#anti authoritarian

[reasonsforhope]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.

But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.

So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?

India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 

But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.

A new (and unequal) economy

Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.

One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.

Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.

“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...

“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 

The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.

Liberalism strikes back

The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).

Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.

Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?

According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.

The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 

Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.

In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.

The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.

By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.

The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

Return of the Gandhis? 

Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.

Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.

The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.

“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.

“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”

This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.

There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 

The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.

Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.

And that is something worth celebrating.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024.

[pixiedreamclub]

Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, 1997 [x]

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

A must read for all of the kiddos getting into organizing rn. Read and print the whole thing here.

[profeminist]

"Jewish anarchists weigh-in on how people can organize and act in the changing terrain. For a zine PDF, go here.

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. —Pirkei Avot (2:21)"

Read the full piece here: https://itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do-nothing-20-things-you-can-do-to-counter-fascism/

More resources:

[bookmothic-dyke]

Everyone!

Followers, mutuals, and strangers on tumblr. The queer people of the internet. I love you. And somehow, we’ll make it through. Because queer folks before us have. Because we have to. For not just us. But every trans and queer kid in existence, and all those who will exist one day.

We have to go on. We have to fight. We have to live.

For those who are yet to be.

[trans-girl-azzi]

A friendly reminder! Politicians houses are flammable and are publicly listed!

Have a good day :3

[sapphiccyranodebergerac]

rereading the mysterious benedict society as an adult is very interesting. the book is lowkey a very poignant callout of authoritarian fear mongering.

like what strikes me most is the use of fear as a driver for control, the whisperer assuaging fears in order to get the kids to submit to it and then messages gaining control over the public by creating “the emergency” and then solving it for them.

also the “free market drill” is such an excellent callout of the paradox of late stage capitalism. like:

“The free market must always be completely free. The free market must be controlled in certain cases. The free market must be free enough to control its freedom in certain cases. The free market must have enough control to free itself in certain cases.”

i read that at 11 and was like “silly nonsense word salad” and now at 19 i’m like… fuck.

although considering how neurodivergent that book series is, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s also a tad socialist.

[sotomato06]

trump isn't even in office yet and companies are already buying up stock to avoid these tariffs. For anybody who was unaware, we pay the tariffs. Not China. Prices are going to rise, it's going to be instant. Trump is going to collapse the economy

[satyrradio]

Supporting dictators should immediately get you kicked out of leftist spaces, no exceptions.

[graveyard-pansy]

new lino project complete! “death to every settler state” patches out now ⛓️

[reasonsforhope]

"It was widely described as the week that India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in on Tuesday [June 4, 2024], all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. On Sunday evening, Modi will be sworn in as prime minister yet many believe his power and mandate stands diminished.

For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the strongman prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), found herself unceremoniously expelled from parliament and kicked out of her bungalow, after what she described as a “political witch-hunt” for daring to stand up to Modi.

The murky and allegedly undemocratic circumstances of Moitra’s expulsion from parliament was seen by many to symbolise Modi’s approach to dissenting voices and the steady erosion of India’s democracy. She was among several vocal opposition politicians who were subjected to investigations by government crime agencies.

But having won a landslide re-election in her home state of West Bengal, Moitra will return once again to parliament, part of the newly empowered opposition coalition. “I can’t wait,” said Moitra. “They went to egregious lengths to discredit and destroy me and abused every process to do it. If I had gone down, it would have meant that brute force had triumphed over democracy.”

While he may be returning for a historic third term, many have portrayed the results as something of a defeat for Modi, who has had to rely on coalition partners to form a government. The BJP’s campaign had been solely centred around him – even the manifesto was titled “Modi’s guarantee” – and in many constituencies, local BJP candidates often played second fiddle to the prime minister, who loomed large over almost every seat. He told one interviewer he believed his mandate to rule was given directly by God.

“Modi’s aura was invincibility, that the BJP could not win elections without him,” said Moitra. “But the people of India didn’t give him a simple majority. They were voting against authoritarianism and they were voting against fascism. This was an overwhelming, resounding anti-Modi vote.”

During his past decade in power, Modi and the BJP enjoyed a powerful outright majority and oversaw an unprecedented concentration of power under the prime minister’s office, where key decisions were widely known to be made by a select few.

The Modi government was accused of imposing various authoritarian measures, including the harassment and arrest of critics under terrorism laws, while the country tumbled in global democracy and press freedom rankings. Modi never faced a press conference or any committee of accountability for the often divisive actions of his government. Politicians regularly complained that parliament was simply reduced to a rubber-stamping role for the BJP’s Hindu-first agenda.

Yet on Tuesday [June 40, it became clear that the more than 25 opposition parties, united as a coalition under the acronym INDIA, had inflicted substantial losses on the BJP to take away its simple majority. Analysts said the opposition’s performance was all the more remarkable given that the BJP stands accused of subverting and manipulating the election commission, as well as putting key opposition leaders behind bars and far outspending all other parties on its campaign. The BJP has denied any attempts to skew the election in its favour.

“This election proved that the voter is still the ultimate king,” said Moitra. “Modi was so shameless, yet despite them using every tool they had to engineer this election to their advantage, our democracy fought back.”

Moitra said she was confident it was “the end of Mr Modi’s autocratic way of ruling”. Several of the parties in the BJP’s alliance who he is relying on for a parliamentary majority and who will sit in Modi’s cabinet do not share his Hindu nationalist ideology...

Moitra was not alone in describing this week’s election as a reprieve for the troubling trajectory of India’s democracy. Columns heralding that the “mirror has cracked” and the “idea of India is reborn” were plastered across the country’s biggest newspapers, and editorials spoke of the end of “supremo syndrome”. “The bulldozer now has brakes,” wrote the Deccan Chronicle newspaper. “And once a bulldozer has brakes, it becomes just a lawnmower.” ...

“This was not a normal election, it was clearly an unfair and unlevel playing field,” said Yadav. “But still, there is now a hope and a possibility that the authoritarian element could be reversed.”

Harsh Mander, one of India’s most prominent human rights and peace activists who is facing numerous criminal investigations for his work, called the election the “most important in India’s post independence history”, adding: “The resilience of Indian democracy has proved to be spectacular.”

He said it was encouraging that an “intoxication of majoritarian hate politics” had not ultimately shaped the outcome, referring to Modi’s apparent attempts to stir up religious animosity on the campaign trail as he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.

“The past decade has seen the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience and dissent taken away,” said Mander. “If this election had gone fully the BJP way, then India would not remain a constitutional secular democracy.”"

-via The Guardian, June 9, 2024

[madame-helen]

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

I got an email from the radical pride organizers today that listed all the other vendors and found out the DSA & Socialist Alternative will both be there lol. So I did some last minute printing to counter their influence at the event.

[profeminist]

"Orbán’s power grab program runs on two components that you can think of as hardware and software. The populist hardware consists of hijacked institutions. The software is made up of populist discourses and narratives that are used to create and enlist the consent of the ruled.

Dismantling the hardware of the Orbán-Trump project requires first defeating its software, so let’s start there."

Read the full piece here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/23/trump-autocrat-elections-00191281

[bookmothic-dyke]

Fuck cops

Don’t fuck cops.

Authoritarianism ain’t hot kiddos. It’s just sad.

[klett161]

So I think many people are not aware about the current state of Julien Assange, the founder of Wikileaks since he‘s not getting a lot of media attention any more and the news cycle has long moved on.

Around 2 years ago the British courts already ruled that hell be extradited into the Usa where he will spend the rest of his life in jail under according to amnesty International: „a real risk of serious human rights violations including possible detention conditions that would amount to torture and other ill-treatment“. In the Usa he will face charges for his Journalistic practices such as leaking footage of Us soldiers committing war crimes.

Right now he‘s being held in Belmarsh high security prison in the east of London, England. He has been there since two years ago and is currently being held in solitary confinement. While the courts in the Uk already ruled about his extardidment to the Usa two years ago he is right at the moment in the process of making his last appeal. if it fails which it mostly likely will his last chance would be an appeal to the Un human rights comitee. The last appeal in front of the court in the Uk will be held on the 16th and 17th of February.

He is being charged for „being a risk to the national security of the United States of America“ under the 1917 Espionage act which was put in place during the Usa‘s Involvement in the first world war to fight german spy’s in Us Institutions and should have been abolished after the end of it. Instead it stayed in place up until today conveniently giving the Us-Government a reason to jail some of their stongest critics.

You just have to really think about the Implications that this whole case carries with it, if the Us Government can classify every document they don‘t want the public to know about because it would Inform them about their atrocities and crooked doings and everyone leaking them can get charged how can you still talk about a functioning Democracy? Not that I think that any representative democracy especially not the one in the Usa represents the true will of the people. But even taken this aside the rational of a democracy must be that information is somewhat available for voters to base their decision on. The thing is the Us-Government knows and this includes both parties that all of their little war adventures in the middle east and the all civilian casualties, displaced people and other atrocities commited would,even under the most ignorant Americans, raise some eyebrows. THEY FEAR THE TRUTH

And I think all of this is not only typical for the Us but for basically every liberal democracy. Nominally there is a right to free speech for everyone up until the point that you pose a real thread to the Government. And no, the constitution will not defend you because guess what even if there are no convenient laws like the Us espionage act that help to prosecute you, there are all sorts of secret services that don’t give a fuck about the constitution and their only purpose is to do what ever is best for the nation-state they are serving weather that is overthrowing government’s, bribing a court or assasinations doesn’t matter. And if the Usa can keep on silencing its sharpest critics without international condemnation or condemnation by their citizens, other western countries will follow this example and be more confident to prosecute their own critics openly, I do believe this is somewhat of a slippery slope.

There will be some last big demonstrations on the 20th and 21st of February outside of the royal court where the hearings will take place. Demonstrations starting as early as 8:30(GMT) so if you live in the area consider going. And even if you don’t live near london you can still get active, share Information, talk to friends and family, make solidarity graffitis, write an article for a local newspaper or zine, attend solidarity demonstrations or if there are none in your area organize one yourself. Anything really just don‘t look away

Please Reblog and share not only this post but all posts aiming to raise awareness about this topic.

This struggle is not merely about Julien Assange it‘s about press freedom as a whole. And not just in the Us but everywhere, so go and fight for free speech while you still can

Source:

amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/julian-assange-usa-justice/