The ghosts of Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the OG’s (Old Guard) of the religious right are dancing these days. Since his inauguration, Trump has rewarded his religious right allies with executive orders creating a “Religious Liberty Commission” and a “Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias.”

“Together they will put the force of the federal government behind the conspiracy theories, false persecution claims, and reactionary policy proposals of the Christian nationalist movement, including its efforts to undermine separation of church and state,” Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery recently reported.

On May 1, members of the religious liberty commission were announced, and nearly all are ultra-conservative Christian nationalists with a huge right-wing agenda. The commission’s chair is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and its vice chair is Ben Carson.

Right Wing Watch profiled several of the commission’s members:

• Paula White, serving again as Trump’s faith advisor in the White House, has used her position to elevate the influence of dominionist preachers and Christian nationalist activists. A preacher of the prosperity gospel, White has repeatedly denounced Trump’s opponents as demonic. When Trump announced the Religious Liberty Commission, White made the startling assertion, “Prayer is not a religious act, it’s a national necessity.”

• Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who developed the Heritage Foundation’s “road map” for overturning marriage equality and was the face of Heritage’s anti-trans activism.

• Franklin Graham, the more-political son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, is a MAGA activist and fan of Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay policies who backed Trump in 2016 as the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGTBT agenda. After the 2020 election Graham promoted Trump’s stolen-election claims and blamed the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol on “antifa.”

• Eric Metaxas, a once somewhat reputable scholar who has devolved into a far-right conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist, emceed a December 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes threatened bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power.

• Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who helped lead U.S. Catholic bishops’ opposition to legal abortion and LGBTQ equality, was an original signer of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declared that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

• Kelly Shackleford, president of First Liberty, who works to undermine church-state separation via the courts; Shackleford has endorsed a Christian nationalist effort to block conservative judges from joining the Supreme Court if they do not meet the faith and worldview standards of the religious right.

• Allyson Ho, a lawyer and wife of right-wing Judge James Ho, has been affiliated with the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ equality religious-right legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute.

Other commission members include Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire ministry; 2009 Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean Boller; TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw; and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.

Montgomery noted that “Advisory board members are divided into three categories: religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The list is more religiously diverse than the commission itself; in addition to right-wing lawyers and Christian-right activists, it includes several additional Catholic bishops, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim activists.”

Notable new advisory board members:

• Kristen Waggoner, president of the mammoth anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which uses the courts to make “generational” wins like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has been named as a possible Supreme Court Justice by the Center for Judicial Renewal, a Christian nationalist project of the American Family Association’s advocacy arm. The ADF is active around the world.  

• Ryan Tucker, senior counsel and director of the Center for Christian Ministries with Alliance Defending Freedom.

• Jentezen Franklin, a MAGA pastor, told conservative Christians at a 2020 Evangelicals for Trump rally, “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”

• Gene Bailey, host of FlashPoint, a program that regularly promotes pro-Trump prophecy and propaganda on the air and at live events. Bailey has said the point of FlashPoint’s trainings is to help right-wing Christians “take over the world.” FlashPoint was until recently a program of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel.

• Anti-abortion activist Alveda King, a niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., once dismissed the late Coretta Scott King’s support for marriage equality by saying , ‘I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t.”

• Abigail Robertson, CBN podcast host and granddaughter of Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

Donald Trump claiming that he’s the front man for “bringing religion back to our country,” is as if the late Jeffrey Epstein claimed that he was working to end sex trafficking.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation called Trump’s religious liberty commission “a dangerous initiative,” that “despite its branding, this commission is not about protecting religious freedom — it’s about advancing religious privilege and promoting a Christian nationalist agenda”.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

In the May 11 briefing, Pakistan claimed that it struck Indian military targets after India violated their airspace and air bases in early-morning strikes. For context, India had launched Operation Sindoor on the intervening night of May 6 and 7 as a series of military strikes to target terror bases in Pakistan. The Indian defence forces have repeatedly reiterated that the strikes were “measured”, “non-escalatory” and carried out with precision to only hit at sites of terror infrastructure; no civilians or military bases were targeted. However, shortly after, Pakistan hit back with heavy shelling along the Indian border areas, resulting in the deaths of civilians and damage to property.

However, in the May 11 briefing, Chaudhry explicitly said that the Pakistan armed forces engaged “military targets, along with facilities in India used to target Pakistani citizens and entities involved in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan”. To prove his point that only military posts and infrastructure were targeted and not civilians, Chaudhry used two clips from a May 10 briefing on Operation Sindoor by the Indian armed forces.

In the above clip, Indian Air Force Wing Commander Vyomika Singh gives a brief of the weaponry used by Pakistan in the shelling. While detailing the areas that suffered damage, she appears to say that Indian military posts were targeted. Her remarks do not mention civilians. Here’s what she said:

“Pakistani military continued with its provocations, carrying out aggressive actions employing multiple threat vectors all along the western border. Pakistan employed UCAV, drones, long-range weapons, loitering munitions and fighter aircrafts to target military infrastructure. Pakistan military also resorted to air intrusions using drones and firing of heavy-calibre weapons along the Line of Control… air intrusions and several harassment attacks were also attempted from Srinagar till Naliya at more than 26 locations… damage was sustained to equipment and personnel at Indian Air Force stations at Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj. There were also several high-speed missile attacks noticed with heavy damages to other military stations in Kupwara, Baramulla, Poonch, Rajouri, and Akhnoor sectors continued. Indian Armed Forces reiterate their commitment to non-escalation, provided it is reciprocated by the Pakistan Military.”

Towards the end of the clip, Indian Army Colonel Sofiya Qureshi can be heard saying, “भारतीय सशस्त्र बल दोहराते हैं कि वे तनाव वृद्धि नहीं चाहते, बशर्ते पाकिस्तान भी ऐसा ही व्यवहार करे।” (Translation: The Indian Armed Forces reiterate that they do not want an escalation of tensions, provided Pakistan behaves similarly.)

After the above clip was shown, Chaudhry tells the press gathered there that even the Indian forces acknowledged that Pakistan only targeted military installations and nothing else, definitely not civilians.

“Did you find…from the Indian statements… did Pakistan attack anything other than military targets? No. Did any international media or even Indian media… what are they reporting? ‘Precise targeting of the military installations…posts.’ We told you that we don’t target civilians…our religion does not allow us, our culture does not allow us, our professionalism of the armed forces doesn’t allow us. We will never target civilians. They are even acknowledging that..” he said.

Below is the full video of the press conference.

Did IAF Wing Commander Vyomika Singh ‘Acknowledge’ Such a Thing?

The short answer is no. Alt News found that IAF Wing Commander Vyomika Singh’s full statements from the May 10 special briefing on Operation Sindoor had been clipped and edited to make it seem like she said what Chaudhry claimed. Vyomika Singh did not say that.

The May 10 briefing by the ministry of external affairs and defence forces was a formal update on Pakistan’s escalatory and provocative pattern of attack. Note that hours after this briefing, the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire.

The clip below shows exactly what Singh said in her update.

The IAF officer clearly says that the Pakistani military targeted civilian areas and military infrastructure. Throughout the briefing, she emphasised the Pakistan had targeted civilian infrastructure, including medicare centres and school premises, at the air bases of Srinagar, Awantipora and Udhampur. She further said that Pakistan attempted multiple air intrusions using drones and conducted shelling using heavy-calibre RT guns, targeting civilian infrastructure and killing civilians.

Her exact words were “Pakistan employed UCAV, drones, long-range weapons, loitering munitions and fighter aircrafts to target civilian areas and military infrastructure.” But in the May 11 briefing by Pakistan, the words “civilian areas” were dropped from her address to make it seem like she said: “Pakistan employed UCAV, drones, long-range weapons, loitering munitions and fighter aircrafts to target military infrastructure.”

Alt News also cross-checked this with a transcript of the briefing by the Indian ministry of external affairs.

Several of Singh’s Remarks Distorted

Surprisingly, this was not the only instance. Alt News found that several statements by Singh were taken out of context and shown to the press, creating misleading narratives regarding what the Indian side actually said.

For instance, the clip of Singh shown in the tri-services press conference on May 11 made it seem like she said that damage was sustained to equipment and personnel at Indian Air Force stations at Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj.

However, what she actually said was that Indian armed forces were able to neutralise air intrusions and several harassment attacks that were attempted by Pakistani forces from Srinagar till Naliya at more than 26 locations and that limited damage was sustained to equipment and personnel at Indian Air Force stations at Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj.

A third instance of manipulation was showing Singh as saying there were high-speed missile attacks that caused heavy damage to other military stations in Kupwara, Baramulla, Poonch, Rajouri, and Akhnoor sectors.

In reality, Singh said that high-speed missile attacks were noticed at air bases in Punjab. Before adding that there was heavy exchange of artillery mortars and small-arm fire in Kupwara, Baramulla, Poonch, Rajouri and Akhnoor sectors, she mentioned that Pakistan was targeting civilian infrastructure and killing civilians. The bit about civilians was conveniently removed.

Thus, statements attributed to IAF Wing Commander Vyomika Singh were selectively edited and presented to manipulate what she actually said; a likely bid to portray Pakistan in a positive light and claim that no Indian civilians were targeted or hurt.

The Targeting of Indian Civilians

The defence ministry has said that Pakistan tried to target multiple military installations along the West and at least 16 people, including three women and five children, have been killed due to firing by Pakistan. These figures were released on May 8, so the number of casualties may be higher now, considering that the border areas witnessed continued shelling. According to a report by BBC, at least 21 civilians have died since the launch of Operation Sindoor, while the armed forces lost five officers.

Among those killed were 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwah Fatima. They died as shells were lobbed near the rented house in Pooch, Jammu and Kashmir.  Their father, Rameez Khan, 48, continues to fight for life. He was critically injured in the firing on May 7 after Pakistani shells tore through his home across the Line of Control.

Another victim of the shelling was Qari Mohammed Iqbal, a 47-year-old teacher who was wrongly labelled a terrorist by several mainstream media outlets.

Read: His name was Qari Mohammad Iqbal. He was not a terrorist.

Watch: Qari Mohammad Iqbal कौन है? | Republic | Zee News | ABP News | CNN-News18

A 45-year-old Kashmiri woman from Uri, two migrants from Bihar in Rajouri, a retired serviceman and a member of the Jammu and Kashmir administration also died in the shelling. The attacks claimed the lives of two-year-old Aisha Noor, seven-year-old Maryam Khatoon, and 13-year-old Vihaan Bhargav.

The post Pakistan uses edited clip of Indian wing commander Vyomika Singh in briefing to claim it ‘did not target civilians’ appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

While hearing a bunch of petitions against the directives issued by the two BJP-ruled states, Justice S V N Bhatti recounted his experiences of eating at a veg restaurant owned by a Muslim in Kerala.

Justice Bhatti joined the Kerala high court at Ernakulam on March 19, 2019. He was the Acting Chief Justice of the high court from April 24, 2023, till he became the Chief Justice on June 1, 2023. On July 14, 2023, he was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court of India.

During an exchange in the courtroom with advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi representing Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, who was one of the petitioners, Justice Bhatti remarked that there was a veg restaurant owned by a Hindu and another owned by a Muslim in Kerala and he used to go to the latter as it was “maintaining international standards with regard to safety, cleanliness and hygiene…”

Several Right-wing social media handles took exception to Justice Bhatti’s remarks on his choice of an eatery in Kerala.

Raushan Sinha, who runs the X handle @MrSinha_, tweeted whether according to Justice Bhatti “Hindus don’t maintain international standard (probably hygiene) in their restaurants, MusIims do?”, and whether “since he prefers MusIim restaurants, he wants all Hindus to do the same?”

So as per SC judge, Hindus don’t maintain international standard (probably hygiene) in their restaurants, MusIims do?

And since he prefers MusIim restaurants, he wants all Hindus to do the same? Isn’t it like declaring all Hindus unhygienic and a boycott call against them? pic.twitter.com/jzeyKWfyWK

— Mr Sinha (@MrSinha_) July 22, 2024

Vijay Patel, who runs the handle @Vijaygajera on X and calls himself an investigative reporter, tweeted that Justice Bhatti had said that “Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain international standards!”

Justice Bhatti is saying that Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain International standards!

The collegium system has given us gems of the judiciary! pic.twitter.com/o6Ts3T9XIh

— Vijay Patel (@vijaygajera) July 22, 2024

Ajeet Bharti claimed on verified his X handle (@ajeetbharti) that Justice Bhatti’s personal opinion represented all the Muslim-run restaurants in the world.

वाह भट्टी जी! इनका व्यक्तिगत विचार पूरे विश्व के हर रेस्तराँ, जो मुसलमानों द्वारा संचालित हो, का प्रतिनिधित्व करते हैं। जब ऐसे जज हों, जजमेंट भी इंटरनेशनल स्टैंडर्ड के ही आएँगे। चार अपवाद ले आओ, कुर्सी से बोल दो, हो गया। pic.twitter.com/mjtsmiU9oF

— Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) July 22, 2024

Fact Check

Live-tweeting the proceedings from the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported the conversation as follows:

Singhvi: These yatras did not start yesterday but since before independence. How much backward integration do you do? Cooker, server, grower has to be non-minority? Lordships raised the right constitutional question.

Adv C U Singh: Some want without onion or garlic also.

Singhvi: But we won’t ask owner.

Justice Bhatti: on that I am completely with you. Without disclosing the name of the city I will share with you. There were two vegetarian hotels, one by Hindu and one by Muslim. I went to the latter, because I preferred the hygiene standards there. He was a Dubai returnee. But he displayed everything on the board.

Singhvi: I am a non practicing Jain, but I know people in the community don’t have onion garlic.

LiveLaw, too, tweeted the conversation in its reporting from the court.

J Bhatti: There is one veg hotel run by a Hindu, and one run by a Muslim…in Kerala…As the judge of that state, I used to go the one run by the Muslim. He was maintaining international standards#SupremeCourt #KanwarYatra

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) July 22, 2024

Several prominent media outlets covered the issue and reported on Justice Bhatti’s remarks. Here are reports by TOI, Hindustan Times, NDTV and Free Press Journal.

As is clear from all the above reports and the real-time tweets shared by the two legal reporting platforms, Justice Bhatti recounted his personal experience and did not speak for all. In other words, his comments were clearly marked by specificity: He said he used to go to a particular restaurant run by a Muslim in Kerala. Several of the reports mentioned above make it clear in the headline itself by quoting the words ‘used to go to…” verbatim.

Now, if one takes a close look at the language of the tweets by the Right-wing influencers in this context, one notices that this specificity is missing in the way they paraphrased Justice Bhatti’s remarks so as to generalize them.

Ajeet Bharti directly claimed that the judge’s remarks represented all Muslim-run restaurants. Raushan Sinha asked a number of rhetorical questions, which by definition, are used “for the sake of persuasive effect rather than as a genuine request for information, the speaker implying that the answer is too obvious to require a reply…”

Sinha asked whether according to Justice Bhatti international standard was not maintained in restaurants run by Hindus and was maintained in those run by MusIims. The use of plurals in his tweet — ‘Hindus’, ‘Muslims’, ‘Restaurants’ — contrasts sharply with the use of singulars in the judges actual statement — ‘one veg hotel run by a Hindu’ ‘one run by a Muslim’ etc.

Sinha also asked since Justice Bhatti preferred MusIim restaurants, whether he wanted all Hindus to do the same and if he was declaring all Hindus unhygienic and giving out a boycott call against them. However, as already pointed out, there was no generalization in the said remarks by the judge. He recounted his own experience and compared a specific Muslim-run restaurant to a specific one run by a Hindu in a specific place. All the rhetorical questions in Sinha’s tweet generalized Justice Bhatti’s remarks in a misleading way.

Vijay Patel also used the plurals in order to generalize the remarks. “Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain international standards,” he quoted the judge as saying, whereas the judge spoke in singulars and did not mean all Hindus, all Muslims or all restaurants run by them.

To conclude, the tweets by Right-wing influencers questioning/condemning Justice Bhatti’s remarks during the Kanwar Yatra hearing distorted the actual statement by the judge by generalizing it and misrepresenting it in a way that falsely suggested that Justice Bhatti spoke about all Hindu-run and all Muslim-run restaurants.

The post SC’s Kanwar Yatra order: Justice Bhatti’s Kerala restaurant remarks distorted by the Right Wing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

While hearing a bunch of petitions against the directives issued by the two BJP-ruled states, Justice S V N Bhatti recounted his experiences of eating at a veg restaurant owned by a Muslim in Kerala.

Justice Bhatti joined the Kerala high court at Ernakulam on March 19, 2019. He was the Acting Chief Justice of the high court from April 24, 2023, till he became the Chief Justice on June 1, 2023. On July 14, 2023, he was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court of India.

During an exchange in the courtroom with advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi representing Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, who was one of the petitioners, Justice Bhatti remarked that there was a veg restaurant owned by a Hindu and another owned by a Muslim in Kerala and he used to go to the latter as it was “maintaining international standards with regard to safety, cleanliness and hygiene…”

Several Right-wing social media handles took exception to Justice Bhatti’s remarks on his choice of an eatery in Kerala.

Raushan Sinha, who runs the X handle @MrSinha_, tweeted whether according to Justice Bhatti “Hindus don’t maintain international standard (probably hygiene) in their restaurants, MusIims do?”, and whether “since he prefers MusIim restaurants, he wants all Hindus to do the same?”

So as per SC judge, Hindus don’t maintain international standard (probably hygiene) in their restaurants, MusIims do?

And since he prefers MusIim restaurants, he wants all Hindus to do the same? Isn’t it like declaring all Hindus unhygienic and a boycott call against them? pic.twitter.com/jzeyKWfyWK

— Mr Sinha (@MrSinha_) July 22, 2024

Vijay Patel, who runs the handle @Vijaygajera on X and calls himself an investigative reporter, tweeted that Justice Bhatti had said that “Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain international standards!”

Justice Bhatti is saying that Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain International standards!

The collegium system has given us gems of the judiciary! pic.twitter.com/o6Ts3T9XIh

— Vijay Patel (@vijaygajera) July 22, 2024

Ajeet Bharti claimed on verified his X handle (@ajeetbharti) that Justice Bhatti’s personal opinion represented all the Muslim-run restaurants in the world.

वाह भट्टी जी! इनका व्यक्तिगत विचार पूरे विश्व के हर रेस्तराँ, जो मुसलमानों द्वारा संचालित हो, का प्रतिनिधित्व करते हैं। जब ऐसे जज हों, जजमेंट भी इंटरनेशनल स्टैंडर्ड के ही आएँगे। चार अपवाद ले आओ, कुर्सी से बोल दो, हो गया। pic.twitter.com/mjtsmiU9oF

— Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) July 22, 2024

Fact Check

Live-tweeting the proceedings from the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported the conversation as follows:

Singhvi: These yatras did not start yesterday but since before independence. How much backward integration do you do? Cooker, server, grower has to be non-minority? Lordships raised the right constitutional question.

Adv C U Singh: Some want without onion or garlic also.

Singhvi: But we won’t ask owner.

Justice Bhatti: on that I am completely with you. Without disclosing the name of the city I will share with you. There were two vegetarian hotels, one by Hindu and one by Muslim. I went to the latter, because I preferred the hygiene standards there. He was a Dubai returnee. But he displayed everything on the board.

Singhvi: I am a non practicing Jain, but I know people in the community don’t have onion garlic.

LiveLaw, too, tweeted the conversation in its reporting from the court.

J Bhatti: There is one veg hotel run by a Hindu, and one run by a Muslim…in Kerala…As the judge of that state, I used to go the one run by the Muslim. He was maintaining international standards#SupremeCourt #KanwarYatra

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) July 22, 2024

Several prominent media outlets covered the issue and reported on Justice Bhatti’s remarks. Here are reports by TOI, Hindustan Times, NDTV and Free Press Journal.

As is clear from all the above reports and the real-time tweets shared by the two legal reporting platforms, Justice Bhatti recounted his personal experience and did not speak for all. In other words, his comments were clearly marked by specificity: He said he used to go to a particular restaurant run by a Muslim in Kerala. Several of the reports mentioned above make it clear in the headline itself by quoting the words ‘used to go to…” verbatim.

Now, if one takes a close look at the language of the tweets by the Right-wing influencers in this context, one notices that this specificity is missing in the way they paraphrased Justice Bhatti’s remarks so as to generalize them.

Ajeet Bharti directly claimed that the judge’s remarks represented all Muslim-run restaurants. Raushan Sinha asked a number of rhetorical questions, which by definition, are used “for the sake of persuasive effect rather than as a genuine request for information, the speaker implying that the answer is too obvious to require a reply…”

Sinha asked whether according to Justice Bhatti international standard was not maintained in restaurants run by Hindus and was maintained in those run by MusIims. The use of plurals in his tweet — ‘Hindus’, ‘Muslims’, ‘Restaurants’ — contrasts sharply with the use of singulars in the judges actual statement — ‘one veg hotel run by a Hindu’ ‘one run by a Muslim’ etc.

Sinha also asked since Justice Bhatti preferred MusIim restaurants, whether he wanted all Hindus to do the same and if he was declaring all Hindus unhygienic and giving out a boycott call against them. However, as already pointed out, there was no generalization in the said remarks by the judge. He recounted his own experience and compared a specific Muslim-run restaurant to a specific one run by a Hindu in a specific place. All the rhetorical questions in Sinha’s tweet generalized Justice Bhatti’s remarks in a misleading way.

Vijay Patel also used the plurals in order to generalize the remarks. “Hindus have substandard restaurants while Muslims maintain international standards,” he quoted the judge as saying, whereas the judge spoke in singulars and did not mean all Hindus, all Muslims or all restaurants run by them.

To conclude, the tweets by Right-wing influencers questioning/condemning Justice Bhatti’s remarks during the Kanwar Yatra hearing distorted the actual statement by the judge by generalizing it and misrepresenting it in a way that falsely suggested that Justice Bhatti spoke about all Hindu-run and all Muslim-run restaurants.

The post SC’s Kanwar Yatra order: Justice Bhatti’s Kerala restaurant remarks distorted by the Right Wing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

As videos of the incident went viral on social media, several users started claiming that the perpetrators were Muslims. Sagar Kumar, who is a ‘journalist’ associated with Right-wing propaganda outlet Sudarshan News, tweeted two videos — one of the incident and another of the alleged perpetrator — claiming that the ‘terror of angry driver Mohammad Sajid Ali was on display’ when he was asked to pay toll tax. (Archive)

Right-wing influencer MeghUpdates also tweeted the same videos and claimed that UP police had given ‘proper servicing’ to the perpetrator Sajid. (Archive)

‘Journalist’ Ashwini Shrivastava, who claims to show his audiences what ‘mainstream media’ doesn’t, also claimed that the perpetrator in question was a Muslim man named Mohammad Sajid Ali. (Archive)

Several other Right-wing users tweeted the same videos with the claim that the accused in question was a Muslim. (Archives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Fact Check

After the claims went viral, Hapur Police issued a video statement. According to SP Abhishek Verma, the JCB driver was arrested after the incident and the JCB was seized. The man was charged under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code. SP Verma also informed that when the driver was trying to flee the scene of the alleged crime, other cars were also damaged. Written complaints had been received from the concerned drivers and a case was registered against him under the relevant section at the Garhmukteshwar police station. The JCB driver was under the influence of alcohol.

थाना पिलखुवा क्षेत्रान्तर्गत छिजारसी टोल प्लाजा पर एक जेसीबी चालक द्वारा जेसीबी से टोल बूथ में तोड़फोड़ करने वाले जेसीबी चालक को अल्प समय में घटना में प्रयुक्त जेसीबी सहित गिरफ्तार करने के संबंध में पुलिस अधीक्षक @vermaabhishek25 महोदय की बाइट..!@Uppolice pic.twitter.com/NbDJgHGeBt

— HAPUR POLICE (@hapurpolice) June 11, 2024

In a later statement, SP Verma informed that the driver’s name was Dheeraj, son of Vidyaram. The perpetrator hails from Janpath Badaun and is 23-24 years old. He works as a labourer and was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident.

#WATCH | Hapur, Uttar Pradesh: On the incident of a toll booth vandalized by a JCB driver, SP Hapur Abhishek Verma says, “JCB driver has been arrested by Hapur police. JCB driver’s name is Dheeraj and he hails from Budaun district…He works as a labourer and was drunk…The JCB… pic.twitter.com/ZBWt4DsbEd

— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) June 11, 2024

The name of the accused was also clarified in a press note.

थाना पिलखुवा व थाना गढमुक्तेश्वर पुलिस टीम ने संयुक्त कार्यवाही कर छिजारसी टोल प्लाजा पर एक जेसीबी चालक द्वारा जेसीबी से टोल बूथ में तोड़फोड़ व सडक दुर्घटना में लोगों को घायल करने वाले जेसीबी चालक को अल्प समय में घटना में प्रयुक्त जेसीबी सहित किया गिरफ्तार।
.@Uppolice pic.twitter.com/JcqfmnUQxl

— HAPUR POLICE (@hapurpolice) June 11, 2024

We also spoke to SHO Pilkhuwa who informed us that the owner of the JCB was a man named Sajid Ali. He also owned a brick kiln. The accused, Dheeraj, took the JCB without his knowledge.

Hence, the claims by the Right-wing influencers that the perpetrator in the Hapur incident was a Muslim are false. The inebriated JCB driver, who destroyed toll booths when asked to pay toll, was identified by police as Dheeraj, son of Vidyaram.

The post JCB driver who damaged Hapur toll plaza is not a Muslim; false claim by the Right Wing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the strikes and dubbed them a ‘tragic mishap’. However, on May 28, Israel unleashed airstrikes again in Rafah killing 21. Just days before the massacre in Rafah, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah and to withdraw from the area.

The attack caused a massive fire, and horrifying images of charred bodies and a headless child surfaced on social media. The visuals of the fire in civilian tents triggered worldwide outrage. As many took to social media platforms to share information about the situation, several influential figures globally expressed their solidarity with those affected by the Israeli airstrike. Most popularly, an AI-generated graphic depicting what appear to be camp tents with the text “All Eyes on Rafah” was shared over 40 million times.

According to the BBC, the slogan got traction after a WHO representative working in Palestinian territories, Richard Peeperkorn, in February 2024 told journalists at the time that “All eyes are on Rafah”, warning against Israeli forces attacking the city. After the graphic with the ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ slogan started trending, Hollywood big names and influential personalities such as Mark Ruffalo, Aaron Paul, Bella Hadid, and others shared it.

Several Indian celebrities also participated in the trend and shared the graphic as their Instagram story. This included tennis player Sania Mirza and several Indian actors such as Madhuri Dixit, Konkona Sen Sharma, Swara Bhaskar, Priyanka Chopra, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Varun Dhawan and others.

Right Wing Targets Indian Celebrities

In a December 2023 report, Alt News documented how Indian social media influencers who aligned themselves with the political Right had been on an overdrive sharing and amplifying pro-Israel propaganda on social media — misleading claims, unverifiable narratives, false quotes, old and unrelated photos and videos: misinformation and disinformation of almost every kind.

This time too, as the ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ trend caught up with social media users and particularly celebrities, Right Wing influencers and propaganda mouthpieces started bullying Indian celebrities who shared the aforementioned graphic or expressed support for Palestine, questioning why they hadn’t spoken up about persecuted Hindus in Pakistan or Kashmiri Pandits. Several of these accounts edited the text on the original graphic to read “All Eyes on POK” or “All Eyes on Pakistani Hindus.” Others transformed the graphic into memes that trivialized the massacre in Rafah and the solidarity that followed.

Below are a few instances:

Ritika Sajdeh Attacked by RW Trolls 

Indian men’s cricket team captain Rohit Sharma’s wife Ritika Sajdeh was also one among the above names who initially shared the ‘All Eyes On Rafah’ graphic on her Instagram Story. However, Sajdeh deleted her story after being subjected to online bullying by Right-Wing trolls.

Deepak Sharma (@SonOfBharat7), who has often used his platform to amplify misinformation, tweeted a warning for the Indian cricketer and his wife. Sharing an image of the couple he wrote in Hindi: “Dear Rohit Sharma,

Was it your wife’s mistake that she was posting stories in support of the terrorists and barbaric demons today, or are you such a scoundrel that you don’t give her enough money for her needs, and she had to post stories to earn a few rupees?

This was the first mistake, so forgiven.
If it happens again, there will be consequences ” (Archive)

प्रिय रोहित शर्मा ज़ी

आपकी पत्नी आज जिन आतंकियों, बर्बर राक्षसों के समर्थन में स्टोरी लगा रही थी क्या वो उसकी गलती थी या तुम हरामीपन करते हो

और उसकी जरूरत के हिसाब से पैसे नहीं देते तो उसने दो रूपये कमाने के लिए स्टोरी लगा दी

पहली गलती थीं इसलिए माफ़
आगे हुईं तो रेला जायेगा pic.twitter.com/ZLqDF4rkdJ

— Deepak Sharma (@SonOfBharat7) May 28, 2024

Below are a few more instances of the Right-wing trolls targeting Ritika Sajdeh.

Mohammed Siraj

Indian cricketer Mohammed Siraj also shared the same graphic on his Instagram story prompting hate from the Right-wing ecosystem.

Premium subscribed X user Moana (@ladynationalist) shared a screenshot of the story shared by Siraj on Instagram and wrote in Hindi: “No matter how much you consider them your own, they will eventually reveal their true nature”. It is apparent from the language that Siraj was being otherized on the basis of his religion. (Archive)

inhe tum kitna bhi apna man|o ye apni jaàt dikha hi denge pic.twitter.com/e3pqgEo639

— Moana (@ladynationalist) May 29, 2024

The same user also posted about several other celebrities targeting them for sharing the viral graphic, especially, individuals who either belonged to the Muslim community or are related to/involved with a Muslim person.

Rhiti Tiwari

BJP MP Manoj Tiwari’s daughter Rhiti Tiwari, who recently joined the BJP, also shared the viral graphic and added a message saying: “Beheading children and burning them alive, amongst the countless other atrocities they’re facing, is beyond evil. To anyone thinking ‘one Insta story won’t do shit’. It will spread awareness and raise your voice, we want a rebellion and we want justice”. However, Rhiti had to delete the post from her story after facing backlash from the Right Wing.

Right-wing influencer Shefali Vaidya shared a video of Rhiti Tiwari with the caption: “This is the same Rhiti Tiwari, daughter of BJP candidate @ManojTiwariMP who shared that meme yesterday about Rafah, and also, she is a member of @BJP4India ! This is a shame that such Izlamic Terr0r supporters are a part of the BJP! cc @blsanthosh @JPNadda”.

Shefali Vaidya also commented on one of Manoj Tiwari’s tweets saying, “Your daughter @RhitiTiwari is supporting the Islamic terrorists of Rafah there, please share some knowledge with her too!”

This is the same Rhiti Tiwari, daughter of BJP candidate @ManojTiwariMP who shared that meme yesterday about Rafah, and also, she is a member of @BJP4India! This is a shame that such Izlamic Terr0r supporters are a part of the BJP! cc @blsanthosh @JPNadda pic.twitter.com/cnEqhrrUzP

— Shefali Vaidya. (@ShefVaidya) May 30, 2024

Several others on social media resorted to bullying Rhiti Tiwari for sharing the graphic. Below are a few instances.

Tiwari later shared a clarification on her Instagram story saying that “my eyes have always remained on each and every atrocities happening around and I always have and will simply just stand for humanity”.

Squint Neon Targets Celebrities

Right-wing troll Squint Neon posted a thread with screenshots of posts by several Indian celebrities who had shared the graphic.

Can you @ImRo45 / @tripti_dimri23/ @Varun_dvn ever raise a voice against Hindu prosecution happening in Pakistan or Bangladesh? pic.twitter.com/19TzwCJkFT

— Squint Neon (@TheSquind) May 28, 2024

Squint Neon has a history of targeting and bullying people whose political views don’t align with his. Previously, he routinely posted images of Hindu women who were in any way connected with a Muslim man and unleashed his army of trolls on them. He also repeatedly used an image of a crying Gazan boy as a meme template in order to mock Palestinians. Alt News has done an extensive report on the same.

Raushan Sinha (MrSinha_)

Raushan Sinha or @MrSinha_ on X who had played an extensive role in peddling misinformation related to the conflict since October 2023, also took to his X handle and resorted to whataboutery saying that the posts of solidarity made by the celebrities were a PR activity directed by Hamas.

Randomsena (@randomsena)

Premium subscribed X page Randomsena (@randomsena) tweeted on May 28 that “trolling is the best way to deal with these propagandists”. The page hailed the trolling unleashed by the Right Wing on Ritika Sajdeh and Rhiti Tiwari which led them to delete their stories. The user further claimed that Indian celebrities had shared these posts about Palestine receiving funding from foreign sources.

Several other users on X shared similar tweets targeting those who had shared the graphic or anything related to the killings in Rafah.

‘All Eyes on Rafah’ Graphic Turned into Distasteful Memes

Right-wing influencer and journalist Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) on May 29 tweeted an edited version of the viral graphic which showed a silhouette of a dog defecating over the text “All Eyes on Rafah”. Sharing the image, he asked in the caption, “Can someone make a silhouette of a pig instead of a dog?”, and his followers delivered. (Archive)

क्या कोई कुकुर के स्थान पर शूकर की सिलुएट बना सकता है? pic.twitter.com/kB8CbJaYAc

— Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) May 28, 2024

While a few shared the edited graphic with an image of a pig defecating, some others edited the text with abuse. One of the commentators imposed the image of a crying Gazan boy.

Another premium subscribed X user, Vikram Pratap Singh (@VIKRAMPRATAPSIN), who as per his bio is an entrepreneur, shared the same image as Ajeet Bharti and mentioned in his caption: “Fixed it”. His tweet has received more than 20 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 1,900 times. (Archive)

Fixed it pic.twitter.com/GXQbu5flFb

— Vikram Pratap Singh (@VIKRAMPRATAPSIN) May 28, 2024

Right Wing YouTuber Elvish Yadav, who was arrested in March for allegedly selling snake venom at rave parties, shared the viral graphic on Instagram with the text changed. The original text was changed to “All Eyes on POK”. He shared the same edited graphic on X with the caption: “I Condemn Killings Of Human Beings Irrespective Of Their Religions Still My Eyes On POK”.

I Condemn Killings Of Human Beings Irrespective Of Their Religions Still My Eyes On POK pic.twitter.com/cLAQGMw69y

— Elvish Yadav (@ElvishYadav) May 29, 2024

Premium subscribed X user m. (@Rashmalaii) posted a thread praising influencers who shared the edited version of the viral graphic.

Thread

List of celebrities/creators who chose to speak for their own country instead of Palestine

1. Rahul Tewatia pic.twitter.com/OU2rAOJgj7

— m. (@Rashmalaii) May 29, 2024

BJP MP from Karnataka P C Mohan also shared an edited version of the viral graphic wherein the original text was changed to “Aayega to Modi hi” (Modi will be back). However, his son Rithin PM was also among those who had shared the original “All Eyes on Rafah” graphic.

Several other users such as BJP MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar, Right-wing influencer Rishi Bagree followed suit and shared the edited version of the graphic on their social media handles.

On May 30, Union ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reiterated India’s stance on the ongoing war, emphasizing that India had always advocated for a two-state solution to resolve the conflict. Addressing the airstrikes in Rafah, the MEA spokesperson described the incident as “heartbreaking” and noted that India has acknowledged Israel’s initiation of a probe into the civilian deaths.

#WATCH | Delhi: On the Rafah situation, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal says, “The heartbreaking loss of civilian lives in the displacement camp in Rafah is a matter of deep concern. We have consistently called for the protection of the civilian population and respect for… pic.twitter.com/SocgbDaWt3

— ANI (@ANI) May 30, 2024

India’s official stance, both historically and under PM Modi’s administration, has been in favour of the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state. However, ever since the conflict began in October, 2023, Right-wing groups, including staunch supporters of the BJP and PM Modi, have found an opportunity to channelize their Islamophobia and communal hatred in supporting Israel’s alleged war crimes in Palestine. The Indian Right Wing has made its position on the ongoing war in Gaza clear by consistently supporting Israel and mocking injured and dead Palestinians. Alt News has documented and analysed the Right Wing’s role in spearheading the disinformation and propaganda campaign about the conflict.

The post All eyes on Indian Right Wing: How pro-BJP influencers targeted celebrities for Rafah-solidarity posts appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

In an election rally at Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, held on May 17, PM Modi indicated the Congress-SP alliance, if voted to power, would send Ram Lalla to the tents and run a bulldozer over the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. In a snide reference to what has come to be known as ‘bulldozer justice’, Modi asked the Opposition to learn from Yogi Adityanath where to use the bulldozer and where not.

#WATCH | In his address to a public meeting in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki, PM Narendra Modi says, “…If SP and Congress come to power, Ram Lalla will be in a tent again and they will run a bulldozer on Ram temple. They should take tuition from Yogi ji, where to run a bulldozer… pic.twitter.com/rfhqN0XiXc

— ANI (@ANI) May 17, 2024

‘Bulldozer Justice’ has become a model of retributive violence popularized by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath in which bulldozers are deployed by the authorities to raze down the house of an accused before a case or a dispute reaches a judicial closure. According to an Amnesty International report, “The authorities in Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh claimed that the demolition of Muslim properties was based on violations of land regulations, such as not securing the required permissions from the local municipalities, or operating businesses on government land, and other regulatory infractions. However, there are widespread similar breaches of land regulations by Hindus as well, and the measures these authorities have taken have been directed largely at Muslims and not Hindus.”

Yogi, popularly hailed as Bulldozer Baba, has repeatedly targeted Muslims while campaigning for the ongoing elections. In one of his speeches, he prided himself on the fact that Muslims offering prayers had vanished from the streets of Uttar Pradesh. On April 21, Adityanath was given a unique guard of honour by a horde of bulldozers when he went to the Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh for election campaigning.

#WATCH | Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh: BJP workers carried out a bulldozer rally before the arrival of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath pic.twitter.com/U54JXOm4O5

— ANI (@ANI) April 21, 2024

This was repeated, with a louder emphasis on the spectacle of the bulldozers, on May 2, in the Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh, when CM Yogi led a roadshow which included bulldozers being queued up as part of the parade, from the top of which local BJP supporters and workers showered petals on the chief minister. The bulldozers were adorned with flowers and sported large posters of PM Modi and Yogi Adityanath.

Tracing the Journey of ‘bulldozer Justice’

Ever since the Modi-led BJP government came to power in 2014, bulldozers have been co-opted by the administrative machinery as an instrument of retributive justice. Over time, the idea of ‘bulldozer justice’ has been popularized the Right Wing ‘fringe elements’ in their speeches. By latching onto the public perception of bulldozers as a means of extra-judicial punishment against Muslims, this rhetoric has seeped into the mainstream political narrative, with eventually PM Modi himself exalting the practice during his speech in UP.

For instance, in October 2021, speaking at a congregation organised by Jay Ambe Seva Group in Gujarat’s Morbi district, Right Wing hardliner Kajal Shingala, popularly known as Kajal Hindustani, called for the demolition of local Islamic structures, which she decreed as illegal. Addressing the crowd, she had said, “I will make the strategy and lead it, all I need is your support. If it is illegal, then why do we need to adopt legal means to destroy it? I will get the bulldozer and I will pay for it. If people are standing with me, I will do it. Tell me when should we do this?” According to a report by The Quint, the local shrine in question came under the purview of the municipal corporation and was not illegal.

More recently, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati urged the UP chief minister to demolish the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband with bulldozers over its fatwa about ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’. “Send your bulldozers and raze Darul Uloom Deoband. Nothing would happen by demolishing properties of petty people,” he said in a video statement.

महामंडलेश्वर यति नरसिंहानंद गिरि ने CM योगी से कहा- दारूल उलूम देवबंद को बुलडोजर से ध्वस्त करें।#DarulUloom pic.twitter.com/RvTWAl87Gg

— Sachin Gupta (@SachinGuptaUP) February 23, 2024

In another recent interview, he drew attention to the fact that what he had said at the Dharam sansad (religious parliaments) were now being repeated by the Prime Minister himself at public rallies. This, Saraswati said, proved that he was right. 

The gun-wielding ‘Acharya’ Azad Singh Arya, who is revered as the chief of the Gau Raksha Dal in Haryana, has resorted to the ‘bulldozer’ rhetoric on several occasions. At one such gathering documented by Alt News, Acharya Azad urged the Haryana government to ‘use bulldozers on cow smugglers.’

Addressing Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, he said, “I would like to request respected Khattar Saab: Please become Yogi for a day. Forget cow slaughter, no one would even dare to touch a hair on any cow. Bulldoze the cow slaughterers and those who cannot stand the protection of cows. But eight years have passed Khattar saab; I don’t understand when you will become Yogi.” (Translation) His speech was met with loud applause from the crowd. It is evident that ‘bulldoze’ here is used as an open call for violence against the Muslims.

Acharya Azad made a similar statement in the aftermath of the Nuh violence in August 2023. While speaking at a Hindu Mahapanchayat held at Pondri village of the Palwal district of Haryana, he exhorted Hindus to take up arms against Muslims. He also appealed to the authorities to ‘bulldoze’ the houses of Muslim people who were responsible for the communal clash.

In the wake of the clashes in Nuh, the country witnessed a barrage of hate speeches made at several rallies and Mahapanchayats across Northern India, where Hindutva ideologues made open calls for violence and economic boycotts. The ‘bulldozer’ rhetoric was a consistent ploy used in these speeches, to further disenfranchise Muslims. At a protest rally organised by several Hindutva groups at Mohan Nagar Chowk in Kurukshetra on August 2, 2023, Haryana, demonstrators were heard urging for ‘bulldozer action’ in retaliation to the communal clashes which had transpired in Nuh, Haryana. Some of the protestors can also be seen riding on bulldozers.

Yet another protest rally was organised by Hindu Right Wing outfits on August 2, 2023, in Prayagraj, in the presence of retired IPS officer KP Singh, a member of the VHP. Islamophobic chants could be heard in the background along with slogans of ‘Bulldozer Baba Zindabad’.

In a byte from the same rally, Vinod Aggarwal, a senior member of the VHP, claims that the perpetrators of the communal clash need to be identified and punished by bulldozers. He also says, “Their houses should be bulldozed similar to the way Yogi Baba uses the bulldozer to restore peace in UP”.

Bulldozer in Hindutva Pop

In Hindutva pop, the rhetoric of the bulldozer is a common trope. The songs implicitly celebrate the extra-judicial actions taken by ‘Bulldozer Baba’. Independent journalist Kunal Purohit, who works at the intersection of politics, social justice, and international relations, recently authored a book called ‘H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars’. In his words, these songs “…when fused with psychedelic beats and hypnotic rhythms, combined with the headiness that being in a group brings, can turn processions into bloodthirsty mobs.” (Purohit Page 10).

Produced by small-time studio houses, these numbers take recourse to catchy beats, and lyrics that stoke nationalist pride and confirm ideological biases and stereotypes in order to normalise political extremism against minority populations.

We have covered a few examples which explicitly celebrate Yogi Adityanath’s ‘bulldozer model’, while calling for attacks against ‘deshdrohis’ (anti-nationals) and ‘dangayi’ (rioters), disseminating the bulldozer rhetoric.

BJP’s Azamgarh MP Dinesh Lal Yadav, popularly known as Nirahua, released a song called ‘Baba Ka Bulldozer’ which has garnered 5.1 million views. The English translation of the Bhojpuri lyrics from this song goes: “When the bulldozer acts, snakes and scorpions go into hiding in their holes”, alluding to the extra-judicial mechanism whereby bulldozers come across as objects of intimidation and fear to the minority communities.

A verified channel called Prabhakar Maurya Ayodhya with over 260000 subscribers, uploaded a music video dedicated to ‘Bulldozer Baba’. Slogans like ‘Dangayi sab knaap rahe hai, bulldozer baba chaap rahe hai’ (Tranlation: The rioters are scared, Bulldozer baba is mowing them) and “Rashtravirodhi pe hai bhaari, bulldozer baba bhagwadhari’ (Translation: He is hard on the anti-nationals, Bulldozer Baba is saffron-clad). The song currently has 4.1 million views on YouTube.

A singer by the name of Shrawan Sultanpuri has a staggering 2.5 million views on a song that glorifies Yogi Adityanath’s reign as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The lyrics of this composition can be literally translated as – “Anti-nationals and traitors will be imprisoned, no one will last against Bulldozer wale Baba”. brandishing the symbolic meaning of the vehicle as something that refers to the unrivalled popularity of Yogi Adityanath’s ‘bulldozer politics.’ The channel has 35,000 subscribers.

By explicitly valorising the bulldozer as an entity that has the capacity to punish the archetypal ‘deshdrohi’ (anti-national), which is the Muslim stone-thrower, these songs operate to recalibrate the very way people perceive the bulldozer. It becomes a symbol that is both abstract and sentient at the same time; an entity whose raison d’etre lies in the protection of the motherland against its enemies.

BJP Leaders Calling for Bulldozer Justice

BJP leaders, too, have indulged in this communal rhetoric while making speeches. At a rally in the Shahdara Chowk area of New Delhi on August 3, 2023, BJP leader Jai Bhagwan Goyal urged all state governments to enforce ‘bulldozer action’ against the ‘Jihadis’, by emulating the Yogi government in UP.

T Raja Singh, the BJP MLA from the Goshamahal in Telangana, notorious for delivering incendiary speeches, has also reinforced this communal rhetoric several times in the past. The most recent documentation of his speech by Alt News shows that while speaking at the Hindu Jan Akrosh Morcha rally on January 6 in Solapur, Singh called for violence and exhorted Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde to follow in the footsteps of Yogi Adityanath and implement ‘bulldozer politics’ in Maharashtra. He proclaims that those accused of ‘Land Jihad’, ‘Love Jihad’, and cow slaughter would have to face the bulldozer. 

In February 2022, Raja Singh was embroiled in a controversy over a remark he had made in a video, where he was seen urging people to vote for Yogi Adityanath or face the wrath of bulldozers. He said, “Hindus should come and vote in large numbers. I want to tell those who did not vote for BJP that Yogi Adityanath has got thousands of JCBs and bulldozers which were procured by him to mow down people who did not support the BJP in the ongoing elections. Yogiji will take action against the identified traitors who did not support BJP during the assembly elections.” The Election Commission issued a show-cause notice to Raja Singh for his incendiary speech.

In March 2023, Alt News documented several speeches in Maharashtra by Singh. In Shrirampur, he lauded Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde for demolishing Afzal Khan’s tomb. He said, “Shinde should also be known as bulldozer Eknath Shinde”, urging him to follow the pattern set by Adityanath.

On April 16, Bijoy Malakar, a BJP MLA from Assam’s Ratabari constituency, came under the spotlight for allegedly threatening the villagers from the Karimganj district to vote for the BJP or be prepared for eviction. Malakar made these comments while campaigning for BJP MP candidate Kripanath Mallah. In the short video which emerged from the rally, he can be heard saying “…if you do not vote this time, I know where you are from, and where you live. The election result is on the…4th, make sure the JCB doesn’t reach your home after that”.

Bijoy Malakar,BJP MLA Ratabari karimganj , Assam
Transcript of what he says in a election Really @ECISVEEP
“Clearly telling you all that If you all dont vote this time,I know who is from where(not Understandandble)result is on 6 th no no 4 th..make sure JCB dsnt reach your home! pic.twitter.com/vO6rJdVXdK

— Sahidul Islam laskar (@Sahidullaskar00) April 17, 2024

In the state of Assam, ever since BJP’s Himanta Biswa Sarma came to power as the chief minister in 2021, thousands of homes have been razed by bulldozers under the label of anti-encroachment drives. This has rendered a large number of Bengali-speaking Muslim families homeless. Similarly, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Dhami has carried out several acts of ‘bulldozer justice,’ justifying his actions under the pretext of targeting ‘illegal encroachment.’

The Congress Manifesto addresses the trend of ‘bulldozer justice’. In the sixteenth point under the section titled ‘Defending the Constitution,’ the party has vowed to put an end to ‘…arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests, third-degree methods, prolonged custody, judicial deaths, and bulldozer justice.’ 

Thus, the ‘bulldozer’ rhetoric has travelled from the discourse of Right Wing fringe elements to the mainstream electoral politics, culminating in the controversial remarks made by the Prime Minister of the country at Barabanki, UP. This, one can say, conclusively settles the long-standing debate — whether for the Indian Right Wing, the fringe is the mainstream.

The post The journey of ‘bulldozer justice’: From Right Wing fringe elements to Modi’s election vocabulary appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

Right-Wing influencer and BJP supporter Roshan Sinha (@MrSinha_) posted this image, claiming that the picture on the wall was of Jesus.

Similarly, Right-Wing influencer Ajit Datta tweeted this image, stating that it depicted Jesus Christ.

BJP supporter Jitendra Pratap Singh also tweeted the image, calling it a picture of Jesus.

Fact Check

Alt News cropped the relevant part of the viral image and performed a reverse image search on Google. Due to the photo being blurry, we could not find any relevant information. We then uploaded it to the Yandex search engine and found a higher resolution version of the image. Searching this version on Google led us to several related articles.

One of these was on the website “Rethinking The Future“, which contained information about the art gallery of Nicholas Roerich and the viral image. According to the site, the image is titled ‘Madonna Oriflamma’, and it was created by Nicholas Roerich in 1932. The painting depicts a peace banner featuring three red dots inside a circle, which is a symbol of the Roerich Pact. The peace flag is associated with the first international conference dedicated to the protection of artistic, scientific, and historical institutions and monuments.

Investigating further, we checked the website of the Nicholas Roerich Museum. According to information on one of its pages, the devastation of World War I and the Russian Revolution led Roerich to realise that each nation’s cultural heritage was essentially a world treasure. He maintained that besides the physical remains of past cultures, the creative activities associated with universities, libraries, hospitals, concert halls, and theatres should be protected from the ravages of war. Roerich understood the need for an international effort and, with the help of international legal experts, crafted a treaty known as the Roerich Pact. The flag with a red circle and three dots is called the Banner of Peace. This pact stipulates that all sites of cultural value should be declared neutral and protected, similar to how hospitals marked with the Red Cross flag are protected to prevent attacks. The painting seen in the viral image is also seen on this page.

To sum it up, the image in question is not of Jesus Christ but rather a painting by Nicholas Roerich titled “Madonna Oriflamma,” created in 1932. The painting features the “Banner of Peace” with three red dots inside a red circle, symbolising the Roerich Pact.

The post Jesus Christ photo behind Rahul and Sonia Gandhi’s inked selfie? No, false claim by Right Wing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

X (formerly Twitter) user ANGRY BIRD (Modi का परिवार) (@angryladki) shared the video on May 5 with a caption in Hindi that stated, “Congress party leaders dance with shoes on the Hindu deities of Sanatan Dharma…”

Readers should note that the user @angryladki has been found sharing misinformation several times in the past.

कांग्रेस पार्टी के नेताओं सनातन धर्म के हिंदू देवी देवता के ऊपर जूते से डांस करते हैं। हिंदू लोगों ने 65 वर्ष से कोंग्रेस पार्टी को वोट दिया। मै और मेरा परिवार कोंग्रेस पार्टी को वोट कभी भी नहीं देंगे।
जय जय श्री राम@INCIndia #CongressMukthBharat @RahulGandhi
क्या अब भी? pic.twitter.com/x6eMBslwv5

— ANGRY BIRD (Modi का परिवार) (@angryladki) May 5, 2024

Propaganda outlet Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) also shared the viral video with the same claim.

कांग्रेसियों की शर्मनाक हरकत !

भगवान राम की तस्वीर को पैर से कुचला, पोस्टर फाड़े।

स्थानीय अखबार के मुताबिक, इन्हें BJP का पटका गले में डालकर भगवान राम का पोस्टर फाड़ने को कहा गया था। pic.twitter.com/BovZUX9BOh

— Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) May 6, 2024

Several other users on Facebook and X shared the same video claiming that the Congress workers had stomped on the posters with images of Hindu deity Ram.

Fact Check

At the 1.27 mark of the viral video, a person who is recording the scene is heard saying in Hindi, “These are our BJP workers”. Toward the end of the video, the women who were stomping on the posters can be seen chanting ‘Jai Jai Siya Ram’, and one of the women in the crowd is spotted wearing a saffron and green scarf with the BJP symbol (Lotus) on it.

Further, we found the same video tweeted with the claim that the posters were torn by BJP members. It was shared by X handle @IndiaAwakened_. Here, too, one can see the BJP symbol on the scarves worn by some of the women.

Taking a cue from the above, we ran a relevant keyword search and found a news report by the Free Press  Journal which carried screengrabs from the viral video. The title of the report said: “Imarti Devi Row: Angry BJP Mahila Morcha Trample Jitu Patwari’s Posters Featuring Lord Ram & Hanuman In Indore; Congress Calls It ‘Insult To God’ (WATCH)”.

The report said that members of the BJP women’s wing had staged a demonstration outside the house of Congress leader Jitu Patwari, a former minister and current president of Madhya Pradesh Congress, in Indore, in protest against some comments made by him about former MLA and BJP leader Imarti Devi. The women in the video were tearing posters of Patwari, which also consisted of images of Hindu deities Hanuman and Ram.

We noticed that on several occasions in the video, then name Jitu Patwari or parts of the name are visible on the damaged posters. Here is one such frame:

As per a report by the NDTV, a case has been registered against Patwari for allegedly making objectionable comments about Imarti Devi.

Hence, the claims that it was Congress workers who had torn apart posters with images of Hindu deity Ram are false. The women seen in the video are BJP members protesting against some remarks by Congress leader Jitu Patwari.

The post BJP women’s wing members tore down Congress posters in Indore with images of Hindu deities; video falsely viral appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

In the clip, Rahul Gandhi is purportedly heard saying, “Desh ke X-Ray kar denge, doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani ho jayega. Minorities ko pata lag jayega ki desh mein unki bhaagidari kitni hai. Iske baad hum financial aur institutional survey karenge, yeh pata lagayenge ki kiske haaton mein hai, kaunse varg ke haat mein hai. Aur is aitihasik kadam ke baad hum krantikaari kaam shuru karenge..(Translation: We will X-ray the country, everything will be crystal clear. Minorities will know their true representation in the country. After this, we will conduct financial and institutional surveys to determine who holds what, and which class has control. After this historic step, we will start transformative work…)

BJP MP Giriraj Singh tweeted the video and remarked that Rahul Gandhi was openly talking about ‘snatching away’ the rights and property of the Hindus.

ये सज्जन खुलेआम हिंदुओं के अधिकार और संपत्ति छीनने की बात कर रहे हैं।
यह बहुत डरावनी मानसिकता है। pic.twitter.com/Ds1mQQzUdc

— Shandilya Giriraj Singh (मोदी का परिवार) (@girirajsinghbjp) April 23, 2024

Right Wing troll Ajeet Bharti also made a similar claim while tweeting the 42-second video and sarcastically asked, “How can someone be so stupid?”

इसे नरेन्द्र मोदी का वीडियो नहीं मिला क्या? कोई इतना मूर्ख कैसे हो सकता है? pic.twitter.com/F8JCEHROvk

— Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) April 23, 2024

Verified user Arun Pudur  also tweeted the viral clip with the same claim that Rahul Gandhi had promised favours to minorities, insinuating Muslims.

Don’t Miss This Bone Chilling Video

We will do a nationwide”X-Ray”, we will then know how much is owed to ‘Minorities’.

Then we will do ‘Survey’ of Individuals Financials and Institutions.

We will find who has the ‘Wealth’ and to which Caste they belong.

After all this… pic.twitter.com/wUr1FDjk7k

— Arun Pudur (@arunpudur) April 23, 2024

The same video was amplified by Right Wing influencer Rishi Bagree as well.

Step 1 – Do a nationwide”X-Ray”
Step 2- Analyse how much is owed to ‘Minorities’
Step 3 – Do ‘Survey’ of Individuals
Step 4 – Find who has the ‘Wealth’
Step 5 – Analyse their caste
Step 6 – Do Re-distribution of wealth

Every Vote to Congress is signing your own death warrant pic.twitter.com/aOitCpa5MY

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) April 23, 2024

‘Journalist’ Abhijit Majumder shared the clip and remarked that Gandhi wasn’t ‘hiding his Hinduphobia and Marxist-Islamist ideas anymore’ and further claimed that he delivered and openly communal speech.

“Desh ka X-Ray kar dengey. Minorities ko pata chal jayega unki bhagidari kitni hai.”
~ Rahul Gandhi is not hiding his Hinduphobia and Marxist-Islamist ideas anymore.
Just listen to this openly communal speech.#WealthRedistributionPlan pic.twitter.com/FGsLY8yXZN

— Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) April 23, 2024

Fact Check

Upon a reverse image search on a key frame from the viral video, we found that the viral clip had been taken from the event of the Congress Manifesto launch in Hyderabad. We located the viral bit at the 31:54 minute mark and found that the video had been edited. Rahul Gandhi had actually spoken about the representation of Dalits, Tribals, OBCs, and poor people while also mentioning minority communities. Only the part where he mentions ‘minorities’ has been kept in the viral clip. Below is a translation of what Gandhi said:

“We will X-ray the country, everything will be crystal clear. The Backward Classes, Dalits, tribals, poor general caste people and minorities will know how much their share in this country is. After this, we will conduct a financial and institutional survey to determine who holds what, and which class has control. After this historic step, we will start transformative work, we will work to give you what is your right.”

The words in bold in the above statement have been edited out in the viral video.

Thus, it is clear that Rahul Gandhi didn’t exclusively mention the minority community when he discussed conducting surveys and ensuring rights. His remarks encompassed backward classes, Dalits, tribals, economically disadvantaged general caste individuals, as well as minorities. However, the video of his statement was edited and manipulated, removing references to other classes and leaving only the mention of minorities.

The post Rahul Gandhi did not talk about rights of minorities exclusively; video of his speech shared by Right Wing is edited appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

An X user named Ritik stated that Ranchi police found heaps of stones on 10 terraces a day ahead of Ram Navami. He also wrote that one could guess which religious community these 10 homes belonged to.

Right Wing troll handle Ajeet Bharti also shared the video calling it a conspiracy to carry out attacks on Ram Navami.

Former BJP spokesperson Naveen Kumar Jindal promoted the video with a communal angle, asking which community owned the aforementioned homes.

Right Wing TV panelist and BJP supporter Anand Ranganathan also amplified the footage describing it as ‘shocking’.

Similarly, many media outlets and Right-Wing users shared it with sensational and communal angles. These include Navbharat Times, Times Now Navbharat, Right Wing propaganda website OpIndia, RSS’s magazine Panchjanya, Anand Ranganathan, Amitabh Chaudhary, Anshul Saxena, and Roshan Sinha alias MrSinha.

Fact Check

Alt News reached out to Ranchi SSP Chandan Kumar Sinha regarding this issue. He stated, “There is no communal angle in this matter, and the landlords receiving notices are not from any specific community.”

According to him, this was part of a routine administrative practice, in which the routes of processions or parades were monitored, and attention was paid to ensure that there were no materials related to construction, such as bricks, sand, gravel, etc., on the terraces of buildings on the routes of the processions.

He added that notices had been sent to the owners of approximately 10 houses where materials related to construction were found on the rooftops. They were instructed to remove them by Ram Navami.

The Ranchi police issued a statement on Twitter denying any conspiracy or communal angle in this matter and stating that the discovery was part of a routine administrative process carried out in multiple districts.

जुलूस के मार्गों की ड्रोन से निगरानी एक सामान्य प्रशासनिक प्रक्रिया है। यह अनेक जिलों में किया जाता है और यदि किसी के छत पर कोई निर्माण सामग्री यथा पत्थर,ईट ,बालू आदि पड़ा रहता है तो उसे हटाने के लिए संबंधित मकान मालिकों को @JharkhandPolice @Lathkar_IPS @amolhomkar_IPS @NBTBihar

— Ranchi Police (@ranchipolice) April 16, 2024

Jharkhand chief minister Champai Soren, too, issued a statement through his official X handle, stating “Some of these houses have been built recently, while some are still under construction. Police has also clarified that the owners of these houses belong to different communities.” He made an appeal to everyone to not fall for rumours.

कल से कुछ सोशल मीडिया हैंडल द्वारा रांची की हिंदपीढ़ी में कुछ घरों के ऊपर ईंट, पत्थर आदि होने को लेकर भ्रामक खबरें चलाई जा रही हैं।

रांची पुलिस ने स्पष्ट किया है कि रूटीन चेक के दौरान 10-11 घरों की छतों पर निर्माण सामग्री मिली थी, जिसे हटवा दिया गया है। इनमें से कुछ घर हाल में…

— Champai Soren (@ChampaiSoren) April 17, 2024

To sum it up, a number of Right-Wing users and news outlets falsely shared a video of Ranchi police monitoring through drones, which is a routine practice, with a sensational and communal angle.

The post Ram Navami: Right Wing users amplify Ranchi Poilce’s drone surveillance footage with communal spin appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

Several users reacted to the tweet mentioning that the Union government had funded the Hill Highway project and hence, the credit should go to the BJP government.

Right-Wing influencer Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) quote-tweeted the above-mentioned tweet made by CPI(M) Kerala and mentioned: “Left promoting Modi Govt infra work ”. The tweet has received over 1 Lakh views and has been reposted over 1,500 times. (Archive)

Left promoting Modi Govt infra work https://t.co/RtRNMvZ5oj

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) March 26, 2024

Another X user, Sreejith Panickar (@PanickarS), quote-tweeted the same tweet from CPI(M) mentioning that the CPI(M) was promoting the BJP government’s projects. The tweet has received over 1.5 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 900 times. (Archive)

Looks like CPI(M) has started promoting BJP government’s projects! https://t.co/3YPrOh2RWS

— Sreejith Panickar (@PanickarS) March 26, 2024

Further, Congress Kerala tweeted on March 26 mentioning that the project in question was conceived by the late Congress leader and former Kerala CM Oommen Chandy during his term between 2004-06. When Congress again gained power in the state in 2011, the project was again pushed forward by them.

Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.

Here is CPI(M) and BJP trying to take credit for a project fully funded by Kerala State, which was one of many infrastructure projects initiated by Late Sri. Oomen Chandy.

This project was conceived by the first Oomen Chandy Govt… https://t.co/aweZ3HHpuR pic.twitter.com/WO3rbuBMaN

— Congress Kerala (@INCKerala) March 26, 2024

Fact Check

On running a relevant keyword search we came across a news report by the Hindu that was published in January 2017. The report titled, “KIIFB funds for hill, coastal highways”, mentions that the funds from the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) are being utilized to build a 1919.4 km hill highway and coastal highway from the north to south of the State. The expenses for the same as pegged at nearly Rs. 5,000 crores.

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan gave the green flag to both the highways in August 2016. The report also mentioned that the initial phase would cover nine districts, which were Kasaragod, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thrissur, Idukki, Ernakulam, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram.

We came across another news report by the Indian Express published in September 2017. The report mentions the proposed 1251 km hill highway project between Nandarapadavu in Kasaragod district and Parassala in Thiruvananthapuram district was originally mooted by the Congress government led by Oommen Chandy in Kerala. The CPI(M) government under Pinarayi Vijayan gave the final nod to begin the construction of the highway.

Another report by the Hindu from February 20 of this year mentions state public works minister P A Mohammed Riyas as saying that the state government aims to complete the entire construction of NH 66 (Hill Highway from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram) by 2025.

We also checked the KIIFB website wherein under ‘Major Projects’ one can find the coastal and hill highway project mentioned.

As per the official website, the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) was established in 1999. We found a newsletter by the KIIFB published in August 2023 where one can find the status of the project mentioned as of the date of the release of the newsletter.

Therefore, the claim that the Hill Highway project in Kerala has been funded by the Union government is false. The idea of the project was conceived during the Congress regime in the state under the late Oommen Chandy, but work began under the current CPI(M) government. The project is funded by the state infrastructure investment board, KIIFB.

The post Kerala hill highway not funded by Union government; claim by Right Wing influencers false appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

Locals used their phones to shoot the policeman kicking and shoving people who had gathered on the road around 2 pm near the Inderlok metro station to offer namaz. In the videos, the cop can be seen stepping on the prayer mat used by the devotees and shouting at them to leave the area.

After the video had gone viral, several Right Wing accounts started claiming that one of the men praying in the area was wearing a burqa with the suggestion that he might have had some sinister motive.

X (Twitter) user Abhijit Majumder, whose bio describes him as a journalist, tweeted a 34-second clip and asked if a man clad in black clothing at the 0:16 second mark was wearing a burqa. (Archive)

Is that a MAN IN A BURQA at 00:16?

What was he doing there on the road?#DelhiPolice #Namaz pic.twitter.com/GAWjWC0Qz1

— Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) March 8, 2024

Alt News has debunked communal disinformation shared by Abhijit Majumder several times in the past. The readers can find the stories here.

Right Wing influencer @MrSinha_ also amplified the claim that a man was seen wearing a burqa. (Archive)

This is serious & makes this incident even more suspicious. What was a man doing in Burqa at that place???

A deep investigation is needed.. @HMOIndia @DelhiPolice, pic.twitter.com/DR4hnxd3I1

— Mr Sinha (Modi’s family) (@MrSinha_) March 8, 2024

Another prominent Right Wing influencer, @MeghUpdates, tweeted the same claim. (Archive)

Viral video of man spotted in Hijab ! at Inderlok as policemen were clearing road for traffic.
Even the other guy looked surprised… pic.twitter.com/l7VS4XLl7p

— Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates) March 8, 2024

Both @MrSinha_ and @MughUpdates have been found sharing communal disinformation multiple times. Related Alt News reports can be found here and here.

Several others tweeted the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fact Check

Alt News accessed a longer version of the video being circulated.

In this video, approximately at the 0:11 minute mark, a man can be seen dressed in black, possibly a black hoodie, dark-coloured pants and a black skullcap. He can also be seen holding a large, dark-coloured piece of cloth as he looks at his phone.

At the 0:30 minute mark, the man can be seen with his back to the camera speaking to another man. The hood and the skullcap are clearly visible at this point.

Now if one carefully looks at the relevant frames from the viral video, one can notice that the hood is visible here as well. Additionally, the piece of cloth that he was carrying on his arm is now placed over his head. He has a phone in one hand and with the other hand, he is holding the cloth.

Many worshippers can be seen carrying their prayers mats after they were made to disperse. The man in the video may be doing the same. Furthermore, he is clearly seen holding the piece of cloth in his hand before covering his head with it. It is common knowledge that this is not the typical way a burqa is worn.

Hence, it is clear that the man being falsely targeted in the viral video wasn’t wearing a burqa. He is clearly seen wearing a black hoodie, a black skullcap and holding had a dark piece of cloth in his hand in a longer video of the incident. When he approached the policeman with the rest of the crowd, he had simply placed the piece of cloth on his head.

The post Delhi cop kicking Muslim worshippers: Right Wing users falsely claim man was wearing burqa appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has designated the political wing of Hamas as a “terrorist” entity.

New Zealand designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity in 2010.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the government unequivocally condemned the “brutal” terrorist attacks by Hamas in October, and the move had been taken after he received official advice.

• READ MORE:  Gaza faces ‘mass killing of chil­dren in slow mo­tion’ as Is­rael blocks aid
• What is Hamas?: A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• Why New Zealand should not designate Hamas a terrorist group
• Other War on Gaza reports

“What happened on 7 October reinforces we can no longer distinguish between the military and political wings of Hamas,” Peters said.

“The organisation as a whole bears responsibility for these horrific terrorist attacks.”

The designation means any assets of the terrorist entity in New Zealand are frozen. It also makes participation in or supporting Hamas’ activities, or recruiting for it a criminal offence.

However, Peters made clear the designation would not affect the provision of humanitarian support to Palestinians, and would not stop New Zealand providing aid to benefit civilians in Gaza.

‘Gravely concerned’
“Nor does it stop us providing consular support to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents in the conflict zone,” he said.

“We remain gravely concerned about the impact of this conflict on civilians and will continue to call for an end to the violence and an urgent resumption of the Middle East Peace Process.

“A lasting solution to the conflict will only be achieved by peaceful means.”

The coalition government has also banned several extremist Israeli settlers from travelling to New Zealand.

Peters said those banned had committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

It was not clear how many settlers have been banned and who exactly they are.

There has been a significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian populations in recent months, Peters said.

He acknowledged the official advice provided to him had been commissioned by then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in October.

Just over a fortnight earlier, Peters had specifically urged Israel not to begin a ground offensive in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

A day later, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon issued a joint statement with his Australian and Canadian counterparts calling for the same thing.

It included a call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the release of hostages, condemned Hamas for its terror attacks on Israel, and said Israel must protect Palestinian civilians.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Steven Spainhouer’s son worked at one of the stores in the Allen, Texas shopping mall chosen by America’s most recent mass shooter (as of Saturday: there were seven this weekend).

He arrived at the mall just after the neo-nazi murderer had slaughtered several people, sometimes ripping their bodies and faces into an indistinguishable mass of flesh with his .322 ammunition.

The killer had moved on into the mall, Steven Spainhouer was probably thinking, when he saw a 5-year-old child.

“The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes, so I felt for a pulse,” Spainhouer, who is trained in CPR, told CBS News, adding that he then “pulled her head to the side and she had no face.”

Next, he found a dead woman who appeared to be laying across a young boy.

“When I rolled the mother over, he came out,” Spainhouer told CBS reporter JD Miles. “I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘My mom is hurt, my mom is hurt.’ Rather than traumatize him any more, I pulled him around the corner, sat him down, and he was covered from head to toe.”
The child looked, Spainhouer said, “Like somebody poured blood on him.”

His mother’s blood. His dead mother who will never again hold or comfort that little boy for the rest of his life.

All because a white supremacist with a “Right Wing Death Squad” patch — commonly worn by Proud Boys — across his chest decided to shoot up a Texas shopping center with a mass-market version of the rifle the Army developed in the 1960s for hunting people in Vietnam.

Thoughts and prayers won’t do a damn thing. Coming from these mealy-mouthed Republicans, they don’t even comfort the families. All they do is prepare Texas for the next massacre.

In response to the unimaginable horror that weapon of war inflicted on these humans, Republican Congressman Keith Self — who represents Allen, Texas in the US House of Representatives — stepped up to a microphone and explicitly refused to say he’d do anything about the American slaughter:

“Our prayers are with the victims and their families and all law enforcement on the scene.”

Other Texas Republicans offered similar sentiments. Not even one of these cowards mentioned the word “gun” or promised to do a single damn thing.

Republican Governor Abbott minimized the tragedy, saying, “Our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas tonight during this unspeakable tragedy.”

Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick might as well have spit on the corpses, asking Texans to, “Please join me in mourning the victims of the unspeakable tragedy in Allen.”

Republican Senator John Cornyn, as he has so many times before, ignored the AR15 that made such a quick and complete slaughter possible, saying instead,“I am grieving with the Allen community tonight…”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz slipped into his usual sanctimonious acceptable-to-the-NRA word salad: “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin County community that's in shock from this tragedy.”

Indicted bribe-taker and fraudster Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton also talked like this slaughter was the result of some sort of bizarre natural disaster, saying, “Pray for Allen, Texas. Pray for these families and law enforcement…”

Thoughts and prayers won’t do a damn thing. Coming from these mealy-mouthed Republicans, they don’t even comfort the families. All they do is prepare Texas for the next massacre.

Representing the rest of America, singer-songwriter Ricky Davila tweeted a list of Republican politicians and the money they took from the NRA, adding:

“Fuck their thoughts and prayers.”

It turns out this slaughter isn’t really all that new or unique to the 21st century. America was once before awash in weapons of war, sparking a national fad of robbery and murder much like today’s trend of mass shootings.

We still remember their names:

— Bonnie and Clyde gunned down civilians and cops as they cut a bloody swath across the Midwest with their full-auto .30-06 fire from M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles, semiautomatic shotguns, and .45 ACP rounds from full-auto M1911 handguns.
— Machine Gun Kelly preferred the Thompson machine gun to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible.
— So did John Dillinger, who’s famous “Tommy Gun” has been recreated and is sold online today.
— Baby Face Nelson liked to kill FBI agents with his fully automatic .45 pistol.
— Pretty Boy Floyd’s famous weapon was an automatic Colt pistol.
— Ma Barker, who as a child was devastated when her hero Jesse James was killed in 1882, couldn’t hold a rifle (she was only 5’ 4” tall) so also used an automatic handgun.
— Al Capone preferred to carry a .38 Smith & Wesson handgun, letting his gang do the really bloody work with their automatic rifles and shotguns.

Collectively, through the late 1920s and early 1930s, these and hundreds of other less-well-remembered killers used weapons developed for the battlefield around the time of the Civil War and World War I to spill blood all across America. Weapons the Founders of America and Framers of the Constitution couldn’t have dreamed of.

And then America said, “Enough!”

In 1934, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act (NFA), which didn’t outlaw even one single gun. Instead, it put a tax on automatic weapons, sawed-off shotguns, and a variety of other weapons of war. That’s all it took to stop the slaughter.

None of the weapons listed in the NFA are “illegal.” But they are under control.

I’ve legally held and fired the same fully automatic Thompson Machine Gun like Machine Gun Kelly and John Dillinger used, among others.

Many gun ranges offer rentals if you want to try target practice with them: I shot them at a public gun range in Marietta, Georgia when, back in the 1980s, I was working on my Georgia private detective license (which I held for 2 years while writing some pretty awful novels about a PI) and running an advertising agency.

Most of the people shooting those fully automatic weapons, in fact, looked pretty average, generally middle-class; there was even racial diversity and a lot of women.

It was perfectly legal because the owner of the shooting range had paid the tax to get the federal license.

And that’s where we can do something today by simply expanding the scope of the weapons covered by the NFA.

To be eligible to pay the tax, you must first acquire a Federal Firearms License.

Step one is to fill out an application with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which you can find here. You pay a fee that can range from $30 to $3000 (most are $200 for fully automatic weapons, a number that hasn’t changed since 1934), provide a photo, and submit your fingerprints.

After you’ve been checked out, you’ll be called in for an in-person interview with an ATF Industry Operations Investigator, who will vet you for ownership of your very own fully automatic machine gun.

There were no gun buy-back programs back in the 1930s, and nobody went door-to-door confiscating guns.

But once everybody understood that it was illegal to sell or possess an automatic or sawed-off weapon of war without first getting a license and paying the tax, they simply started to disappear from the American scene (outside of licensed shooting ranges like today).

Which brings us to a simple proposal. When enough ethical politicians hold office to pull it off (hopefully after the 2024 election), simply amend the National Firearms Act to include semiautomatic weapons along with the existing category of fully automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns.

After all, most semiautomatic weapons were originally developed for warfare: they are, pure and simple, designed to kill as many people as fast as possible, whether they be handguns or long rifles. (There are a handful of “sort of” semiautomatic low-capacity rifles commonly used for hunting; they could be exempted.)

This would not conflict with the 2^nd Amendment or even the Heller decision, as bizarre and twisted as it was, as I document in The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment. It’s perfectly legal.

And it could take us back in time to a less deadly America.

Fire up Netflix or Amazon Prime and watch a few cop shows from the 1970s and early 1980s. McMillian and Wife, Adam 12, Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, etc.

Semiautomatic weapons were few and far between back then because they were so hard to get and expensive: they were widely acknowledged as purely for the battlefield. Cops carried revolvers, as did criminals. Rifles were mostly bolt-action.

And mass shootings almost never happened.

Semiautomatic weapons are very profitable for their manufacturers, and they’re the weapon of choice for mass- and school-shooters. Most are designed specifically to hunt and kill human beings.

Which is why we shouldn’t allow them to stay on our streets without restrictions. Let’s take them out of general civilian circulation, just as we did machine guns back in the day.

If you’re buying a gun to protect yourself or your home (a bad idea: guns in the home are far more likely to be used against a resident than a bad guy), a simple handgun is convenient and works just fine.

And any idiot who walks into the woods with an AR-style rifle will be laughed out of the forest by actual sportsmen: there’s nothing “sporting” about mowing down deer or rabbits with a giant magazine and .233 ammo. (Not to mention what it does to the meat and hides.)

In fact, the groups calling for continuing the unregulated status of semiautomatic weapons of war are mostly made up of people actually planning seditious warfare against the United States.

Members of the so-called “militia movement” and other crackpots believe the BS story the NRA started peddling in the mid-1970s that the 2^nd Amendment was written so average citizens could kill “tyrannical” politicians and American police enforcing their laws.

The reality is the exact opposite: the Constitution itself contains numerous references to the requirement of the government to put down insurrections and rebellions by people like today’s Proud Boys and Three Percenters.

Every one of the 50 states today explicitly outlaws unregulated civilian militias, either by constitution or law or both. Virginia, the home of Madison, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Washington, etc., was the first, putting into their constitution in 1776:

“That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” [emphasis mine]

Forty-eight of the 50 states have similar clauses in their constitutions requiring any militia in the state to be subordinate to civilian authorities: typically the governor, occasionally the legislature, or both. (Georgia and New York are the exceptions.)

Twenty-nine states have specific laws outlawing private militias altogether (Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming).

Twenty-five states, as the Brennan Center for Justice notes:

“[H]ave laws that generally prohibit teaching, demonstrating, instructing, training, and practicing in the use of firearms, explosives, or techniques capable of causing injury or death, for use during or in furtherance of a civil disorder.”

(They include Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington.)

As you can see from this history, the last thing the Founders — and politicians in every state over the past 200+ years — thought was that Americans should be armed with weapons of war to fight against the government that they themselves created.

And it’s not like this is a new issue: back in 1886 the US Supreme Court ruled, in Presser v Illinois (upholding state anti-militia laws), that:

“It cannot be successfully questioned that the state governments … have also the power to control and regulate the organization, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except when such bodies or associations are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.
“The exercise of this power by the states is necessary to the public peace, safety, and good order. To deny the power would be to deny the right of the state to disperse assemblages organized for sedition and treason, and the right to suppress armed mobs bent on riot and rapine.”

Back in 1907, when the Klan was the main white supremacist militia of the day (although it operated under multiple different names in various states), the Washington Supreme Court ruled that:

“Armed bodies of men are a menace to the public. Their mere presence is fraught with danger, and the state has wisely reserved to itself the right to organize, maintain, and employ them.”

In other words, there is not one single legal rationale to keep weapons of war on the streets of America; if anything, doing so is antithetical to our Constitution and over 200 years of law, both state and federal.

It’s time to get these weapons of war off our streets, and we have the tool to do it in the National Firearms Act.

For years I’ve suggested we should treat guns like cars: require registration, a shooter’s license, and liability insurance. That’s still a good idea, but we must also figure out how to rid our towns and cities of these ultra-deadly weapons of war. This could do it.

We already have the law in place, and a sweeping change could come across our nation with a single tweak.

Had we done this a year ago, a little boy in Texas would still have his mother, and a five year old girl would still have her face.

Let your members of Congress know.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

The Congress leader had made the remark at a press conference on March 25 when asked if he would apologize for the statement that led to his disqualification from the Lok Sabha.

Against this backdrop, some Twitter users have claimed that Rahul Gandhi deleted all his tweets on VD Savarkar after the backlash from the latter’s grandson.

Sheetal Chopra, who describes herself as an RSS volunteer and ‘Modibhakt’ in her bio, took a jibe at Rahul Gandhi while making the claim. (Archive)

Darpok Fattu Rahul Gandhi deletes all the tweets on Veer Savarkar

His shortest journey from “ Daro Mat “to “Daro Mat aayega tho Modi hi”

pic.twitter.com/mXQprm0PXD

— Sheetal Chopra (@SheetalPronamo) March 28, 2023

Amit Athir, a social media activist according to his bio, made the same claim while replying to a tweet by Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate, and wrote that Rahul was scared of the threat of an FIR against him. (Archive)

डर गए राहुल गांधी !!

वीर सावरकर पर किए गए सभी ट्वीट किया डिलीट।

राहुल गांधी ने FIR के डर से डिलीट किया ट्वीट।

वीर सावरकर के पोते रणजीत सावरकर ने राहुल द्वारा माफी न मांगने पर FIR करने की कही है बात। pic.twitter.com/2OvCsRNJPV

— Amit Ahir (@AmitAhir_) March 28, 2023

Users Ashok Srivastav (a journalist with DD News) and Subir H Chaudhuri quote-tweeted entrepreneur Jagdish Bhatia and made the same claim. Chaudhuri said Rahul had deleted the tweets on the advice of Sharad Pawar.

Several other Right Wing users made the same claim but later almost all of them deleted their tweets. Archived links to their tweets are, however, available.

Among them are Supreme Court lawyer Shashank Shekhar Jha and entrepreneur Arun Pudur, both of whom frequently share misinformation on social media, Amitabh Chaudhary, Twitter handles MeghUpdates and Know the nation, entrepreneur-cum-journalist Pradeep Bhandari, and Prajwal Busta, who describes herself as BJP’s Himachal spokesperson. Arun Pudur even claimed that all UPA parties had agreed to not speak against Savarkar anymore. Screenshots of their now-deleted tweets can be seen below:

Fact Check

Alt News found an archive of Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter timeline as of March 25, 2023. The total number of tweets shown here is 6,782, and the last tweet here is the following:

मैंने प्रधानमंत्री की आखों में डर देखा है – वो डरते हैं अडानी पर संसद में मेरे अगले भाषण से।

सीधा सवाल है – शेल कंपनियों द्वारा अडानी समूह में लगाया गया ₹20,000 करोड़ का विदेशी पैसा किसका है?

ये सारा नाटक इसी सवाल से ध्यान भटकाने के लिए है।

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 25, 2023

Then we noted that live count of tweets on Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account. It stands at 6,786.

So, four tweets have been added. Scrolling down the timeline, we could find the our tweets. These four tweets can be seen in the following gallery, starting from the latest:

Had Rahul Gandhi deleted any tweet in this period, the numbers would not add up.

Next, Alt News checked the details of Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter activities on the Social Blade website and found that between March 27 (the day Ranjit Savarkar spoke about the FIR) and March 29 (the day of this story being written) Rahul Gandhi’s total tweet count had gone up by one (01). From 6,785 on March 26, it went up to 6,786 on March 27. In other words, he had tweeted only once within this time frame, and that was on March 27. (See highlighted part)

Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter timeline corroborates this. On March 27, he tweeted about the controversy regarding Gautam Adani.

Had Rahul Gandhi deleted any tweet on or after March 27, it would have reflected on the Social Blade statistics, i.e., the total number of tweets would have gone down. One might argue that the Congress leader deleted X number of tweets and tweeted X+1 times and hence Social Blade data shows an increase of one in the total number of tweets. However, Rahul’s Twitter timeline clearly shows that is not the case.

We also did a keyword search on Google with the terms “Rahul Gandhi” “tweeted” “Savarkar” to see if any media outlet ever reported on Rahul Gandhi tweeting about VD Savarkar, who has been a hotly debated topic for quite some time in national politics. The search results did not yield any such news report.

To sum up, the claim by Right Wing Twitter users that Rahul Gandhi deleted tweets on VD Savarkar after the threat of an FIR from Ranjit Savarkar on March 27 is false. The simple reason a keyword search with ‘Savarkar’ on the Congress leader’s timeline does not yield any result is the fact that he never tweeted on VD Savarkar.

The post Right Wing users falsely claim Rahul Gandhi deleted Savarkar tweets, then delete their own tweets appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

Several social media users have shared the image of the body of a boy, seemingly a minor, with the claim that he had been murdered because he was a Hindu. The incident is claimed to have taken place in Bangladesh where the majority of the population belongs to the Muslim community.

Journalist Ambuj Bharadwaj tweeted the image and claimed that a Hindu school-going boy, Nirab Mandal, had been murdered by ‘Mohammad Sohail and his friends’.  (Archive)

बांग्लादेश में हिन्दू होना पाप है !!

ये निरोब मंडल है , इसकी गलती थी कि ये एक हिन्दू था !!

बांग्लादेश में मोहम्मद सोहेल और उसके दोस्तों ने मिलकर स्कूल के एक हिंदू लड़के निरोब मंडल को जान से मार दिया।https://t.co/jCdabwYUjy pic.twitter.com/ppOqKM8MDm

— Ambuj Bharadwaj (@Ambuj_IND) February 7, 2023

The official Twitter handle of Panchjanya, a weekly national magazine published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), tweeted the image with the same claim. According to the tweet, Nirab Mandal had been murdered by Mohammad Sohail and his friends in Bangladesh. (Archive)

बांग्लादेश में हिन्दू बच्चे की बेरहमी से हत्या !!

मोहम्मद सोहेल और उसके दोस्तों ने मिलकर स्कूल के एक हिंदू लड़के निरोब मंडल को जान से मार दिया। pic.twitter.com/y2DVOIxKwT

— Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) February 7, 2023

Social activist Manoj Singh also tweeted the image with the same claim. (Archive)

बांग्लादेश में हिन्दू बच्चे की बेरहमी से हत्या !!

मोहम्मद सोहेल और उसके दोस्तों ने मिलकर स्कूल के एक हिंदू लड़के निरोब मंडल को जान से मार दिया। pic.twitter.com/uvqysz6Wam

— Manoj Singh (@manojkrs29) February 8, 2023

The image has also been shared several times on Facebook.

Fact Check

On doing a relevant Bangla keyword search, we found several articles by Bangladeshi news outlets reporting on the incident. According to a Dhaka Times report dated February 3, 2023, five minors were accused of murdering 12-year-old Nirab Mondal. The accused and the victim went to the same school. Mondal’s body was recovered from a school located in the Gutudiya Upazila, Khulna District.

According to the report, Nirab’s family went looking for Nirab when he had not returned home from school on time on February 2.  Around 4:30 pm, Nirab’s father received a call on his mobile phone and a ransom of 30 lakh Taka (Bangladeshi currency) was demanded in return for his son. Nirab’s father informed the police about the incident. Upon receiving the information, the police started search operations. Nirab’s body was found in a classroom at a secondary school in Gutudiya around 1 am.

The report states the names of the accused. Four of the five accused belong to the Hindu community while one of them belongs to the Muslim community. Alt News is withholding the names as the accused are all minors.

Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Dumuria police station confirmed the names of the accused to the Bangladeshi daily The Daily Inquilab. As per police, on Thursday (February 2), Nirab was taken to an abandoned building behind his school. As soon as he reached the spot, the accused grabbed his legs and tried to shut his mouth. According to the detainees, their plan was only to take money from Nirab’s father after Nirab fell unconscious. However, they ended up killing him.

This information was further corroborated by Rtv News Bangladesh. According to their reportage, two of the accused gave a confessional statement to Judge Ronak Jahan. The accused have informed that the plan of the crime was inspired by the Indian crime series Crime Patrol. The accused have been sent to juvenile correctional home.

Thus, social media users have given a false communal spin to Nirab Mondal’s murder. Mondal was murdered by five minor school students, four of whom are Hindus while one belongs to the Muslim community. The murder was inspired by the Indian TV series Crime Patrol.

The post Bangladesh school boy murder: False communal claim by Right Wing handles appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

The heinous act was met with widespread condemnation from all spheres of society. As more and more details of the gruesome murder became public, several prominent personalities took to social media platforms to express their shock. We first came to know that Shraddha and Aftab met on an online dating app and despite their parents’ disapproval, pursued the relationship and moved to Delhi. Subsequently, there were reports quoting Shraddha’s father where he said that he had disapproved of his daughter’s relationship with Aftab because the latter was a Muslim. As a result, Shraddha walked out of his home in Mumbai and they hadn’t been in touch for over a year. Since this piece of information came out, Aftab and Shraddha’s religious identities and political beliefs, and invasive scrutiny of their lifestyle and life choices became the focal point of much of the discourse — both in social and mainstream media.

Several news media outlets relentlessly reported on the incident. Much of the reportage sought to sensationalize the crime with unpleasant details, communal undertones, and victim blaming and shaming.

Setting the Narrative

Interestingly, instead of focusing on violence against women in domestic spaces, from the very outset, the conversation veered towards a collective protest seeking surveillance and sanctions on inter-faith relationships. The accused in this case is a Muslim man and the victim is a Hindu woman. Hence the incident was lapped up by the love-jihad theorists who oppose such relationships to target Muslims.

Rishi Bagree, for example, tweeted an image with the text, “श्रद्धा के जिंदा रहते उसको समझाते तो वह अंधभक्त बोल के ब्लॉक कर देती..”. (If somebody talked to Shraddha about this when she was alive, she would have blocked them calling them an ‘andh-bhakt’). Bagree implied that even if someone explained to Shraddha the inherent risks in getting into a relationship with a Muslim, she wouldn’t have listened because of her sociopolitical ideology.

आज का कड़वा सच pic.twitter.com/ps7nS7eQMF

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) November 18, 2022

Bagree has 2.5 lakh followers on Twitter. When such opinions get amplified, they eventually facilitate collective hatred, often with real life consequences.

The most common narratives of social media vigilantes were twofold:

First, the accused, being a Muslim, is intrinsically a criminal. This is what is expected of him. Within hours of the case hitting the headlines, ‘Abdul’ and #lovejihaad started trending on social media. Several Twitter users (noticeably aligned with the Right Wing) tried to demonize the Muslim community by implying that being involved with a Muslim man or ‘Abdul’ would result in a fate similar to Shradhha’s. Editor-in-chief of OpIndia, Nupur J Sharma tweeted, “Aapka Abdul bhi waisa hi hai” (Archive). The implication is that all Muslim men would mete out the same treatment to their respective spouses as Aftab did to Shraddha.

“Aapka Abdul bhi waisa hi hai”

— Nupur J Sharma (@UnSubtleDesi) November 14, 2022

Second, a Hindu woman is at fault if she chooses a Muslim partner going against her family, transgressing her faith and ignoring the ‘obvious’ dangers. For example, @dr_vee95 tweeted:

Always listen to your parents. You’ll be dead otherwise and people won’t even realise for over 6 months.#Shraddha pic.twitter.com/evWuGFaJke

— dr_vee (@dr_vee95) November 15, 2022

The tweet implies that the deceased is as responsible, if not more, as the perpetrator since she was the one who defied her parents and walked out. The subtext of such a comment is that it is unethical for a woman to choose personal aspirations over the sanctity of institutions like the family. Hence, her death is, in some sense, justice for such an act of transgression.

Apart from the obvious communal angle, these opinions also reflect a major part of the national sentiment, unveiling the ugly side of this nation’s tryst with gender sensitivity. The tweets and comments on social media are not only deeply sexist and degrading to the victim and women in general, but also lie on the fringes of gender-based hatred.

Lying underneath the victim blaming and shaming, there is a deep rooted conception in the collective psyche of who a woman can be or cannot be, in other words, the stark differences between an ideal woman and a fallen woman. One of Alt News projects has been to document hate speech in various forms, and to document this constant struggle with moderation of speech; hanging between the right to free speech and right to dignity. It is in this context that we are trying to analyse the nature of outrage over Shraddha’s death. We have taken the liberty to categorize the hateful content into three themes: Misogyny, The ideal woman versus the fallen woman, politics and practice. Most of the hateful tweets fall at the intersections of these themes.

Misogyny

Some of the tweets are plain misogynistic. Misogyny is a deep-seated hatred for women stemming from the belief in their inferiority, and the acceptance of prejudice against women as natural and just. The understanding and practice of misogyny varies from culture to culture. The proliferation of social media platforms has played a role here. For example, although the social role of women is no more confined to domestic spaces, but a vocal assertion of their freedom is treated with disdain.

In a statement to Hindustan Times, cyber-psychologist Dr Nirali Bhatia says, “Only cyberspace offers a platform to say exactly what you feel without being bound by societal norms or codes of conduct… The internet lets you get away with it”.

We found some of the most vile misogynistic comments on Shraddha’s Instagram and Facebook profile.

Examples:

Right Wing columnist Shefali Vaidya tweeted a screenshot of an OpIndia tweet which stated that “all of Aftab’s 20 girlfriends would be questioned. Some of his girlfriends even visited the house where Shraddha’s body was present”. Vaidya’s tweet was captioned, “I bet all 20 of them were stupid woke HINDU girls desperate for s€x! All of them could have been #ShraddhaWalkar! #AftabAminPoonawalla #MeraAbdulAisaNahiHai”. (Archive)

I bet all 20 of them were stupid woke HINDU girls desperate for s€x! All of them could have been #ShraddhaWalkar! #AftabAminPoonawalla #MeraAbdulAisaNahiHai pic.twitter.com/IlRNTRYgAA

— Shefali Vaidya. (@ShefVaidya) November 17, 2022

Most of the tweets imply or overtly reflect a tendency to naturalize misogyny. Tweets implying Shraddha deserved the treatment that was meted out to her because she did not abide by traditional Hindu norms are very common. For example, the following tweet by user @Saffron_Nik (Archive)

We should not have any sympathy with those Hindu girls who leave their religion/community & marry Abdul.

Shraddha jaisi girls yahi behaviour deserve karti hai…

— Mini (@Saffron_Nik) November 14, 2022

Memes and jokes about this case have also flooded social media. Dehumanizing memes involving ‘fridge’ and ‘suitcase’ have been shared in abundance. Personal images of inter-faith couples are being arbitrarily circulated on social media with users asking questions like ‘Fridge or Suitcase?’ These memes have the power to visually evoke and provoke deep seated prejudice. Below are some of the tweets seek to hammer into the public imagination a sense of resentment towards inter-religious relationships.

Click to view slideshow.

Ideal Woman versus Fallen Woman

It is a common practice to stereotype women as either ideal or notorious. The Right Wing often subscribes to that and amplifies such classification. These binaries capture the collective psyche pretty easily. The ideal woman conforms to the proverbial mother-figure who abides by traditional familial values. For example, the tendency to link ‘nation’ to ‘motherland’. When Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, commenting on Shraddha Walkar’s murder says, “If today the country does not have a strong leader, a govt that respects nation as a mother, such Aftabs will emerge in every city and we will not be able to safeguard our society:.”, he symbolically puts women on a pedestal, to be protected at all costs, thus stripping them of their agency to be human.

In a thoughtless tweet about the murder, BJP supporter and vocal Hindutva activist Shefali Vaidya sarcastically commented on Shraddha’s defiance of her father’s disapproval. This comes from the notion of an ideal woman as someone who obeys her parents and does not assert her own choices. Not only does her tweet have a patronizing tone, but she also described the gruesome details of the murder by using phrases like “…only to find her REALLY dead and chopped in 35 pieces!”.

When her father opposed her relationship with Ola ka Banda #AftabAminPoonawalla, #ShraddhaWalkar told him, ‘I am 25, I can do what I want. If you don’t like it, consider me dead for you’. The same father tracked her down, only to find her REALLY dead and chopped in 35 pieces!

— Shefali Vaidya. (@ShefVaidya) November 15, 2022

In yet another hate-filled tweet, Vaidya attempted to put the blame for the murder on Shraddha. She felt the victim had lost her moral compass when she decided to “trample all over her parents feelings” by walking out on them to live with her partner. She also asked why Shraddha couldn’t walk out of her abusive relationship insinuating that the victim is to be blamed for what happened to her. Here is an insightful article by ‘Women Against Abuse’ on why it is often difficult for the survivor to walk out of an abusive relationship.

What beats me about this whole sordid #ShraddhaWalkar #AftabAminPoonawala saga is how easily she could trample all over her parents’ feelings and desert them but lacked the guts to walk away from an abusive partner! This is peak feminism I suppose?

— Shefali Vaidya. (@ShefVaidya) November 15, 2022

Right Wing columnist Madhu Kishwar tweeted, “One more martyr who valiantly crushed her parents with the heady slogan: My Body, My Right! Forget I am your daughter’: Shraddha Walkar told parents. Today, none left to even mourn her death except the same parents she humiliated &callously cast away!”.

One more martyr who valiantly crushed her parents with the heady slogan: My Body, My Right!

Forget I am your daughter’: Shraddha Walkar told parents

Today, none left to even mourn her death except the same parents she humiliated &callously cast away!

https://t.co/7TORXxCKDo

— Madhu Purnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) November 14, 2022

‘My body, my choice’ is a slogan that represents the idea of bodily autonomy and freedom of choice. It entails self-determination over one’s own body, a basic human right. In the field of human rights, the violation of the bodily integrity of another is regarded as either unethical infringement and/or possibly criminal. In her tweet, Kishwar mocked this idea.

Kishwar is a repeat offender when it comes to hateful conduct on social media platforms. Her criticism is not just regressive, it does more. It presumes family dynamics to be neat and unproblematic in patriarchal institutions. It cleverly ignores any possible context that might have triggered a particular choice in a woman.

Former BJP member Balbir Punj asks, “did she think of her parents? Their warnings?” in a tweet. There is a direct implication here that the victim was at fault for not abiding by her parents.

SHARADDA’s parents objected to her relation with Aftab.

She defied them, ignored their advice . Opted to live with him , at cost of all her relationships.

When Aftab ws strangulating her , did she think of her parents?Their warnings?Was she alive ,when he was chopping her?

— Balbir Punj (@balbirpunj) November 14, 2022

When Union minister Kishore Kaushal says things like ‘girls are responsible for leaving parents for live-in relationship’, ‘Educated girls to be blamed’ or ‘Get married first, live-ins encourage crime’, he is reinstating the patriarchal norm. Thus, any woman who does not fit into the narratives of the ideal woman should be prepared for the consequences of her choices.

#BreakingNews | Girls are responsible for leaving parents for live-in relationship: Union minister Kaushal Kishore insults #ShraddhaWalkar

“Educated girls to be blamed”

“Get married first, live-ins encourage crime”@kaidensharmaa | @toyasingh | #Shraddha #Vic pic.twitter.com/zoo5IZBCks

— News18 (@CNNnews18) November 17, 2022

Such narratives have an underlying implication that women who prioritize personal freedom, who do not hold on to community ideals, and who are individualistic with a mind of their own, are to be perceived as a threat to the community. In such an imagination, family is a sacred and an invincible institution which is under threat from modernity and thinking women. Such women cannot be a good judge of their choices without being guided by patriarchs and social institutions, in the process it is only just that they be stripped of ownership over their lives. Some of the tweets urge people to raise awareness so that ‘gullible’ Hindu women don’t ‘fall prey to’ Muslim men. Such statements take away a women’s agency to choose their partners, especially so in instances of inter-religious relationships.

• 
• 
• 
• 
  +1

Politics and Practice

At a time when social media enables surveillance and scrutiny of every moment of our lives, what we speak or espouse is put to test at every step. Any contradiction in speech and action is seen as a scope for trivializing a standpoint. For example, it is not enough that Shraddha believed in freedom of choice and right to dignity. For the vigilantes, her choices had to be a living proof of how she cared for her dignity. In the process, the focus of the entire discussion shifted from domestic violence — of which Shraddha was a victim — to bashing a liberal way of life, paving the path for victim blaming. This mentality is on display in tweets/comments such as the following:

Victim shaming also has nuances. For example, user @manasipkumar writes a long thread questioning why Shraddha Walkar did not walk out of an abusive relationship. Even though it is a valid question, the thread ends with a simplistic and naive assessment of Walkar’s choices by asking if it was ‘Codependency? Fear? Abandonment issues?’ that made her stay back. Such remarks fail to humanize women.

In Conclusion

Victim blaming need not be directly abusive. It slowly creeps into society, trivializing the ideas of human dignity and justice, by delegitimizing constitutionally accepted constructs like secularism and liberty. Victim blaming is further accentuated when feminism and related concepts are frequently used in a pejorative sense by ridiculing a woman based on her looks. Victim blaming and shaming is considered a norm in a society where the burden of preserving the morality of a society is to be carried by the woman through their everyday choices, failing which they ‘deserve’ gruesome consequences.

The post Victim blaming on social media: How Shraddha murder case exposed the patriarchal core of Right Wing appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

The Sainsbury Wing redesign. Photograph: Selldorf Architects

A new design by has been revealed for the Sainsbury Wing entrance of the National Gallery in London. It is by New York architect, Annabelle Selldorf, whom I had never previously heard of, but that is a reflection on me rather than her, because I have never heard of most architects.

I have, though, developed an antipathy to them, and, if anything would align myself more with the tastes of my namesake now on the throne of the United Kingdom, than the average or even above average architectural office.

A short walk through the centre of London or even its outskirts or indeed most built up places on the globe induces in me an appalled reaction at the impersonal, bland, glass and concrete overblown manifestations of self-consumed egos with apparently no feeling for human beings, only for some horrendous fusion of Moloch and 1984.

I was therefore prepared for Selldorf to do her worst and was amazed at my pleasure seeing her design. I don’t know the intricacies and shenanigans that resulted in the current layout of the Sainsbury entrance, after the first proposal was scrapped in the wake of then-Prince of Wales’s condemnation of it as a “monstrous carbuncle” (it sounds even better now it can be attributed to him as Charles III).

However, I have always found the layout that was finally constructed to be depressingly gloomy with ill-related spaces and a staircase that seems remarkably out of place, the impersonal ascent of which for some peculiar personal idiosyncrasy reminds me  of Charles I ascending the scaffold for his execution. (Perhaps it’s the name association that does it.)

Selldorf’s design has been met with overwhelming objection from every organisation you can think of, including English Heritage, Historic Buildings and Places, and the Twentieth Century Society, not to mention such condemnations as “an act of vandalism” by Sean Griffiths, Professor of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster.

It seems to be in the art word that if you want to evaluate something, you should take what the critics say and reverse it. This works very well here. The current dull grey tomb that passes for the Sainsbury Wing entrance is the act of vandalism.

Selldorf’s design opens up a wonderfully light and airy space, uplifting in its expansiveness and freedom, making even those endless, wide steps to the next floor seem justified.

However, in a cultural world prophesied by George Orwell where the Ministry of Peace makes war, the cultural leaders yet again march round in lockstep like headless chickens (or headless monarchs even).

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Charles Thomson.

Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate. He has served as his state’s United States Attorney and as the state Attorney General, as well as its top business regulator. He is the author of Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy, and the new book The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court.

We just had a vote on [the DISCLOSE Act] in the Senate, and every single Republican voted against it. They voted— to a person—to protect dark money. Despite not only 80% of Republican voters feeling opposed and hostile to dark money and all this corporate influence, but really angrily opposed to it. These are people that come in with a very high sense of frustration and fury. It's a very salient and even emotional issue, and yet they all voted— to a person— against it.  Because, in my view, they've become as dependent on dark money as a deep-sea diver is on an air hose.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, author of The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

Imagine blaming Joe Biden for high gas prices when the fossil fuel industry actually sets the gas prices. If they actually let Joe Biden set gas prices when they were high, he could have knocked a dollar per gallon off like that. But of course, you can’t. We’ve got a market economy. But they blame him for it.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, author of The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

There's only one oath that all of our members of Congress and the President and the judiciary take— the one oath to hold and support the Constitution of the United States. They don't take an oath to support their political party. They don’t take an oath to get re-elected. They don't take an oath for any other purpose other than to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Bruce Fein

The crux of our Republic is process— following process as prescribed in the Constitution, and if you lose, you go back and you make a better argument, or if you think the Constitution is defective, you propose an amendment…that is what makes us different from other countries. And this preoccupation with personalities is leading us off of a cliff very fast.

Bruce Fein

Your broader point, Bruce, is truly being occluded by people who engage in the public press and Congressional activities. Your broadest point is that we are living in an age of massive serial violations of our Constitution by our elected representatives, and of course, by implication, government officials who are working under these elected representatives in the branches of government. And this breeds a culture of lawlessness all the way down to the corporate crime wave to violations of consumers’ rights, workers’ rights, civil rights, civil liberties.

Ralph Nader

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

President Donald Trump attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds in Florence, Ariz., on Jan. 15, 2022.

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

A wounded woman stands outside a hospital after the bombing by Russia of the eastern Ukraine town of Chuguiv on Feb. 24, 2022.

Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by James Risen.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Senate confirms Merrick Garland to lead Justice Department and Marcia Fudge to lead Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• House gives final approval of $1.9 trillion pandemic relief American Rescue Plan.
• House passes pro-union, worker’s rights bill; PRO Act bars right to work laws.
• Border Republicans blast President Biden’s roll back of Trump-era immigration policies.
• President Biden orders 100 million more COVID-19 vaccines, despite possible surplus and third world shortage.
• Texas ends mask wearing mandate, city of Austin defies it, mandates mask wearing.
• Governor Gavin Newsom gives State of State address amidst right wing recall effort.

The post House sends $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill to President Biden; House passes pro-union, worker’s rights bill PRO Act; California Governor gives State of State address amidst right wing recall effort – March 10, 2021 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Democrats demand President Trump’s removal and impeachment, in wake of capital siege.
• Capitol police chief and senate sergeant of arms resign after Trump supporters storm capitol.
• 5 dead in wake of pro Trump insurrection at U.S. capitol.
• President-elect Joe Biden announces Attorney General and team to “restore integrity” to rule of law.
• United States and California hit record coronavirus deaths.
• California coronavirus vaccine commission convenes to ramp up vaccinations.
• Facebook and Twitter ban President Donald Trump’s social media accounts.

The post Democrats demand President Trump’s removal and impeachment; 5 dead in wake of right wing pro-Trump capitol siege; President-elect Joe Biden announces Attorney General appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The post Episode 94 – The Right Wing SnowFlakes with Steve Macek appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.

The post Episode 94 – The Right Wing SnowFlakes with Steve Macek appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.