This is part one of the series titled: The Characters
It is not a new observation that social media has changed the whole process of politics dramatically. Every other columnist and his neighbour have dished out platitudes on ‘democratisation of information’ with the rise of social media as a tool for dissemination, discourse and discussion.
Especially the so called ‘right wing’ has been constantly telling us how social media gave a voice to right wingers (RWs) when academia, news media and most other intellectual arenas are essentially controlled by left wing intelligentsia and made into pulpits for giving leftist sermons, how social media played a role in the RWs acquiring a place for themselves at the table of public discourse. It has long been known that academia—and because academia carries the stamp of intellectual authority, public discourse too—is dominated by the left. And its tacit acknowledgement manifests when leftist discourse/propaganda frequently portrays leftists as the ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ ones (whatever that means) and characterises itself as the intellectually driven faction as opposed to an emotionally driven one. But how has social media affected or brought to light the dynamic within the factions?
Narrativewalas And The Rest
Much of the nuance that right wing social media shows has to do with the dynamic between the loudest and most populous section of the right (the staunchly pro-Modi, pro-RSS vote bank of the BJP) and conservatives of various stripes. And this dynamic cannot be characterised by the simplistic moderate/extremist dichotomy because conservatism is not extremism. The populous section includes everyone from ‘Modi is the best bet’ to ‘Modi is doing well’ to ‘Modi can do no wrong’. Nicknames like ‘Sanghi’, ‘chaddi’ and ‘bhakt’ refer to these folks. They support and defend Modi-Shah on most matters. When credibility seems to stretch thin, they bet on the future by trusting/assuming that Modi-Shah are planning something ‘big’. All other sections of the right are by comparison quite small in numbers, power and influence. These mostly conservative smaller groups also have differences among themselves but they all have a special contempt for the populous group and think that they are a liability for the right. The populous group also thinks that the other groups are a liability to them (they think of themselves as the right, not a section of it) and to secure and distance themselves from others, they portray the others as ‘fringe’ elements or as ‘far right’, employing the stale moderate/extremist dichotomy.
The populous group seems to have appeared out of nowhere in post-Modi India. Many of them will tell you that they were either apolitical or liberal before 2014, that the rise of Modi made them rethink their relationship with their society and culture and so on. Many of them say that it has become alright now to identify oneself as ‘Hindu’ whereas previously, constant propaganda on Hindu practices and social structures made them feel ashamed, at least publicly, of the identity. Many of them are thoroughly ‘modern’, urban, college ‘educated’ and optimistic about a Hindu ‘resurgence’ or ‘renaissance’, again whatever that means. These are folks who realised one fine day that their parents (practicing Hindus) had been right in treating their civilisational heritage as more than just superstitious hocus-pocus when they found that left-liberalism was no longer the unambiguously popular or desirable side to be on (in a public discourse dominated by the urban voice, that is). Importantly, they also became adults as social media was rising.
This was a time when social media ‘activism’ characterised by cheap, empty statements with no skin in the game and no responsibility for one’s words, sometimes mockingly called and rightly mocked as ‘hashtag activism’ became hip. In other words, they became adults at a time when it became desirable to have causes to support and be seen as ‘opinionated’. That is how this group of self-proclaimed ‘right wingers’ appeared suddenly on the scene, not only having had a change of views but asserting that change due to social incentive. It is also why these self-proclaimed ‘right wingers’ do little more than share ‘assertive’, supposedly pro-Hindu posts on social media. For example, some self-obsessed ‘bhagwa’ cheerleaders on Twitter recently showed how to them, political activity amounts to little more than sharing their own pictures in saffron ‘ethnic’ dresses for the most trivial excuses (supposedly amounting to an assertion of civilisational pride and protest against the Indian state’s harassment of a poor fruitwala for putting up saffron flags). And unsurprisingly in their discourse, ideology and structured thought is replaced by meaningless platitudes and slogans borrowed from elsewhere. This is why, for example, this species of RWs often defend gau rakshaks on one hand and proudly claim to have beef-eating friends on the other (sometimes they’re themselves beef-eaters). They are also fond of demonstrating how much more liberal and secular they are than the left itself! According to them, left-liberals are pseudoliberal and pseudosecular. With this, they implicitly accept that being ‘liberal’ or ‘secular’ is a good, positive political attribute and therefore, a conservative is axiomatically ‘bad’. On the other hand, this confused lot also treats ‘liberal’ as an insult when used for liberals and if you say they’re quite similar to liberals, they will strongly disagree! They even often seek validation (they call it explanation) from the left, which is unsurprising since left-liberalism was the winner of the popularity contest until 2014. They usually do this by tweeting posts on events related to current affairs or hotly debated political issues and tagging major left-liberal handles like journalists and public ‘intellectuals’ or handles related to Congress, demanding ‘answers’ from them.
These are the same folks who are always saying that the right needs a ‘narrative’. Clearly they do, because they rarely make much sense on their own. It’s not always clear what makes these Narrativewalas any different from left-liberals. But if you do offer help in right wing ‘maintenance’, point out problems in the way Narrativewalas think and operate, articulate or point to informed, meaningful opinions as the less mainstream, conservative sections of the right do, or try to trim the ‘narrative’ into shape by cutting out nonsense, you will either be labelled ‘far right’ or dismissed with a conspiratorial explanation: you’re a troll account trying to defame, ridicule or divide the right. After all, how could Narrativewalas be wrong? How can the very people who feel the need for a narrative or perspective to organise their mental mess possibly have confused thoughts? It is axiomatic that the Narrativewala cannot be wrong. This section of the right is so insecure about its intellectual position that it is even afraid to take a closer look at its own views to see if it has taken for granted any leftist stances, for fear of what they might find. You cannot reason with these folks. For the stability of their own badly conceived views and worldview, these folks need to assume that they cannot be wrong. They only woke up to the beauty of their civilisational heritage when Mr Sabka Vishwas woke them up in 2014 and they haven’t fully recovered from the fever of leftist indoctrination and constant denigration of the civilisation. There is still fear that if they inspect their simplistic and superficially pro-civilisation assertions closely, it (the civilisation itself, not just the assertions) will crumble. So they drink this heady cocktail of ignorance and confidence as medicine.
In the war between BJP and Congress, the conservative finds himself outside the arena of public discourse. The victory of BJP was not achieved by ‘resurgence’ of conservatism but by letting liberals take over the right. The right-liberal won against the left-liberal; the conservative was thrown out. Even the news portal that Narrativewalas rely on most heavily describes itself as right-liberal. These are the opinions that Narrativewalas favour.
Click here to read part 2.