The clamour against US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump is strongly reminiscent of the liberal outcry that preceded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s thumping victory in 2014. Now, as then, there are warnings of impending doom, of a horrifying descent into barbarism and a suspension of civil liberties should the electorate, in their unwisdom, opt for the right-wing candidate.
In January, 2014, the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, had warned that “it would be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as PM.” Taking their cue from Singh, a group of Indian and British intellectuals declared: “Were he (Modi) to be elected prime minister, it would bode ill for India’s future as a country”. The open letter was signed by economists Jayati Ghosh and Prabhat Patnaik, sundry British MPs and professors at the London School of Economics, novelist Salman Rushdie and a host of Indian screenwriters/directors (doubtless fearful of a McCarthy-like campaign against Bollywoodian freedoms).
THE rise of Modi in India, Trump in the US and AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) in Germany without doubt raises red flags, but the centrist response is both inadequate and misdirected. Self-righteous outrage and illiberal fulminations against the folly of voters only feeds their unease. Why is it easier to whine about Trump’s success than focus on the reasons for it?
Another bunch of intellectuals, led by Jnanpith award winner U R Ananthamurthy and such luminaries as poet Ashok Vajpeyi and Syeda Hameed, member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, declared that Modi was morally unfit to lead the nation and warned of “the rising danger of bigotry, communal divide, organised violence on and hatred for sections of people in the country”. Not to be outdone, writer Amitav Ghosh said Modi would be “deeply destabilising”.
Ananthamurthy went to the extent of declaring that he would quit the country if Modi was elected. As it happened, he quit the world altogether, but not before withdrawing his threat and admitting that he was emotionally overcharged when he made it.
Similar emotional overcharging is now evident in the run-up to the US presidential election. The US electorate is warned against Trump’s “autocratic attitudes”, “xenophobia” and “megalomania”. Doomsayers predict a “breakdown of moral order” if so “unhinged” a candidate is elected. A high-profile columnist horripilated at the prospect of allowing Trump to get “his sweaty finger on the nuclear trigger.”
As Fox News’ Howard Kutz observed, the assault on Trump is unprecedented: “The tone of the media attacks over the last two weeks is apocalyptic, as if each commentator is undertaking a solemn mission to save the planet from an awful fate.”
Lampooning Trump has become a favourite past time. Cyberspace abounds with Trump jokes and invective. By comparison, the ridiculing of former US president George Bush Jr, for perceived intellectual incapacity, was a lovefest. Check out the website trumpdonald.org, for
instance, which has attracted more than a 100 million “trumps”! Another site, #stophatedumptrump, has recruited many anti-Trump signatories from academia and Hollywood. Celebrated author Noam Chomsky has warned that Trump spells “deep trouble”, not just for the US, but the “human species” as a whole!
Like Modi, Trump seems to thrive on bad press. He challenges the media to do its worst, as Modi did, playing the role of people’s crusader to the hilt. Modi defied not only detractors within his own party, but relentless demonisation by the media to sweep the 2002 assembly elections in Gujarat and become chief minister. He pulled off a hattrick, winning again in 2007 and 2012, thumbing his nose at the media each time. Voters appeared to be at best indifferent, at worst annoyed, by the media tirade.
The US electorate seems similarly indifferent to the doomsday prophecies of their media pundits, who have gone so far as to caricature Trump’s supporters variously as “idiots”, “poorly educated”, “unemployed” and “white high-school dropouts”. Whether such superciliousness will alienate voters, or scare them into voting for an alternative candidate, is anybody’s guess.
The rise of Modi in India, Trump in the US and AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) in Germany without doubt raises red flags, but the centrist response is both inadequate and misdirected. Self-righteous outrage and illiberal fulminations against the folly of voters only feeds their unease. Why is it easier to whine about Trump’s success than focus on the reasons for it?
Almost two years into Modi’s government, the grim predictions of doom have proved unfounded. The fascist dictator of Ananthamurthy’s imaginings has turned out to be, according to at least one eminent columnist, a pussycat. Mediapersons have freely bashed the government on any and every subject, be it the beef ban, the brouhaha in Jawaharlal Nehru University or the death of Rohith Vemula. Indian democracy has seen better days, but it has also seen much worse – the Emergency being a case in point.
To arrogate to one individual the power to destabilise the world is absurd and counter-productive. Rhetoric will not stop Donald Trump. Reason might.
