How 'Brand Modi' was packaged and sold to Indian voters
We must never forget Gujarat 2002. But my worst fear is we have already forgotten it. We have forgotten the three days of inter-communal violence that was a field-test to see how stirring the communal cauldron would pan out as an electoral strategy.
Though the jury may still be out about the role of the state administration in all this, the fact is the riots worked well for the political dispensation in power then. It helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi win elections in Gujarat, and build up the momentum to get the BJP to come to power in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Manufactured image
If you are baffled about how peace loving Gujaratis, brought up on Gandhi’s idea of non-violence and Swaraj, could turn into a mob of mindless, sword-wielding goons, look at the ideas that led to this. The seed of violence was planted by the Godhra incident, which is a perfect example of how fascism manufactures ideas and sells it to the masses. Today, when a man lynches another in the name of faith, ideology or even food preferences, one can see that the test runs done in 2002 are working well and have grown in both form and stature.
There are many steps of buying into an idea or being sold into a product. Besides the campaign which is run through the media, one of the biggest strategies of advertising is the test marketing drive. Here, a small sample of a product is farmed out into the market and then feedback is collected about how the ‘subjects’ reacted to the idea or the product. If they bought into the whole idea that we need this product to survive, then the final product is introduced into the market. The same process is followed when it comes to selling ideas.
The ‘Big Brother’ in the West is particularly adept at this strategy. One of my favourite books, The Selling of the President, 1968, by McGinniss, points out how the campaign for President Richard Nixon was run insidiously by his PR company and an image of a good wholesome man who could run the country was totally manufactured and sold to the people. This was quite the opposite of what Nixon was in real life, and normally people would never have voted for him, especially after Kennedy.
The Trump model
In present-day America, Donald Trump is a perfect example of how the thinking people of America got fooled into voting for a man who built his empire by planting outrageous stories in tabloids and manipulating TV where the storylines are adjusted according to the ratings. Trump pumped up his success story of running a multi-million dollar company. He tapped into the bigoted beliefs of a small minority of fascists and got people to believe that this is what America needs in order to become a superpower again.
On a scarier level, it is pretty easy to see how Trump operates. Release a small dose of fascism into society, for example the credo ‘Mexicans and Immigrants are taking all our jobs’ and when the people are fooled into the thinking the economic crisis can be blamed on the Mexicans and immigrants, we go to phase two where Mexican immigrant children are separated from their families and America looks on as this dastardly act is committed in broad daylight and in full public view.
The truth is fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. However, a persistent and intimidating campaign works wonders. The fascist machine does not operate on a majority. It just needs about 40 per cent of the people to agree with it, the rest are sucked into a universe of alternative ‘facts’, which soon become impervious to realities.
Silencing dissent
Then there is a handful of dissenting voices who then are intimidated into silence. One suspects some of the economic acts of the Modi government, like ‘note-bandi’ (read demonetisation), aimed at targeting his opponents, to be both political and ideological. With the country brought down to its economic knees, it is easy to sidewinder and suckerpunch dissenting voices into silence.
The liberals, the Left, the democrats are being picked off one by one, with carefully crafted stories that are planted in the newspapers about their so-called involvement in scandals and murders. In some instances, their bank accounts have been frozen, some of them are in jail, as the fascist machine rumbles on, replicating its vitriol of hate.
But there’s a glimmer of hope: As the recent bypoll results suggest, people are slowly waking up from the great Modi hypnosis. They are realising how the government has messed the country’s economy, jobs are not being generated, and worse, the nation’s social fabric is in the disarray. Change is perceptible; one just hopes it’s not too late already.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)