
do with the fact the Muslim population of the area
(02:10):
had been beaten, murdered and ghettoed into political irrelevance bad
sounds tight we had at most of it had to
do with the fact that violent bigotry is actually super
fun when you're on the side of the majority. See,
Moody is a very intelligent man, and he grasped instinctively
that the most important lesson that any would be tyrant
can ever learn, which is never ever apologize. So instead
(02:33):
of that, he followed up this nightmarish blood letting with
a Hindu pride march across the state. Ranks and ranks
of uniformed RSS members celebrated their violent oppression of the
Muslim minority and were met by cheering crowds. He was
careful in his actual language, always delivering the message that
without exposing too much of his ass, saying things like
if we raise the self respected morale, a fifty million
gujratis the schemes of Ali's, Moli's and Jamali's will not
(02:56):
be able to do us any harm. Those are all
like stereotypical of Muslim names in India. Do you see
what he's saying? I just he doubled down on the genocide.
He sure did, which is a real power move, a
white power move. White power move. You might say Airy
in power. Let's let's get a little more specific. Yeah,
(03:19):
wal Nor Render solidified his base of power. The rest
of the b JP suffered a series of electoral reversals.
This also wound up working out for Moody. The more
liberal wings of the party crumbled in the wake of
these defeats, and while they flailed, Moody pressed forward in
guj Rot and made deals with the biggest businessmen in
the region. He made life easy for them and they
pumped more money into guj Rot's economy, allowing him to
(03:39):
brag that he developed Gugrot into a financial powerhouse during
his time in office. That's a real trump yep boast.
Kind of sounds like they're all working from the same
play book. Over time, Moody seized control of the b
JP and married it's hardline racist, fascist DNA with the
financial interests of the business class. And I'm gonna quote
now from an article in the News Statesman. The turning
(04:01):
point came in October two thousand and eight when Tata
Motors moved its car plant for its much publicized new
budget hatchback the NANO from the leftist dominated West Bengal
to the pro business guz Rot. In two thousand eleven,
Ford invested one billion dollars in setting up another car plant.
Before long, Gugrot started to make headlines not for riots,
but for its new image as an economic powerhouse. From
to that just like mine com really wasn't about no,
(04:24):
it's about business tilling. It was really just a self
help business kind of yeah, exactly. From two thousand three,
Modi began holding an annual summit Vibrant guz Rot, which
cumulatively generated investment pledges of NWY billion. All the prominent, Yeah,
all the most prominent Indian captains of industry, from Matan
Tata to the Ambani's and the Mittal's rallied behind Mody
(04:45):
and declared him India's most business friendly chief Minister. Guzrot
now enjoys double digit growth and there's no question that
Mody has run an economically successful administration. However, his claims
to have made the state's economy and ideal for the
rest of India is disputed by economists to point out
that the gouge Rot model has done little to alleviate
poverty or improve indexes of education, malnutrition, or healthcare because
(05:06):
the money does not people down because Drick gold Down
Thery is not a real thing. But if you can
make the numbers look good on paper, you can get
people to vote for you because they think they'll get
some of that money, and then genocide it gets to happen.
It's cool. It's cool that it always works. When the
wealthiest men and goug Rot saw how good Moody could
(05:26):
be for business, they put their money into making sure
the few thousand people have gotten murdered were forgotten. There
was an investigation, of course, but the Indian Supreme Court
decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge Moody himself of anything.
That's so crazy. It's like, we tried, but like there's
nothing to tie you to the genocide. So it's like
so weird. There's no evidence but you're basically free. That's
(05:47):
so crazy. That's wild. Yeah, some officials within the government
did try to take action against Moody. Hern Pondia, a
can't minister, gave sworn testimony about the riots, claiming that
on the night it all began, he had attended a
meeting at moody home and heard the Chief Minister tell
police officials to allow people to vent their frustration and
not come in the way of the Hindu backlash. Yeah,
(06:07):
it's a good switchblade moment. Sanjiv Bought. A police administrator
also testified to hearing Moody express similar sentiments, discussing his
hope that the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure
that such incidents do not recur. The evidence was there,
but most of Moody's political rivals were too frightened of
the consequences of pursuing him to the fullest extent of
the law. They decided to take their chances with the
(06:27):
electoral system and the hope that you really never should
you never decide not to fully pursue criminal charges against
a fascist because you're worried about the backlash socially and
decided to just trust in voters. Turns out that doesn't
ever work. Yeah, gotta be on the right side of history.
(06:48):
Gotta throw then you can't wait until someone else is
like this is bad. So uh. Meanwhile, Moody and his
followers set to work eliminating the men who test to
fight against them, but was quickly charged with the death
of a suspect and police custody and sentenced to life
in prison. Hira and Pandya was found dead in his
car in two thousand three. His wife insisted this day
(07:10):
that his death was a political murder. So that's cool.
There's allowing to be a lot more of those. Moody
angrily ignored questions about the riots for years. One of
the most direct responses he actually did make came in
two thousand thirteen, when a reporter asked him if he
felt sorry for all the Muslims who'd been murdered by
those mobs he enabled. Moody responded, if someone is driving
a car and we're sitting behind, even then, if a
(07:32):
puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful? Of
course it is. What what if you're sitting by someone
in a car and they hit a puppy? Does it
hurt you to see? Yes, But that's the same as
him enabling this mob that killed three things. Not even
an analogy. It's it's pretty great. That's like sentences that
(07:52):
don't form a whole story. I mean, there's definitely like
some translation makes no sense stuff here like that he
originally said it. I'm guessing and like Karatti or whatever.
So it's like, you know, there's probably maybe it made
more sense than the original language, but like he did
it though, because it doesn't seem to address the fact
it was always a bullshit response. I just think the
phrasing is a little weird, not just mean. There's no
(08:14):
part of it where he's like what he's saying is
that like his role in letting the letting it enabling
these models? Why are the Muslims though the puppy where
and he's like still a human in the analogy, why
are the Muslims? And a good boy is just confusing.
He's like, I am a man, but in this story,
(08:36):
the Muslims are a puppy, and sometimes puppies get hit
by cars and you don't like to see it, so
you don't care driving the car which he's behind. Yeah,
he was totally sense and like, no, you're the driver
and they're not a puppy, they're a man, and you
just ran over the man. So I don't really understand why.
(08:57):
I get what he was trying to make it different
because think of Muslims as people. But it's like that
Simpson's bit where Liona Huts is like, yeah, this judge
doesn't like me because I hit his dog with my car.
Only replaced the word dog with the words son and
replaced the word hit with repeatedly that's a good bit,
oh boy. Moody's popularity was further augmented in two thousand
(09:19):
five when Gut police announced that they had shot dead
a terrorist they believed had been planning to assassinate Neurindra
sa Buddin Chic. The dead man was said to have
been a member of an Islamic terrorist cell collaborating with
the I s I Pakistani intelligence. Gujarati police claimed sar
Buddin had opened fire on them when they had caught him,
and they've been forced to fire back and kill him.
None of this was true, and it soon became clear
(09:41):
that the whole affair had been blatantly orchestrated by the authorities.
And I'm gonna quote now from scroll dot Ian and
Indian News website. Those were the years when Gujat was
scarred by several such encounters. The police killed more than
twenty people claiming they were trying to murder the Chief
Minister or commit other acts of terrorism, and a few
of these cases was the police's version effectively challenged. Shake's
killing would have become just another statistic and forgotten police records,
(10:03):
except for two interventions. First, Rubba Buddin Shaik wrote to
India's Chief Justice that he did not believe the police's
version of his brother's killing and that he was worried
for the safety of kawser B s A Buddin Shake's wife,
who disappeared since her husband's killing. In response, the Supreme
Court told the Gugrot police to find out how Shake
had been killed and what had happened to his wife. Second,
Preshant Daal, a journalist for the Dba Vashgar Paper newspaper,
(10:26):
published a sensational report claiming senior guz Rot police officials
had deliberately killed Shake and then rape and burned alive
his wife. Holy shit, Yeah, it's fucked. So a thorough
investigation would eventually secure the admission of the Gujrat government's
legal counsel that the whole shooting had been a fake encounter.
The motorcycle that police claimed Shake had been writing at
(10:47):
the time of the shootout turned out to be owned
by a relative of one of the cops who killed him.
As the crime was dug into. That's not even a
good cover up, No, it was not a good guy.
You gets someone who's not directly involved with what is
one of the frustrating things about fascism is how lazy
they're allowed to be and can still get away with it. Yeah,
(11:07):
it's very frustrating. So as the crime was dug into
ultimate blame for planning all this eventually settled on the
shoulders of Ahmed Shaw, a government minister in Narendra Moody's
right hand man. The state investigation eventually revealed that Shaw
had been running a massive extortion racket through the Gujrati Police.
Shake had been a part of this racket, and for
one reason or another, Shaw had decided that killing him
would be good for business. And since he was going
(11:28):
to commit murder, he figured he might as well make
the murdered man's death work for his political patron. So
he was like, oh, we'll just say this guy was
planning to kill Moody. It'll buffer Moody's popularity and we'll
get rid of this guy. All of this took years
to properly dig up, though, and the slow drip of
unimpeachable evidence of Moody and Shaw's shameless violent corruption had
no impact on their political futures. Instead, Moody grew more
(11:49):
popular year after year. He was reelected as Chief Minister
of Gujrat in two thousand seven. During his campaign, he
deliberately mocked his political opponents for trying to prosecute him
from murder, saying at one rally, congress people say that
Moody is indulging in encounters, saying that Moody killed Sora Buddin.
You tell me what should I do with Sora Budden.
He asked, kill him. The crowdared killed him, so kill him.
(12:11):
They said, yeah, that's cool. By two twelve, it really
is like Trump rallies. It's very much the same, insanely erie.
All of them are the same person, just in different bodies. Yeah.
By two thousand twelve, this guy had a nicer body
than Trump. It's not a high bar, That's what I
was about. It was like, uh, that body is failing
on every level. It's not doing great. It's like a diaper,
(12:35):
but a person good time. By two thousand twelve, and
a dramody stood at the very top of the b
j P, and the b j P was one of
the most powerful parties in the country, with tens of
millions of members. Moody announced his campaign for Prime Minister
near the end of two thousand thirteen, and I'm gonna
quote again from The New Yorker. Here he sold himself
(12:56):
not as a crusading nationalist, but as a master manager
at the visionary who had presided over an economic boom
in Gujrat. His campaign slogan was the good days are coming.
A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy
had grown no faster under his administration. The dog days
are over and he's saying it, yeah, a little bit yeah.
(13:18):
A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy
had grown no faster under his administration than under previous ones.
The accelerated growth was a fantastically crafted fiction, even so,
many of India's largest businesses flooded his campaign with contributions.
Moody was helped by an overwhelming public perception that the
Congress Party, which had been in power from most of
the past half century, had grown arrogant and corrupt. Its
complacency was personified by the Gandhi family, whose members dominated
(13:41):
the party but appeared diffident and out of touch. Rahul Gandhi,
the head of the party and Nehru's great grandson, was
dubbed the reluctant prince by the Indian media. By contrast,
Moody and his team were disciplined, focused and responsive. The
Gandhi's would keep chief ministers who had traveled across the
country to see them waiting for days. They didn't care.
An Indian plitical commentator who has met with the Gandhi's
(14:01):
as well as Moody, told me, with Moody's people, you
got right in. So, like Moody, number one, access and
availability trumps yep, trumps being an out of touch political
elite who just tells, trust me, I know what I'm doing.
We've been at this for a while. Um yeah, yeah, yeah.
It turns out that works. And also, you know, when
(14:23):
you're trying to get elected for the first time as
a fascist, you you you button down a little bit
on their racism and focused on I'm a good manager.
I'm gonna be good for the economy. I'm a good businessman. Yeah.
A huge amount of the b JP success had to
do with the casual corruption and elitism many Indians perceived
from the Congress Party. Most of their highest officials came
from families who had dominated Indian politics since the nation
(14:46):
got its independence. The actors of power was there's by
right of birth. The men of the b JP, however,
portrayed themselves less as aristocrats and more as humble warrior monks.
They were cheap, simple clothing and avoided displays of wealth.
There and Drew Moody talked regularly about the hour of
yoga he did every day and repeatedly emphasized his simple
life and noble refusal to fuck anybody. So that's good. Yeah,
(15:10):
this may seem odd, but Moody's refusal to have a
family meant that he had no distractions from work, and
that's the image, the hard working, religiously dedicated aesthetic that
played for Indian voters. It's anyone's guess as to whether
or not Moody really is the man he portrays himself
to be, but it's possible that he actually is. One
political commentator told The New Yorker, when you have that
kind of power, that kind of adoration, you don't need romance.
(15:32):
I mean, I just feel like the members of the
b j P should really have exploded on the scene more. Yeah. Sorry,
they should have come into power. Yeah, you're better at
this than me. They should have ejaculated on Parliament no,
(15:52):
that didn't work. They should have really focused on stimulating
the head of their party, stimulating the head and sort
of making a cream pie of the different branches. So
many people, we do, we do? We do? We do?
(16:14):
Where the hell was I here? The b JP won
the popular vote and Moody, it's leader became Prime Minister.
He immediately set to work dealing with problems the prior
government had ignored. Chief among them was public defecation. This
is like this is but the India's like fucking huge.
It's like the biggest, It's one of the biggest countries
on the planet. And like this is not just like
a sort of because of the lack of a lot
(16:35):
of like good plumbing and stuff, it's often a lot
of people consider it cleaner to go out in public,
but like then you wind up like this stuff spreads disease.
Like it was a big problem. And I was mostly
just laughing because I thought that it would be amazing
if that problem only circulated around the b j P headquarters,
because people were like fuck you and just around it
(16:58):
and they're like, we have this really weird public defecation problem,
and like the rest of the city is totally clean.
They're like, yeah, but it's just like ships running in
the streets. People are like, no, no, it's no, it's
not just fortunately not. It was a problem and they
decided to deal with it um and again in the
(17:18):
traditional way that you see with this. They like launched
a thing that looked really good but was less effective
than it actually wound up being, but allowed them to
like publicly claimed that they were making great strides. So
in one of his first speeches in Delhi, Nedromodi promised
to launch a nationwide campaign to build public toilets and
every school. In sixty months, hundred and ten million toilets
were constructed, serving more than sixty million Indians. It was
(17:39):
probably the largest fastest toilet building program in world. Are
just fascist building? It also does that too, yeah, building,
And it's hard to fault Moody on at least the
idea of adding more public toilets to India, but its
execution and its efficacy were distinctly mixed. And I'm gonna
quote now from a Voice of American news right up. Quote.
Critics however, charged that over zealous government workers may have
(18:01):
inflated the number, since a deadline had been set for
declaring India open defecation free by October two hundred, fiftieth
birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India's independent struggle.
The entire movement happened in a mission mode. There were
targets to achieve, according to Nazarka, Lead, a New Delhi
research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a
nonprofit that works on child and sanitation issues in India.
(18:21):
He charges in some places, people were coerced into building
toilets by local authorities who wanted to demonstrate progress. A
study conducted last year by the group and four of
India's biggest states found that access to household toilets increased
from thirty seven percent into this in fourteen to last year. However,
roughly one quarter of people who owned a toilet continued
to defecate in the open. They considered it wholesome and
(18:41):
healthy and an opportunity to get some fresh air or
see their fields. So I thought that was going to
be in see their friends. I was like, damn, just
pooping and talking. That's pretty ann P and T, A
little bit of P and T for the b j P.
That's a that's a merch shirt, that's for sure. We're noticed.
How how good I slice this like you did? You
(19:04):
sliced it great. We're playing with knives when we talk
about fascism, and I really did a great job with mine.
I'm very proud of you. And you know what else,
I'm proud of these goods and services. Absolutely, I am
so proud of these goods and services. I have no children,
but in a way, all of the products and services
that we advertise are my children. And by in a way,
(19:25):
I mean in a literal way, and that I I
have fucked the parent companies in order to produce the
products that you can now buy. So you are purchasing
the spawn of my alloyance when you buy what Sophie,
this is how you sell sofiellos wine. I never needed
to hear this. This podcast is built on freedom time
(19:49):
for ads. We're back. We're back after that flawless ad break,
and so Fia is now holding two knives. The very
ready to continue here. So the toilet building project had
(20:11):
a debatable impact, but it achieved its real purpose, which
was to give Moody a strong out of the gate
win that made him look like a decisive and powerful leader,
and since it was impossible to make more toilets into
a partisan issue, there was nothing his opponents could do
but kind of hand him that win. Uh. And Moody
scored another early victory when he attacked India's massive problem
with gang rape. In two thousand twelve, twenty three year
(20:31):
old woman had been raped and tortured by six men
on a public bus. She died of her Oh yeah,
it was it was this. It was a huge story internationally.
It happened like right before I went there. Um And
it was still like the big topic of discussion in
Delhi at the time. And it was this kind of
like horrible, horrible crime that catalyzed the fact that like
India had a major problem with gang rape. Um. And
(20:52):
so this is like this makes the international news. India
gets like criticized for it worldwide, and like it is
something that has to be addressed. Um. And I hate
to give Moody credit for anything, but his first public
speech on the issue, he actually gave a really good statement.
He told a crowd parents asked their daughters hundreds of questions,
but if any dared to ask their sons where they
are going, which is like kind of the right way
(21:15):
to lean it drop for that fascist. Yeah, one good thing.
Yeah he handles this that he handles talking about that. Well,
I mean, Hiller was a vegetarian. We gotta give him.
He was pretty good. He was anti animal testing too.
So with stories like that coming out of the early
days of Moody's reign, it was hard for the world
to stay mad at him for the minor issue of
helping to orchestrate inside three months of bloody riots that
(21:37):
killed thousands of people and ethnically cleansed large chunks of
a major state. He said, the woke thing. So we're good.
This is the day Moody became Prime minister. Oh Man, Yeah.
According to the New Yorker quote, Moody's effort to transform
his image succeeded in the West as well. In the
United States, newspaper columnists welcome his emphasis on markets and efficiency.
In addition, Moody called on a vast network of Indian
(21:59):
Americans cheered to success at putting India on the world stage.
The Obama administration quietly dropped the visa ban when Moody
meat Obama not long after taking office. The two visited
the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. A man Moody
claimed to admire. During his stay, Moody had a dinner
meeting with Obama, but he presented White House chefs with
a dilemma. He was fasting for Navaratri, a Hindu festival.
At the meeting, he consumed only water, which obviously like
(22:22):
makes him look really good, is very religious bases, like
he's not even going to eat at this this White
House feast and stuff. So pretty awkward to have a
full dinner in front of a man that's just like,
now I'll have water. Thanks. You knew when this meeting
was happening. We could have like a different schedule. We're
not dinner, Like we don't invite a lot of like
the leaders of Muslim countries over during Ramadan, or if
(22:44):
we do, we do like the night thing that you're
supposed to do, Like we could have worked this out,
but could have just done like a tea meeting. He
might not be allowed to consume tea during it kind
of depends like the different levels of fast. Well, never mind,
should have just rescheduled. Yeah, well. Moody's early days were
relatively unproblematic. On the outside. There were numerous clear signs
that he was still exactly as much of a fascist
(23:05):
as he's always been. The trial of his old buddy
I'm at Shaw over the murder of Sora Budin Shake
was still going on at this point, but in two
thousand fourteen, Modi's first full year in power, show just
stopped showing up to court. The judge ordered him to appear,
and in response, the government removed the judge from the case.
So Shaw got a new judge named bridge Go Paul Lawyer,
and this judge also complained about Shah's refusal to come
(23:28):
to court. He confessed to his friends and family that
he'd been offered sixteen million dollars from the Chief Justice
of the Bombay High Court to drop the case. That's
a lot. That is a lot of money. Lawyer refused
because he was a good judge, and then he died
conveniently of a heart attack. The Caravan and Indian News
magazine reported on some peculiarities about how the judge's body
(23:48):
was returned to his family. Rather than the arrangements being
made by government officials like you'd expect for a government employee,
they were handled by the RSS and his corps arrived
back at home covered in blood A lot of equal
suspect maybe it wasn't a heart attack. They didn't even
bother to wipe the blood off saying how they were like, yeah,
(24:08):
we don't give up. It's frustrating because, like I've gotten
to a lot of protests were like thousands of activists
organized for weeks and held like a mostly peaceful event,
but like one kid tosses a rock and that's like
the whole story. Whereas like fascists get to like murder
people and send their bloody corpses back to their family
and everyone's like, yeah, but the economy, it's very frustrating,
very frustrating, cool and good, It's what I meant to say.
(24:32):
Shah's case was given to a third judge named Gosavi,
who dismissed all the charges after about a month. Um,
that's so weird, that's so weird. Did the pittsporaldecessor's bloody
corpse have anything to do with this decision? Might have been?
Might have been? And while all this was going on,
Norindra Moody went ahead and made Amshaw the president of
the b JP, making him the second most powerful man
(24:52):
in the country. Over the next few years, Moody and
his followers consolidated power, killing her, sidelining judges who worked
against them, and or frustrating a vast campaign of suppression
against the press. Good journalists have been the chief enemy
of Narendra Moody from day one, and the b j
P set up a sophisticated cyber harassment campaign to shut
down or scare off anyone who might speak out against them.
Naha Dixit, a reporter, told The New Yorker. Every day
(25:15):
I get three notifications with Dick pis and with conversations
about how they should rape me with a steel rod
or a rose thorn bush or something like that. And
obviously the worst of the abuses saved for female journalists
who have been kind of at the forefront of attacking
modes regime, very brave women reporters in India. Dixit's abuse
does not just come from random Moody bros. Online. Official
(25:36):
representatives of the b JP regularly tweet abuse to her,
suggesting that that this behavior is officially condoned by the party.
The New Yorker continues. Partixin, a former software engineer and
the founder of alt News, which tracks online disinformation, described
a nimble social media operation that works on behalf of
the b JP. In two thou seventeen, his group made
a typical discovery when a pro b JP website called
(25:57):
Hindutva dot info released a video of a gruesome stabbing,
which was passed around on social media as evidence that
Muslims were killing Hindus and Kerala Punic Sharma, an rss Apparachnik,
who Moody follows on Twitter, promoted the video saying that
it should make Hindu's blood boil. But when All News
tracked the video to its source, it turned out to
depict a gang killing in Mexico, which you might recognize
(26:17):
does not have a high Hindu population or Muslim population,
was probably unrelated to any conflicts there. Yeah, it also
seems again pretty lazy. They get to be lazy. It's fine.
Sinaha told me he believed that some of the most
aggressive social media poster instigated by an official I T
cell staffed and funded by b JP loyalists. He said
that people affiliated with the b JP maintained websites that
(26:40):
pushed promodi propaganda and attack his enemies. They were organized
and quick, He said. They got their act down a
long time ago in gug rot pretty cool, that's so
funked up and again so similar to what we have going.
I was going to say completely different from anything that's
ever happened anywhere, but I guesst what you say works
to sixteen, the Moody Adminitis station went after Indie TV,
(27:02):
one of the most prominent and influential critics of their regime.
All government advertising was pulled from the network, and members
of the Moody cabinet pressured business owners and private corporations
to stop buying ads on in d TV as well.
The station was forced to lay off a quarter of
its staff, while good journalists lost their jobs and in
some cases, their lives. Narendra Moody continued to pump money
into his social media operations. In two thousand nineteen, yours
(27:26):
you gotta stay up on the socials, social meds, social meds.
In two thousand nineteen, Moody faced reelection, He spent as
much as five billion dollars on his campaign regular fucking
Bloomberg over here. Yeah, I mean it's a big country,
so you do have to like spread it out more.
Uh yeah, pouring money into his propaganda efforts to mitigate
(27:47):
the fact that India's economy actually took a bit of
a dive under his leadership. It's like fascist starting actually
good at the one thing fascist wild. He was helped
along in this by an attack by a suicide bomber
on Cashmere on February fourteenth, two thousand nineteen, which killed
forty Indian soldiers. Moody's online propaganda machines swung into action.
Video went viral of Moody consoling the widow of a
soldier that recording was actually from two thousand thirteen. But
(28:10):
the truth never gets in the way of spreading a
good meme. They're like, she's a widow. You know, widows.
One widows as good as another. Throw it out there. Uh.
Moody used anger over the attack as an excuse to
ratchet up as anti Muslim rhetoric. He gave speeches claiming
that the blood of the people is boiling, and sent
thousands of troops into Cashmir on the pretext that India's
(28:31):
only semi autonomous Muslim majority state had to be cracked
down on for the safety of the people. Twelve days
after the attack, the Prime Minister ordered a series of
air strikes on what he claimed was a terrorist training
camp in a town called Balakot. Predictably, online Modi supporters
hailed this as a massive success in the battle against terrorism,
claiming that more than three hundred Islamic extremists had been killed.
Viral pictures of smoking corpses spread throughout social media, but
(28:54):
journalists who investigated found only a few holes in the
ground and no evidence that anyone at all had died.
The viral photos were actually just pictures from the aftermath
of a deadly heat wave. Purported video of the air
strikes was actually footage from a video game called Arma Too.
I believe the Russian government has also used to like
fake videos of air strikes. It's very funny and good
and cool. None of this mattered the lies sold I
(29:17):
meet Shaw bragged to a group of election workers that
the b JP social media operations had created an impenetrable
wall of bullshit. Quote do you understand what I'm saying?
We are capable of delivering any message we want to
the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake about
sweet and sour? Am I right? And balance it out?
I got good chicken? Yeah? No. Reindramodi was reelected and
(29:39):
while his first term started with a series of field
good measures almost everyone could support. There was no pretense
at all. The second time around, and I'm going to
quote from the New Yorker again, Moody's government introduced a
series of extraordinary initiatives meant to solidify Hindu dominance. The
most notable of them, along with provoking the special status
of Kashmir, was a measure designed to strip citizenship from
as many as two million resid at the state of Assam,
(30:01):
many of who who had crossed the border from the
Muslim nation of Bangladesh decades before. In September, the government
began constructing detention centers for residents who had become a
legal overnight. Fuck cool and good. I mean again, to
remind me of anything happening where No, not unlike anything
in history or now elsewhere on the planet. As is
always the case in situations like this, the government's open
(30:22):
embraced bigotry acted as a blank check for bigots among
the population, Hindu nationalists and so crazy, how there's a
connection between that. Really it's really weird, right, yeah, I mean,
this is the only time that's happened to a lot
of only time happenings here. The first and only lots
of those, so Hindu nationalists in Northern India, for example,
started to spread rumors that Muslim men had launched a
(30:44):
hidden operation to trick Hindu women into marriage and then
foresaid women into prostitution. These bogus rumors spread like wildfire
on social media and what'sapp and quickly acquired the name
love Jihad. Interfaith couples have been increasingly insulted, assaulted. Edge
is actually the next show from the Love Is Blind
People on Netflix because it is a good title, you know,
(31:07):
the only thing I watch on Netflix. Well, no, they
don't have it on Netflix, so I had to torrent it. Um, yeah,
never mind. Just it's not for you, that's good. The
only thing that's for me is rewatching old episodes of
Star Trek, The Next Generation and Community. So that's that's
basically it for me. I'm I'm a I'm an old man,
(31:28):
and I hate new things. You're wearing an adorable cardian
thank you, thank you, thank you. A tiny, little cute
old man working on it. You know what else I'm
working on these goods and services, I'm working on getting
together making a little love connection with another corporation or two,
just kind of pumping a couple of products out, getting
(31:51):
them to push out a service or two, and then
you can buy them wet and fresh from the womb
or dry because it's gross. No, no, no, no, you
can't trust that it's fresh. All the products are away. Yes,
every product that we sell is damp as hell. That
is our guarantee. Yea bye, and we're back. We were
(32:22):
just talking about how good we are at advertising products
and services. I'm I'm proud of us. I'm I'm. We
were doing a lot of handshaking and popping champagne bottles.
I love that this industry works the way it does.
It's great and good and cool. The years in power
(32:42):
do not seem to have changed Moody. A journalist with
a New Statesman interviewed a number of people who work
closely with the Prime Minister, and they all reported more
or less the same thing. Quote. He is teetotal and
a vegetarian and lives in almost monastic lifestyle. When told
me he is extremely focused when he talks to you,
he really listens. He can focus like a few people
I know. He calls it a day by eleven and
gets up at four in the morning. Another aid told
(33:03):
me he spends the first ninety minutes of the day
happily surfing the internet for articles about himself. His staff
starts getting caused by five thirty latest. He's obsessed with
personal hygienes. Set a third, he changes his clothes at
least four or five times a day, and he always
eats alone, always, which is weird in India. Like eating
together big groups of people is like a really important thing.
That's a very strange fact um. But also if you
(33:25):
look at all the pictures of like even the Democratic
candidates eating, they all look like none of them know
how to eat food like a normal human being. It's bizarre,
Like why can't you? Maybe it's just like being photographed
makes you look weird eating like you just like get
self conscious. I don't know, I've never had to eat
on camera. I was gonna say, happily surfing the internet
for articles about himself. First of all, obviously that is
(33:47):
what Trump does, But happily is a hilarious thing to
insert in there, Like I just picture him like going
like like singing to himself and Mr Blue, Yeah, good times.
It is, of course impossible to say whether or not
all this is true, but it plays well with Indian voters,
particularly young voters who supporting their indraw Moody at unprecedented levels,
(34:10):
and Moody is already hard at work earning the next
generation of young votes. He's written a number of books
that could best be described as dictatorial pop philosophy, and
had even more written about him that sell him as
a management guru, essentially across between Tim Ferris and Adolf Hitler,
who's also a management He was like, he's like Hitler
two point oh, they're so psyched about it. Moody even
(34:30):
wrote a book specifically aimed at school aged children called
Exam Warriors. This book is innocuous enough on the surface,
and mostly focuses on urging children to study hard, look
forward to exams, his way to prove and improve themselves,
and do lots of yoga. Um. It includes an autumount
of militant word play, though not just in the title
Exam Warriors, but in chapters with heads like be a warrior,
(34:51):
not a warrior, and sleep as a great weapon. Sharpen
it gott to sharpen your sleep. I can't can't get
to bed without a nice I mean I never sleep
without a machete. Yeah, I'm holding and I have something
like I get sharp sleep. I get sharp sleep. I
got a machete bayonet for one of my rifles. Sharp.
(35:11):
We should get you a machete. Please. Let's get a
lot of machetes, a lot more machetes, like, oh, great,
dangerous narcissists. Moody saw in radio and podcast the ultimate
opportunity to brainwash the masses. His monthly show mon Kibat
is hugely popular, and he recently launched the Normindra Moody
mobile app to further connection to run a monthly show.
(35:32):
I know, I'm trying to run a monthly show as
a stand up and it's like it's exhausting, hard to
find the time. I mean, I think it might be
easier to be dictator of India than a stands So, yeah,
dictator is actually the wrong word. We'll get to that
in a little bit. While Moody's role in the Gouge
riots saw him condemned by the international community, it seems
as if nothing he does now will be met by
any real condemnation around the world. On February, while President
(35:54):
Donald Trump visited New Delhi, the city was convulsed by
a wave of mass violence that is probably best described
an anti Muslim pagram. It started with protest against the
expansion of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The law MODI used
to remove the citizenship of some two million Muslim citizens.
And I'm going to quote now from coverage by the Print,
an English language Indian news site. This is about how
the riot started off. Quote. The women sitting in ce
(36:16):
lamp Or, a Muslim dominated slum area, rightly felt it
was no use just sitting there. The women decided to
move their protest to a road underneath the jah RaBaD
metro station Saturday night. This blocked a road. Unless you
block a main road, how do you get the attention
of the main stream. This is not the first time
a road has been blocked by a group of protesting people,
but b JPS Kapil Mishra said that the blocking of
a road was somehow a matter serious enough for the
(36:37):
people to take law into their own hands. He demanded
that the road be cleared in both jap RaBaD and
the nearby Chanda Bag. What unfolded them was a clear
diabolical plan make it look like a clash between pro
and anti c a A supporters. The clash goes violent
Muslims provoked and forced to respond in self defense. It
looks like a riot used the violence as an excuse
to clear the protests, the peaceful and democratic protests. When
(37:00):
the Jaffrabod protest site was cleared, a chop b JP
RSS leader declared victory. Bils and Thosh is the b
JPS general secretary a post reserve for the RSS representative.
Here was his tweet just as news came in off
the Jaffrabod site being cleared. Jafferbod Metro protest area totally cleared.
The game starts now. Rioters need to be taught a
lesson or two of Indian laws. Pretty cool that it's
(37:22):
a game. Yeah, and san Fosh deleted the tweet later
and to remove game starts now and replace it with
time to enforce the law in its entire spirit and
a new tweet. The mask was a little bit too
off for him. At least forty two people were killed
during this game, and probably a lot more, but we
don't know yet. The vest majority fun game. Fun game.
(37:42):
I do play a lot of games that kill forty
two people, but everyone everyone knows when we play knife tennis,
you know there's a risk. Sometimes you get you have
people sign the waivers. Sign the waivers with a knife.
It's the only way. Yeah, forty two were killed, the
best majority of the Muslims and once again the police
stood by or actively aided the mobs. It is not
(38:04):
a coincidence. The Delhi Police report directly to the Home
Minister of India one A'mit shaw. As I write this,
the fallout from this program has not fully fallen out.
It took three days for Moody to even make a
statement on the matter. The Delhi police have made a
lot of noise about holding reconciliation meetings to try and
de radicalize people. And it is worth noting that Moody's
(38:26):
muted response a tweet that said we cannot allow vested
interest groups to divide us and create disturbance smacked more
than a little bit of fear and uncertainty and a
mass expulsion of public rage that he and his party
inspired but cannot fully control. Because the frightening reality of
the situation in India today is that while Narendra Moody
enjoys almost unchecked power, he's not really a dictator. It
(38:46):
seems more accurate to say that he and his propaganda
have inflamed a huge chunk of the electorate enough that
they have vested him with unprecedented power, so long as
he uses it to hurt the people. He has worked
to convince them they hate. One of the journalists The
New Yorker talked to guy named Prasad, the editor of
an Indian magazine called Outlook, said this of his country.
It's very different now. The institutions of crumbled universities, investigative agencies,
(39:10):
the courts, the media, the administrative agencies, public services. And
I think there is no rational answer for what has
happened except that we pretended not to be what we
were for fifty sixty years, but we are now reverting
to what we always wanted to be, which is to
pummel minorities, to push them into a corner, to show
them their places, to conquer Kashmir, to ruin the media,
and to make corporation servants of the state, and all
(39:31):
of this under a heavy resurgence of Hinduism. India is
becoming the country it has always wanted to be. That's
eerie and sad. Yeah, hopefully not true. Hopefully not true.
But I do find a lot I identify with in
this fear of life. We're not reverting here in the US,
you know, to the way we were before the civil
(39:52):
rights movement, before the the LGBT rights movement, before all
these gains were made, were becoming the country. A lot
of us always wanted us to be like, that's terrifying, thought.
It is cooling good, Sophia, how you feeling feeling good?
Feeling good as hell? Yeah, stab myself with this, n
don't do that. Don't do that, you know what, keep
(40:14):
it ready for a Nazi. It's true, if I go,
taking at least one Nazi with me, that is what
George orwell, there's a fun quote from Georgie like that.
I said, if I go, if I go, because I
believe believe in the singularity, And I'm like, well, if
we don't all die, I'll be We've got to get
rid of the fascial before the singularity, otherwise we get
(40:36):
fascist robots. Truth. Yeah, I don't want that. That doesn't
sound terrifying. Yeah, I mean fascists are also really inefficient,
So maybe like a machine would be fundamentally anti fascist
because it's just frustrated by the inefficiencies that they generate
and into system they control, or if the machines did
our eyes against us and they were fascists that because
(40:58):
they're so poorly made, there would be like one flaw
that would be very easy to hack and they would
just all die at the same time. Either that or
we'd wind up in like an I have no mouth,
but I must scream sort of situation. Oh no, yeah again,
this is like a ship streak. Yeah, it's let me
have a silver lining, dude, turn into a ship streak
(41:19):
right away. Yeah, I guess the silver lining is really
love love the lead in from Ship Streak. Guys. If
you want to keep the ship streak going, you can
find me on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia s
(41:41):
O f I y A, and you can listen to
me on my two podcasts, one with Miles Gray of
the Daily Zay Guys called for Fiance and the other
one with Courtney Kosak called Private Parts Unknown about love
and sex around the world. So yeah, follow me, follow review,
(42:05):
and uh, we have a dog related problem. Yeah, what
the fuck? There's some dogs barking outside the studio. Hopefully
is not involved. We have to go deal with a
dog related situation. But you all deal with this fascism
related situation, perhaps by stockpiling arms. Perhaps if I just
watch listening to Behind the Bastards, visiting our website Behind
(42:28):
the Bastards dot com, if buying a T shirt and
te pump work, or listening to our political podcast The
Worst Year Ever. See Sophie, I still do it sometimes,
all right, I know, Let's go see if the dogs
are okay. Bye,
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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