Its 4:00am in India but Indian twitter is still buzzing. The protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act are continuing, and the police have taken to brutalizing ostensibly Muslim protestors and being more tolerant towards non-Muslims. Police in plain-clothes make trouble, which gives the paid-news media footage of "violent protestors" which gives the police an excuse to charge them with batons. The Muslim protestors are battered and terrified, the Hindu protestors are put off by the 'violent' Muslim protestors, or simply lose interest and the country can go back to being a fascist dictatorship. An absence of morals or kindness is a superpower.
I feel the bloodshed is just starting in India. If fascism has one weakness, it is it cannot back down from a major action. Losing face with their rabid supporters is political suicide. It doesn't matter how much the New York Times or The Guardian condemns them. Fascism stops for nothing or noone once it has grown beyond a point. The state's violent repression will be brutal but is expected (easy for me to say from an armchair in the UK). What is more terrifying is how the rabid masses, fed on a drip diet of fake news and hate news, will react. At the moment, the protestors are those opposed to the state. What will happen when the tens of millions of Indians who voted for Modi take to the streets in his defence. The Indian state is used to being the organizer of violence. I shudder to think what will happen if there is actual riot, like there was during the partition of India.
But,resistance is the only path forward. There is no going back to willing blindless and complicity through inaction. What will be, will be. Fascism will either burn the world down or will burn out in the process.
I feel the bloodshed is just starting in India. If fascism has one weakness, it is it cannot back down from a major action. Losing face with their rabid supporters is political suicide. It doesn't matter how much the New York Times or The Guardian condemns them. Fascism stops for nothing or noone once it has grown beyond a point. The state's violent repression will be brutal but is expected (easy for me to say from an armchair in the UK). What is more terrifying is how the rabid masses, fed on a drip diet of fake news and hate news, will react. At the moment, the protestors are those opposed to the state. What will happen when the tens of millions of Indians who voted for Modi take to the streets in his defence. The Indian state is used to being the organizer of violence. I shudder to think what will happen if there is actual riot, like there was during the partition of India.
But,resistance is the only path forward. There is no going back to willing blindless and complicity through inaction. What will be, will be. Fascism will either burn the world down or will burn out in the process.
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