Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Mar 29, 2025

A public performance of an acclaimed stand up comedian in India was attacked recently in Mumbai by a mob of supporters of the ruling state govt, he is now facing defamation charges framed by the state police [1], around the same time a Palestinian man a co-director of an Oscar winning documentary was nearly lynched by Israeli settlers & then detained in the West Bank [2]; and elsewhere a comedian was arrested in Russia for supposedly mocking war invalids [3]. Tough in different locations, all three are routine, deemed thought crimes that pose a risk. World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 lists India as powerhouse of fake news [4], fake remedies, manipulated history, at the same the Government of India has brought in tailored legislation to ‘check’ fake news that borders on censorship. Foreign funding licenses of thousands of NGOs have been cancelled [5] in India over the past years and independent media & media critics are continually facing curbs. Unfriendly media networks come under fire, Journalists get targeted routinely, the latest example being in Assam [6] and peaceful protests shut down, the latest example being the crackdown on protesting Farmers from Punjab [7]. In open defiance of the Supreme Court of India, India is seeing large scale arbitrary use of ‘Bulldozer justice’ [8], something seemingly imported from Israel [9]. There is much need to connect the dots and see how similar things are happening beyond national borders. —an overt breach of rule of law, cult of personality around a supreme leader, deployment of fake news and propaganda to whip up public sentiment, targeting of political opposition, critics, subverting the rules of governance, incitement to violence and nationalism are on display in the playbooks in use by the strongmen rulers in Israel, Turkey, USA, India, Russia, Hungary. There are no taboos here, Russia has cultivated & cooperated with the far-right parties across Europe despite its vocal antifascist public stance [10], [11]; Israel has courted India’s far right Hindu nationalists for long time [12]. India’s Hindutva Far Right has been courting the Far Right in the West. [13], [14] Israel just organised a conference on antisemitism in Israel where its Far-Right Govt had no problem inviting Europe’s far-right politicians [15]; in Turkey the autocratic Islamo-conservative government can openly arrest [16] the immensely popular mayor of Istanbul, the main rival to President Erdogan [17]; Turkey supported the Islamist factions in Syria [18] and now hopes to call the shots in post Assad Syria [19]. The second administration of Donald Trump in the US can literally humiliate a foreign head of state in full view of the media, call for minerals deal in Ukraine in exchange for previous funding of arms as if he runs a protection racket, call for take over of Greenland and the Panama canal, and dissolve government institutions by decree [20], [21], undermining all checks and balances. The American Vice President and Elon Musk who is part of the Trump administration are openly courting the far right in Germany and in the UK [22]. Authoritarian governments are inter-changeably drawing on practices from each other’s bags and a shared repertoire.

March 29, 2025 —HK