Part Two: Narendra Modi, And India's Weird Nazi Obsession

But yeah, I mean I almost took off. This has been a rough one. I mean it's it's not a lot of dead children. It is, but we don't talk about all of them. Yeah, that's yeah, we don't detail it. That's a silver lining, but it stay in just a silver lining. A lot of dead children, but we don't

have to talk about them specifically. We could just say two or three thousand dead and not get more specifically that friend Yeah, sometimes the truest form of friendship is not going into more detail about horrible ethnic cleansings than you need to. I mean, it's what I put on our T shirts. But it's a lot of words. Yeah, it has to go all the way on the sleeves and the back, but a lot hop onto behind the bastards.

T public for our new ethnic cleansing is horrible, but there's only a certain amount of detail that's really necessary to get across the key facts of what's happening without getting into you know, uh, what's the word when somebody like looks at a car crash that sort of thing. A lot of words on those T shirts, but that shirt also has you saying of five times in a row, like it's quoted. Yeah, it's not. We should have edited the shirt at some point. No, But honestly, we were

going for realism. We were cinema verite. That's what that means. It's putting ums on a T shirt on fiance miles and I call that a transparency bonus. Oh nice's intentional. Yeah. In the wake of the Gujrat riots, Narendra Modi was shunned and marginalized and broader Indian society both in Gujrat itself,

his popularity grew. Some of this may have had to do with the fact the Muslim population of the area had been beaten, murdered and ghettoed into political irrelevance bad sounds tight we had at most of it had to do with the fact that violent bigotry is actually super fun when you're on the side of the majority. See, Moody is a very intelligent man, and he grasped instinctively that the most important lesson that any would be tyrant

can ever learn, which is never ever apologize. So instead of that, he followed up this nightmarish blood letting with a Hindu pride march across the state. Ranks and ranks of uniformed RSS members celebrated their violent oppression of the

Muslim minority and were met by cheering crowds. He was careful in his actual language, always delivering the message that without exposing too much of his ass, saying things like if we raise the self respected morale, a fifty million gujratis the schemes of Ali's, Moli's and Jamali's will not be able to do us any harm. Those are all like stereotypical of Muslim names in India. Do you see what he's saying? I just he doubled down on the genocide. He sure did, which is a real power move, a

white power move. White power move. You might say Airy in power. Let's let's get a little more specific. Yeah, wal Nor Render solidified his base of power. The rest of the b JP suffered a series of electoral reversals. This also wound up working out for Moody. The more liberal wings of the party crumbled in the wake of these defeats, and while they flailed, Moody pressed forward in guj Rot and made deals with the biggest businessmen in

the region. He made life easy for them and they pumped more money into guj Rot's economy, allowing him to brag that he developed Gugrot into a financial powerhouse during his time in office. That's a real trump yep boast. Kind of sounds like they're all working from the same play book. Over time, Moody seized control of the b JP and married it's hardline racist, fascist DNA with the financial interests of the business class. And I'm gonna quote

now from an article in the News Statesman. The turning point came in October two thousand and eight when Tata Motors moved its car plant for its much publicized new budget hatchback the NANO from the leftist dominated West Bengal to the pro business guz Rot. In two thousand eleven, Ford invested one billion dollars in setting up another car plant. Before long, Gugrot started to make headlines not for riots,

but for its new image as an economic powerhouse. From to that just like mine com really wasn't about no, it's about business tilling. It was really just a self help business kind of yeah, exactly. From two thousand three, Modi began holding an annual summit Vibrant guz Rot, which cumulatively generated investment pledges of NWY billion. All the prominent, Yeah, all the most prominent Indian captains of industry, from Matan Tata to the Ambani's and the Mittal's rallied behind Mody

and declared him India's most business friendly chief Minister. Guzrot now enjoys double digit growth and there's no question that Mody has run an economically successful administration. However, his claims to have made the state's economy and ideal for the rest of India is disputed by economists to point out that the gouge Rot model has done little to alleviate poverty or improve indexes of education, malnutrition, or healthcare because the money does not people down because Drick gold Down

Thery is not a real thing. But if you can make the numbers look good on paper, you can get people to vote for you because they think they'll get some of that money, and then genocide it gets to happen. It's cool. It's cool that it always works. When the wealthiest men and goug Rot saw how good Moody could be for business, they put their money into making sure

the few thousand people have gotten murdered were forgotten. There was an investigation, of course, but the Indian Supreme Court decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge Moody himself of anything. That's so crazy. It's like, we tried, but like there's nothing to tie you to the genocide. So it's like so weird. There's no evidence but you're basically free. That's so crazy. That's wild. Yeah, some officials within the government

did try to take action against Moody. Hern Pondia, a can't minister, gave sworn testimony about the riots, claiming that on the night it all began, he had attended a meeting at moody home and heard the Chief Minister tell police officials to allow people to vent their frustration and not come in the way of the Hindu backlash. Yeah,

it's a good switchblade moment. Sanjiv Bought. A police administrator also testified to hearing Moody express similar sentiments, discussing his hope that the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure that such incidents do not recur. The evidence was there, but most of Moody's political rivals were too frightened of the consequences of pursuing him to the fullest extent of

the law. They decided to take their chances with the electoral system and the hope that you really never should you never decide not to fully pursue criminal charges against a fascist because you're worried about the backlash socially and decided to just trust in voters. Turns out that doesn't ever work. Yeah, gotta be on the right side of history. Gotta throw then you can't wait until someone else is

like this is bad. So uh. Meanwhile, Moody and his followers set to work eliminating the men who test to fight against them, but was quickly charged with the death of a suspect and police custody and sentenced to life in prison. Hira and Pandya was found dead in his car in two thousand three. His wife insisted this day that his death was a political murder. So that's cool. There's allowing to be a lot more of those. Moody

angrily ignored questions about the riots for years. One of the most direct responses he actually did make came in two thousand thirteen, when a reporter asked him if he felt sorry for all the Muslims who'd been murdered by those mobs he enabled. Moody responded, if someone is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then, if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful? Of course it is. What what if you're sitting by someone in a car and they hit a puppy? Does it

hurt you to see? Yes, But that's the same as him enabling this mob that killed three things. Not even an analogy. It's it's pretty great. That's like sentences that don't form a whole story. I mean, there's definitely like some translation makes no sense stuff here like that he originally said it. I'm guessing and like Karatti or whatever.

So it's like, you know, there's probably maybe it made more sense than the original language, but like he did it though, because it doesn't seem to address the fact it was always a bullshit response. I just think the phrasing is a little weird, not just mean. There's no part of it where he's like what he's saying is that like his role in letting the letting it enabling these models? Why are the Muslims though the puppy where and he's like still a human in the analogy, why

are the Muslims? And a good boy is just confusing. He's like, I am a man, but in this story, the Muslims are a puppy, and sometimes puppies get hit by cars and you don't like to see it, so you don't care driving the car which he's behind. Yeah, he was totally sense and like, no, you're the driver and they're not a puppy, they're a man, and you just ran over the man. So I don't really understand why. I get what he was trying to make it different

because think of Muslims as people. But it's like that Simpson's bit where Liona Huts is like, yeah, this judge doesn't like me because I hit his dog with my car. Only replaced the word dog with the words son and replaced the word hit with repeatedly that's a good bit, oh boy. Moody's popularity was further augmented in two thousand five when Gut police announced that they had shot dead a terrorist they believed had been planning to assassinate Neurindra

sa Buddin Chic. The dead man was said to have been a member of an Islamic terrorist cell collaborating with the I s I Pakistani intelligence. Gujarati police claimed sar Buddin had opened fire on them when they had caught him, and they've been forced to fire back and kill him. None of this was true, and it soon became clear that the whole affair had been blatantly orchestrated by the authorities. And I'm gonna quote now from scroll dot Ian and

Indian News website. Those were the years when Gujat was scarred by several such encounters. The police killed more than twenty people claiming they were trying to murder the Chief Minister or commit other acts of terrorism, and a few of these cases was the police's version effectively challenged. Shake's killing would have become just another statistic and forgotten police records,

except for two interventions. First, Rubba Buddin Shaik wrote to India's Chief Justice that he did not believe the police's version of his brother's killing and that he was worried for the safety of kawser B s A Buddin Shake's wife, who disappeared since her husband's killing. In response, the Supreme Court told the Gugrot police to find out how Shake

had been killed and what had happened to his wife. Second, Preshant Daal, a journalist for the Dba Vashgar Paper newspaper, published a sensational report claiming senior guz Rot police officials had deliberately killed Shake and then rape and burned alive his wife. Holy shit, Yeah, it's fucked. So a thorough investigation would eventually secure the admission of the Gujrat government's legal counsel that the whole shooting had been a fake encounter.

The motorcycle that police claimed Shake had been writing at the time of the shootout turned out to be owned by a relative of one of the cops who killed him. As the crime was dug into. That's not even a good cover up, No, it was not a good guy. You gets someone who's not directly involved with what is one of the frustrating things about fascism is how lazy they're allowed to be and can still get away with it. Yeah,

it's very frustrating. So as the crime was dug into ultimate blame for planning all this eventually settled on the shoulders of Ahmed Shaw, a government minister in Narendra Moody's right hand man. The state investigation eventually revealed that Shaw had been running a massive extortion racket through the Gujrati Police. Shake had been a part of this racket, and for one reason or another, Shaw had decided that killing him

would be good for business. And since he was going to commit murder, he figured he might as well make the murdered man's death work for his political patron. So he was like, oh, we'll just say this guy was planning to kill Moody. It'll buffer Moody's popularity and we'll get rid of this guy. All of this took years to properly dig up, though, and the slow drip of unimpeachable evidence of Moody and Shaw's shameless violent corruption had

no impact on their political futures. Instead, Moody grew more popular year after year. He was reelected as Chief Minister of Gujrat in two thousand seven. During his campaign, he deliberately mocked his political opponents for trying to prosecute him from murder, saying at one rally, congress people say that Moody is indulging in encounters, saying that Moody killed Sora Buddin. You tell me what should I do with Sora Budden. He asked, kill him. The crowdared killed him, so kill him.

They said, yeah, that's cool. By two twelve, it really is like Trump rallies. It's very much the same, insanely erie. All of them are the same person, just in different bodies. Yeah. By two thousand twelve, this guy had a nicer body than Trump. It's not a high bar, That's what I was about. It was like, uh, that body is failing on every level. It's not doing great. It's like a diaper,

but a person good time. By two thousand twelve, and a dramody stood at the very top of the b j P, and the b j P was one of the most powerful parties in the country, with tens of millions of members. Moody announced his campaign for Prime Minister near the end of two thousand thirteen, and I'm gonna quote again from The New Yorker. Here he sold himself not as a crusading nationalist, but as a master manager at the visionary who had presided over an economic boom

in Gujrat. His campaign slogan was the good days are coming. A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy had grown no faster under his administration. The dog days are over and he's saying it, yeah, a little bit yeah. A close look at the data showed that Gurot's economy had grown no faster under his administration than under previous ones. The accelerated growth was a fantastically crafted fiction, even so, many of India's largest businesses flooded his campaign with contributions.

Moody was helped by an overwhelming public perception that the Congress Party, which had been in power from most of the past half century, had grown arrogant and corrupt. Its complacency was personified by the Gandhi family, whose members dominated the party but appeared diffident and out of touch. Rahul Gandhi, the head of the party and Nehru's great grandson, was dubbed the reluctant prince by the Indian media. By contrast,

Moody and his team were disciplined, focused and responsive. The Gandhi's would keep chief ministers who had traveled across the country to see them waiting for days. They didn't care. An Indian plitical commentator who has met with the Gandhi's as well as Moody, told me, with Moody's people, you got right in. So, like Moody, number one, access and availability trumps yep, trumps being an out of touch political elite who just tells, trust me, I know what I'm doing.

We've been at this for a while. Um yeah, yeah, yeah. It turns out that works. And also, you know, when you're trying to get elected for the first time as a fascist, you you you button down a little bit on their racism and focused on I'm a good manager. I'm gonna be good for the economy. I'm a good businessman. Yeah. A huge amount of the b JP success had to do with the casual corruption and elitism many Indians perceived

from the Congress Party. Most of their highest officials came from families who had dominated Indian politics since the nation got its independence. The actors of power was there's by right of birth. The men of the b JP, however, portrayed themselves less as aristocrats and more as humble warrior monks. They were cheap, simple clothing and avoided displays of wealth. There and Drew Moody talked regularly about the hour of yoga he did every day and repeatedly emphasized his simple

life and noble refusal to fuck anybody. So that's good. Yeah, this may seem odd, but Moody's refusal to have a family meant that he had no distractions from work, and that's the image, the hard working, religiously dedicated aesthetic that played for Indian voters. It's anyone's guess as to whether or not Moody really is the man he portrays himself

to be, but it's possible that he actually is. One political commentator told The New Yorker, when you have that kind of power, that kind of adoration, you don't need romance. I mean, I just feel like the members of the b j P should really have exploded on the scene more. Yeah. Sorry, they should have come into power. Yeah, you're better at this than me. They should have ejaculated on Parliament no,

that didn't work. They should have really focused on stimulating the head of their party, stimulating the head and sort of making a cream pie of the different branches. So many people, we do, we do? We do? We do? Where the hell was I here? The b JP won the popular vote and Moody, it's leader became Prime Minister. He immediately set to work dealing with problems the prior government had ignored. Chief among them was public defecation. This is like this is but the India's like fucking huge.

It's like the biggest, It's one of the biggest countries on the planet. And like this is not just like a sort of because of the lack of a lot of like good plumbing and stuff, it's often a lot of people consider it cleaner to go out in public, but like then you wind up like this stuff spreads disease.

Like it was a big problem. And I was mostly just laughing because I thought that it would be amazing if that problem only circulated around the b j P headquarters, because people were like fuck you and just around it and they're like, we have this really weird public defecation problem, and like the rest of the city is totally clean. They're like, yeah, but it's just like ships running in the streets. People are like, no, no, it's no, it's

not just fortunately not. It was a problem and they decided to deal with it um and again in the traditional way that you see with this. They like launched a thing that looked really good but was less effective than it actually wound up being, but allowed them to like publicly claimed that they were making great strides. So in one of his first speeches in Delhi, Nedromodi promised to launch a nationwide campaign to build public toilets and

every school. In sixty months, hundred and ten million toilets were constructed, serving more than sixty million Indians. It was probably the largest fastest toilet building program in world. Are just fascist building? It also does that too, yeah, building, And it's hard to fault Moody on at least the idea of adding more public toilets to India, but its execution and its efficacy were distinctly mixed. And I'm gonna quote now from a Voice of American news right up. Quote.

Critics however, charged that over zealous government workers may have inflated the number, since a deadline had been set for declaring India open defecation free by October two hundred, fiftieth birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India's independent struggle.

The entire movement happened in a mission mode. There were targets to achieve, according to Nazarka, Lead, a New Delhi research fellow at the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, a nonprofit that works on child and sanitation issues in India. He charges in some places, people were coerced into building

toilets by local authorities who wanted to demonstrate progress. A study conducted last year by the group and four of India's biggest states found that access to household toilets increased from thirty seven percent into this in fourteen to last year. However, roughly one quarter of people who owned a toilet continued to defecate in the open. They considered it wholesome and healthy and an opportunity to get some fresh air or see their fields. So I thought that was going to

be in see their friends. I was like, damn, just pooping and talking. That's pretty ann P and T, A little bit of P and T for the b j P. That's a that's a merch shirt, that's for sure. We're noticed. How how good I slice this like you did? You sliced it great. We're playing with knives when we talk about fascism, and I really did a great job with mine. I'm very proud of you. And you know what else, I'm proud of these goods and services. Absolutely, I am

so proud of these goods and services. I have no children, but in a way, all of the products and services that we advertise are my children. And by in a way, I mean in a literal way, and that I I have fucked the parent companies in order to produce the products that you can now buy. So you are purchasing the spawn of my alloyance when you buy what Sophie, this is how you sell sofiellos wine. I never needed to hear this. This podcast is built on freedom time

for ads. We're back. We're back after that flawless ad break, and so Fia is now holding two knives. The very ready to continue here. So the toilet building project had a debatable impact, but it achieved its real purpose, which was to give Moody a strong out of the gate win that made him look like a decisive and powerful leader, and since it was impossible to make more toilets into a partisan issue, there was nothing his opponents could do

but kind of hand him that win. Uh. And Moody scored another early victory when he attacked India's massive problem with gang rape. In two thousand twelve, twenty three year old woman had been raped and tortured by six men on a public bus. She died of her Oh yeah, it was it was this. It was a huge story internationally. It happened like right before I went there. Um And it was still like the big topic of discussion in

Delhi at the time. And it was this kind of like horrible, horrible crime that catalyzed the fact that like India had a major problem with gang rape. Um. And so this is like this makes the international news. India gets like criticized for it worldwide, and like it is something that has to be addressed. Um. And I hate to give Moody credit for anything, but his first public speech on the issue, he actually gave a really good statement.

He told a crowd parents asked their daughters hundreds of questions, but if any dared to ask their sons where they are going, which is like kind of the right way to lean it drop for that fascist. Yeah, one good thing. Yeah he handles this that he handles talking about that. Well, I mean, Hiller was a vegetarian. We gotta give him. He was pretty good. He was anti animal testing too.

So with stories like that coming out of the early days of Moody's reign, it was hard for the world to stay mad at him for the minor issue of helping to orchestrate inside three months of bloody riots that killed thousands of people and ethnically cleansed large chunks of a major state. He said, the woke thing. So we're good. This is the day Moody became Prime minister. Oh Man, Yeah. According to the New Yorker quote, Moody's effort to transform

his image succeeded in the West as well. In the United States, newspaper columnists welcome his emphasis on markets and efficiency. In addition, Moody called on a vast network of Indian Americans cheered to success at putting India on the world stage. The Obama administration quietly dropped the visa ban when Moody meat Obama not long after taking office. The two visited the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. A man Moody

claimed to admire. During his stay, Moody had a dinner meeting with Obama, but he presented White House chefs with a dilemma. He was fasting for Navaratri, a Hindu festival. At the meeting, he consumed only water, which obviously like makes him look really good, is very religious bases, like he's not even going to eat at this this White House feast and stuff. So pretty awkward to have a full dinner in front of a man that's just like, now I'll have water. Thanks. You knew when this meeting

was happening. We could have like a different schedule. We're not dinner, Like we don't invite a lot of like the leaders of Muslim countries over during Ramadan, or if we do, we do like the night thing that you're supposed to do, Like we could have worked this out, but could have just done like a tea meeting. He might not be allowed to consume tea during it kind of depends like the different levels of fast. Well, never mind, should have just rescheduled. Yeah, well. Moody's early days were

relatively unproblematic. On the outside. There were numerous clear signs that he was still exactly as much of a fascist as he's always been. The trial of his old buddy I'm at Shaw over the murder of Sora Budin Shake was still going on at this point, but in two thousand fourteen, Modi's first full year in power, show just stopped showing up to court. The judge ordered him to appear, and in response, the government removed the judge from the case.

So Shaw got a new judge named bridge Go Paul Lawyer, and this judge also complained about Shah's refusal to come to court. He confessed to his friends and family that he'd been offered sixteen million dollars from the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court to drop the case. That's a lot. That is a lot of money. Lawyer refused because he was a good judge, and then he died conveniently of a heart attack. The Caravan and Indian News magazine reported on some peculiarities about how the judge's body

was returned to his family. Rather than the arrangements being made by government officials like you'd expect for a government employee, they were handled by the RSS and his corps arrived back at home covered in blood A lot of equal suspect maybe it wasn't a heart attack. They didn't even bother to wipe the blood off saying how they were like, yeah,

we don't give up. It's frustrating because, like I've gotten to a lot of protests were like thousands of activists organized for weeks and held like a mostly peaceful event, but like one kid tosses a rock and that's like the whole story. Whereas like fascists get to like murder people and send their bloody corpses back to their family and everyone's like, yeah, but the economy, it's very frustrating, very frustrating, cool and good, It's what I meant to say.

Shah's case was given to a third judge named Gosavi, who dismissed all the charges after about a month. Um, that's so weird, that's so weird. Did the pittsporaldecessor's bloody corpse have anything to do with this decision? Might have been? Might have been? And while all this was going on, Norindra Moody went ahead and made Amshaw the president of the b JP, making him the second most powerful man

in the country. Over the next few years, Moody and his followers consolidated power, killing her, sidelining judges who worked against them, and or frustrating a vast campaign of suppression against the press. Good journalists have been the chief enemy of Narendra Moody from day one, and the b j P set up a sophisticated cyber harassment campaign to shut down or scare off anyone who might speak out against them.

Naha Dixit, a reporter, told The New Yorker. Every day I get three notifications with Dick pis and with conversations about how they should rape me with a steel rod or a rose thorn bush or something like that. And obviously the worst of the abuses saved for female journalists who have been kind of at the forefront of attacking modes regime, very brave women reporters in India. Dixit's abuse

does not just come from random Moody bros. Online. Official representatives of the b JP regularly tweet abuse to her, suggesting that that this behavior is officially condoned by the party. The New Yorker continues. Partixin, a former software engineer and the founder of alt News, which tracks online disinformation, described a nimble social media operation that works on behalf of

the b JP. In two thou seventeen, his group made a typical discovery when a pro b JP website called Hindutva dot info released a video of a gruesome stabbing, which was passed around on social media as evidence that Muslims were killing Hindus and Kerala Punic Sharma, an rss Apparachnik, who Moody follows on Twitter, promoted the video saying that

it should make Hindu's blood boil. But when All News tracked the video to its source, it turned out to depict a gang killing in Mexico, which you might recognize does not have a high Hindu population or Muslim population, was probably unrelated to any conflicts there. Yeah, it also seems again pretty lazy. They get to be lazy. It's fine. Sinaha told me he believed that some of the most aggressive social media poster instigated by an official I T

cell staffed and funded by b JP loyalists. He said that people affiliated with the b JP maintained websites that pushed promodi propaganda and attack his enemies. They were organized and quick, He said. They got their act down a long time ago in gug rot pretty cool, that's so funked up and again so similar to what we have going.

I was going to say completely different from anything that's ever happened anywhere, but I guesst what you say works to sixteen, the Moody Adminitis station went after Indie TV, one of the most prominent and influential critics of their regime. All government advertising was pulled from the network, and members of the Moody cabinet pressured business owners and private corporations to stop buying ads on in d TV as well.

The station was forced to lay off a quarter of its staff, while good journalists lost their jobs and in some cases, their lives. Narendra Moody continued to pump money into his social media operations. In two thousand nineteen, yours you gotta stay up on the socials, social meds, social meds. In two thousand nineteen, Moody faced reelection, He spent as much as five billion dollars on his campaign regular fucking

Bloomberg over here. Yeah, I mean it's a big country, so you do have to like spread it out more. Uh yeah, pouring money into his propaganda efforts to mitigate the fact that India's economy actually took a bit of a dive under his leadership. It's like fascist starting actually good at the one thing fascist wild. He was helped along in this by an attack by a suicide bomber on Cashmere on February fourteenth, two thousand nineteen, which killed

forty Indian soldiers. Moody's online propaganda machines swung into action. Video went viral of Moody consoling the widow of a soldier that recording was actually from two thousand thirteen. But the truth never gets in the way of spreading a good meme. They're like, she's a widow. You know, widows. One widows as good as another. Throw it out there. Uh. Moody used anger over the attack as an excuse to

ratchet up as anti Muslim rhetoric. He gave speeches claiming that the blood of the people is boiling, and sent thousands of troops into Cashmir on the pretext that India's only semi autonomous Muslim majority state had to be cracked down on for the safety of the people. Twelve days after the attack, the Prime Minister ordered a series of air strikes on what he claimed was a terrorist training

camp in a town called Balakot. Predictably, online Modi supporters hailed this as a massive success in the battle against terrorism, claiming that more than three hundred Islamic extremists had been killed. Viral pictures of smoking corpses spread throughout social media, but journalists who investigated found only a few holes in the ground and no evidence that anyone at all had died. The viral photos were actually just pictures from the aftermath

of a deadly heat wave. Purported video of the air strikes was actually footage from a video game called Arma Too. I believe the Russian government has also used to like fake videos of air strikes. It's very funny and good and cool. None of this mattered the lies sold I meet Shaw bragged to a group of election workers that the b JP social media operations had created an impenetrable wall of bullshit. Quote do you understand what I'm saying?

We are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake about sweet and sour? Am I right? And balance it out? I got good chicken? Yeah? No. Reindramodi was reelected and while his first term started with a series of field good measures almost everyone could support. There was no pretense at all. The second time around, and I'm going to quote from the New Yorker again, Moody's government introduced a

series of extraordinary initiatives meant to solidify Hindu dominance. The most notable of them, along with provoking the special status of Kashmir, was a measure designed to strip citizenship from as many as two million resid at the state of Assam, many of who who had crossed the border from the Muslim nation of Bangladesh decades before. In September, the government began constructing detention centers for residents who had become a

legal overnight. Fuck cool and good. I mean again, to remind me of anything happening where No, not unlike anything in history or now elsewhere on the planet. As is always the case in situations like this, the government's open embraced bigotry acted as a blank check for bigots among the population, Hindu nationalists and so crazy, how there's a connection between that. Really it's really weird, right, yeah, I mean, this is the only time that's happened to a lot

of only time happenings here. The first and only lots of those, so Hindu nationalists in Northern India, for example, started to spread rumors that Muslim men had launched a hidden operation to trick Hindu women into marriage and then foresaid women into prostitution. These bogus rumors spread like wildfire on social media and what'sapp and quickly acquired the name

love Jihad. Interfaith couples have been increasingly insulted, assaulted. Edge is actually the next show from the Love Is Blind People on Netflix because it is a good title, you know, the only thing I watch on Netflix. Well, no, they don't have it on Netflix, so I had to torrent it. Um, yeah, never mind. Just it's not for you, that's good. The only thing that's for me is rewatching old episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation and Community. So that's that's

basically it for me. I'm I'm a I'm an old man, and I hate new things. You're wearing an adorable cardian thank you, thank you, thank you. A tiny, little cute old man working on it. You know what else I'm working on these goods and services, I'm working on getting together making a little love connection with another corporation or two, just kind of pumping a couple of products out, getting them to push out a service or two, and then you can buy them wet and fresh from the womb

or dry because it's gross. No, no, no, no, you can't trust that it's fresh. All the products are away. Yes, every product that we sell is damp as hell. That is our guarantee. Yea bye, and we're back. We were just talking about how good we are at advertising products and services. I'm I'm proud of us. I'm I'm. We were doing a lot of handshaking and popping champagne bottles. I love that this industry works the way it does. It's great and good and cool. The years in power

do not seem to have changed Moody. A journalist with a New Statesman interviewed a number of people who work closely with the Prime Minister, and they all reported more or less the same thing. Quote. He is teetotal and a vegetarian and lives in almost monastic lifestyle. When told me he is extremely focused when he talks to you, he really listens. He can focus like a few people I know. He calls it a day by eleven and

gets up at four in the morning. Another aid told me he spends the first ninety minutes of the day happily surfing the internet for articles about himself. His staff starts getting caused by five thirty latest. He's obsessed with personal hygienes. Set a third, he changes his clothes at least four or five times a day, and he always eats alone, always, which is weird in India. Like eating together big groups of people is like a really important thing.

That's a very strange fact um. But also if you look at all the pictures of like even the Democratic candidates eating, they all look like none of them know how to eat food like a normal human being. It's bizarre, Like why can't you? Maybe it's just like being photographed makes you look weird eating like you just like get self conscious. I don't know, I've never had to eat on camera. I was gonna say, happily surfing the internet

for articles about himself. First of all, obviously that is what Trump does, But happily is a hilarious thing to insert in there, Like I just picture him like going like like singing to himself and Mr Blue, Yeah, good times. It is, of course impossible to say whether or not all this is true, but it plays well with Indian voters, particularly young voters who supporting their indraw Moody at unprecedented levels, and Moody is already hard at work earning the next

generation of young votes. He's written a number of books that could best be described as dictatorial pop philosophy, and had even more written about him that sell him as a management guru, essentially across between Tim Ferris and Adolf Hitler, who's also a management He was like, he's like Hitler two point oh, they're so psyched about it. Moody even wrote a book specifically aimed at school aged children called

Exam Warriors. This book is innocuous enough on the surface, and mostly focuses on urging children to study hard, look forward to exams, his way to prove and improve themselves, and do lots of yoga. Um. It includes an autumount of militant word play, though not just in the title Exam Warriors, but in chapters with heads like be a warrior, not a warrior, and sleep as a great weapon. Sharpen it gott to sharpen your sleep. I can't can't get to bed without a nice I mean I never sleep

without a machete. Yeah, I'm holding and I have something like I get sharp sleep. I get sharp sleep. I got a machete bayonet for one of my rifles. Sharp. We should get you a machete. Please. Let's get a lot of machetes, a lot more machetes, like, oh, great, dangerous narcissists. Moody saw in radio and podcast the ultimate

opportunity to brainwash the masses. His monthly show mon Kibat is hugely popular, and he recently launched the Normindra Moody mobile app to further connection to run a monthly show. I know, I'm trying to run a monthly show as a stand up and it's like it's exhausting, hard to find the time. I mean, I think it might be easier to be dictator of India than a stands So, yeah, dictator is actually the wrong word. We'll get to that

in a little bit. While Moody's role in the Gouge riots saw him condemned by the international community, it seems as if nothing he does now will be met by any real condemnation around the world. On February, while President Donald Trump visited New Delhi, the city was convulsed by a wave of mass violence that is probably best described an anti Muslim pagram. It started with protest against the

expansion of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The law MODI used to remove the citizenship of some two million Muslim citizens. And I'm going to quote now from coverage by the Print, an English language Indian news site. This is about how the riot started off. Quote. The women sitting in ce lamp Or, a Muslim dominated slum area, rightly felt it was no use just sitting there. The women decided to move their protest to a road underneath the jah RaBaD

metro station Saturday night. This blocked a road. Unless you block a main road, how do you get the attention of the main stream. This is not the first time a road has been blocked by a group of protesting people, but b JPS Kapil Mishra said that the blocking of a road was somehow a matter serious enough for the people to take law into their own hands. He demanded that the road be cleared in both jap RaBaD and

the nearby Chanda Bag. What unfolded them was a clear diabolical plan make it look like a clash between pro and anti c a A supporters. The clash goes violent Muslims provoked and forced to respond in self defense. It looks like a riot used the violence as an excuse to clear the protests, the peaceful and democratic protests. When the Jaffrabod protest site was cleared, a chop b JP

RSS leader declared victory. Bils and Thosh is the b JPS general secretary a post reserve for the RSS representative. Here was his tweet just as news came in off the Jaffrabod site being cleared. Jafferbod Metro protest area totally cleared. The game starts now. Rioters need to be taught a lesson or two of Indian laws. Pretty cool that it's a game. Yeah, and san Fosh deleted the tweet later and to remove game starts now and replace it with time to enforce the law in its entire spirit and

a new tweet. The mask was a little bit too off for him. At least forty two people were killed during this game, and probably a lot more, but we don't know yet. The vest majority fun game. Fun game. I do play a lot of games that kill forty two people, but everyone everyone knows when we play knife tennis, you know there's a risk. Sometimes you get you have people sign the waivers. Sign the waivers with a knife.

It's the only way. Yeah, forty two were killed, the best majority of the Muslims and once again the police stood by or actively aided the mobs. It is not a coincidence. The Delhi Police report directly to the Home Minister of India one A'mit shaw. As I write this, the fallout from this program has not fully fallen out. It took three days for Moody to even make a statement on the matter. The Delhi police have made a lot of noise about holding reconciliation meetings to try and

de radicalize people. And it is worth noting that Moody's muted response a tweet that said we cannot allow vested interest groups to divide us and create disturbance smacked more than a little bit of fear and uncertainty and a mass expulsion of public rage that he and his party inspired but cannot fully control. Because the frightening reality of the situation in India today is that while Narendra Moody

enjoys almost unchecked power, he's not really a dictator. It seems more accurate to say that he and his propaganda have inflamed a huge chunk of the electorate enough that they have vested him with unprecedented power, so long as he uses it to hurt the people. He has worked to convince them they hate. One of the journalists The New Yorker talked to guy named Prasad, the editor of an Indian magazine called Outlook, said this of his country.

It's very different now. The institutions of crumbled universities, investigative agencies,

the courts, the media, the administrative agencies, public services. And I think there is no rational answer for what has happened except that we pretended not to be what we were for fifty sixty years, but we are now reverting to what we always wanted to be, which is to pummel minorities, to push them into a corner, to show them their places, to conquer Kashmir, to ruin the media, and to make corporation servants of the state, and all of this under a heavy resurgence of Hinduism. India is

becoming the country it has always wanted to be. That's eerie and sad. Yeah, hopefully not true. Hopefully not true. But I do find a lot I identify with in this fear of life. We're not reverting here in the US, you know, to the way we were before the civil rights movement, before the the LGBT rights movement, before all these gains were made, were becoming the country. A lot of us always wanted us to be like, that's terrifying, thought. It is cooling good, Sophia, how you feeling feeling good?

Feeling good as hell? Yeah, stab myself with this, n don't do that. Don't do that, you know what, keep it ready for a Nazi. It's true, if I go, taking at least one Nazi with me, that is what George orwell, there's a fun quote from Georgie like that. I said, if I go, if I go, because I believe believe in the singularity, And I'm like, well, if we don't all die, I'll be We've got to get rid of the fascial before the singularity, otherwise we get

fascist robots. Truth. Yeah, I don't want that. That doesn't sound terrifying. Yeah, I mean fascists are also really inefficient, So maybe like a machine would be fundamentally anti fascist because it's just frustrated by the inefficiencies that they generate and into system they control, or if the machines did our eyes against us and they were fascists that because they're so poorly made, there would be like one flaw that would be very easy to hack and they would

just all die at the same time. Either that or we'd wind up in like an I have no mouth, but I must scream sort of situation. Oh no, yeah again, this is like a ship streak. Yeah, it's let me have a silver lining, dude, turn into a ship streak right away. Yeah, I guess the silver lining is really

love love the lead in from Ship Streak. Guys. If you want to keep the ship streak going, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia s O f I y A, and you can listen to me on my two podcasts, one with Miles Gray of the Daily Zay Guys called for Fiance and the other one with Courtney Kosak called Private Parts Unknown about love and sex around the world. So yeah, follow me, follow review, and uh, we have a dog related problem. Yeah, what

the fuck? There's some dogs barking outside the studio. Hopefully is not involved. We have to go deal with a dog related situation. But you all deal with this fascism related situation, perhaps by stockpiling arms. Perhaps if I just watch listening to Behind the Bastards, visiting our website Behind the Bastards dot com, if buying a T shirt and te pump work, or listening to our political podcast The Worst Year Ever. See Sophie, I still do it sometimes, all right, I know, Let's go see if the dogs

are okay. Bye,