India's Not-So-Democratic Prime Minister

India's often touted as "the world's largest democracy," but under the governance of authoritarian nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it's getting harder to see that as reality. Modi, whose government has refused to condemn Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine while buying Russia's oil and armaments, is the subject of a BBC film, "India: The Modi Question,"  looking into Modi's role in deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002. At the time, he was the leader of the state of Gujarat, and allegedly permitted, and even encouraged, rioters to attack Muslims, killing over 1,000. Modi's government banned the film, and is trying to prevent the sharing of it over social media (already succeeding with Twitter and YouTube). From the Associated Press:

"Days after India blocked a BBC documentary that examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during 2002 anti-Muslim riots and banned people from sharing it online, authorities are scrambling to halt screenings of the program at colleges and universities and restrict clips of it on social media, a move that has been decried by critics as an assault on press freedom.

Tensions escalated in the capital, New Delhi, on Wednesday at Jamia Millia University, where a student group said it planned to screen the banned documentary, prompting dozens of police equipped with tear gas and riot gear to gather outside campus gates.

Police, some in plain clothes, scuffled with protesting students and detained at least half a dozen, who were taken away in a van.

'This is the time for Indian youth to put up the truth which everybody knows. We know what the prime minister is doing to the society,'said Liya Shareef, 20, a geography student and member of the student group Fraternity Movement."  (our emphasis)

One of the first steps in establishing authoritarianism is to muzzle free speech and freedom of the press. Modi's increasingly right wing "populism," akin to the right wing "populism" espoused by the America Firsters / Trumpists, is turning India into a semi-authoritarian state, where basic rights assumed under a democracy are being curtailed or eliminated. It's not surprising that he's found sympathetic leaders in Trump and Putin, and it's a worrying development in a nation that prides itself as a democracy.

(photo: Brothers-in-arms. CNN)

 

DeSantis' Assault On The First Amendment

Imagine Floriduh's version of Hungary's Viktor Orbán becoming President:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t exactly hiding what he’s up to.

Earlier this month, the Republican appointed Chris Rufo, the architect of the 2021 moral panic over “critical race theory,” to the board of a public liberal arts school in Florida. As Rufo told New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, his goal — and the goal of several other DeSantis appointees to the New College of Florida’s board — is to transform New College, a liberal bastion in the South, into something more like Hillsdale College, a conservative school in Michigan with close ties to former President Donald Trump.

The one positive thing that can be said about this appointment is that it is, at least, legal — something that cannot be said about many of the governor’s attempts to sic the government on institutions he deems too liberal. DeSantis isn’t just determined to use his public office to suppress dissenting voices and promote his own reactionary views; he’s also quite willing to thumb his nose at the Constitution in order to do so.

Indeed, DeSantis often seems to revel in his contempt for the First Amendment, even fundraising off of it. Shortly before DeSantis signed unconstitutional legislation punishing the Walt Disney Company for criticizing one of his policies, the governor sent a fundraising email to supporters touting the fact that he was doing so. The company, DeSantis said, was being punished after it “tried to attack me to advance their woke agenda.”

DeSantis signed legislation imposing speech codes on university professors, as well as legislation attempting to seize control of content moderation at sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. He attacks classroom teachers with vague, unconstitutional laws stigmatizing LGBTQ people. His administration threatens drag performers with criminal charges.

In his victory speech shortly after winning reelection in his increasingly conservative state, DeSantis pledged to “fight the woke in the legislature,” “fight the woke in the schools,” and to “fight the woke in the corporations.” 

One of his lawyers later clarified that the word “woke” means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

As a constitutional matter, a governor is allowed to give speeches arguing that the United States is somehow miraculously immune from systemic injustice. He may sign legislation repealing programs intended to cure these injustices. He may appoint officials to public school boards that share his belief that the US is immune to these injustices. And he may even enact policies that help perpetuate these injustices, assuming that those policies violate neither the state nor federal constitution.

But DeSantis goes much further. He wields the government’s sovereign powers to sanction speech he does not like, and to punish institutions that criticize him. DeSantis, in other words, does not seem content to simply enact policies that hew to a right-wing economic or social vision. He wishes to use the sovereign powers of government to shape public discourse itself — punishing some ideas, rewarding others, and conscripting public schools and universities into his culture war...

Milhiser has much more to say about DeSantis'/ DeSanctimonious' un-American authoritarianism, including the prospect of him as President appointing more ultra- right hack judges in the mold of Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, et al to the Federal judiciary -- think Florida's Trumpist judge Aileen Cannon as a template.  The comparisons to dictator Orbán, a darling of Republican "thought" leader Tucker Carlson and CPAC as part of an international authoritarian movement, have been duly noted elsewhere and is worth a read.

DeSantis/DeSanctimonious has the attention of the pundits and Republican pols eager to have Trumpism without Trump.  DeSantis gives them that, mixed in with some Hungarian g(h)oulash.

BONUS:  

 

But our elite national political reporters will continue to describe him as an electable non-Trumpy "culture warrior."

He's a fascist and a liar. https://t.co/naXFAx3nnu https://t.co/LdMB0V22qc

— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) January 17, 2023

(Photo:  He'll tell you what to think and say! /Paul Hennessy, SOPA Images via AFP)

Pence Booed At "Hamilton;" New York Times Wankers Appalled

By now you've likely heard homophobic vice president elect =choke=spew= Mike "Dense" Pense attended the highly acclaimed musical, "Hamilton," last night on Broadway. As you also probably know, the audience booed him lustily on his arrival at the theatre, and following the performance, the cast had a message, delivered by Brandon Victor Dixon:

“We have a guest in the audience this evening. Vice President-elect Pence I see you walking out, but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There’s nothing to boo here ladies and gentlemen. We have a message for you sir. We hope that you will hear us out. I encourage everyone to pull out your phones and tweet because this message needs to be spread far and wide.

Vice President-elect Pence we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton, an American Musical. We really do. We sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, out children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us. We truly thank you for sharing in this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientations and we truly hope that you heard our message sir, because you all represent all of us."

So, what was the elite media's hot take to the booing before and after this perfectly reasonable and patriotic appeal?  Let's hear from two of the guardians of the First Amendment and frontline normalizers of neo- fascist gargoyle Donald "Rump" Trump and his mini- me (who inexplicably are employed at the "liberal" New York Effing Times).  First, there's culture reporter Dave Itzkoff, then adding to the appalling wankery we have crack political writer and Clinton e-mail scourge Maggie Haberman (the NYT's "amateur etiquette expert"):

Pence getting booed at Hamilton bums me out. Whatever you think of him. He’s trying to engage. Could get ideas from far worse places. https://t.co/gn7j25Nuy7

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) November 19, 2016

"Engage"! Someone got Dense an effing ticket to the hottest show in America so he could sit in a seat and stare dumbly at the stage, you clown. Try engaging your brain.

He's also the VP-elect. A level of disrespect https://t.co/Xgfbb0EpBH

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 19, 2016

We leave it to our betters to point out a few things to the clueless Itzkoff and Haberman:

After the way President Obama has been treated the past eight years, and after the way people are being violated now, today, a lusty boo is apparently beyond the pale. 

Miss Manners — the actual one, not the poor imitation above — says it is perfectly acceptable to boo performers on a stage; surely one can, without throwing a tomato, calling him a cracker, or beating his ass like he was a common Muslim cabbie minding his own business in a post 11/9 America, express equal displeasure with a man whose lifelong ambition is to denude gay people of not just equal protection under the law but funding for AIDS that didn’t line the pocket of a conversion therapist instead, and who is about to run both foreign and domestic policy under a president-elect already staffing his cabinet with overt white nationalists, and it is just as acceptable.

Maggie Haberman does not belong in polite society. And whoever that Dave Itzkoff schmuck is he’s a idiot too.

The Twitter feeds of both these dolts are full of pithy responses that explain why it was perfectly righteous to boo a slug like Dense Pence, who has a long history of anti- LGBTQ activism.  What's clear to us is that these two guardians of freedom have lived very sheltered and privileged lives that have robbed them of their capacity for empathy -- well, except for the likes of Dense Pence.

BONUS:  With the right- wing fee- fee umbrage machine working overtime (including Rump's asinine "demand" for an apology), we're with David Waldman, who detects a double standard:

What? He got booed? pic.twitter.com/oq2JU9SSS8

— David Waldman (@KagroX) November 19, 2016