‘A king rules over willing subjects’, wrote influential historian and scholar George Buchanan, ‘a tyrant over the unwilling’. Today, some democracies have enabled the same with the mass complicity of the willing.
One would have thought that India with its much-touted 2.7 trillion dollar economy and huge military force would, for once, shed off its insecurity and Pakistan phobia but not to be. The much-hyped Houston NRG Stadium reality show with Modi chanting ‘Ab ki baar Trump sarkar’ was hounded, yet again, by Modi’s phantasmal demon; Pakistan.
The attending Indian American diaspora proved that the Hindutva affliction has not remained confined to the borders of India. Indian Americans deem themselves entitled to unbiased acceptability and due citizen-privileges as American citizens, yet in India, they fully support a regime that negates the very same ideals by brutal persecution of its religious minorities and the genocidal subjugation of eight million Kashmiris.
The Modi rant about Pakistan with President Trump in tow at the NRG Stadium evoked memories of a scene from ‘Twins’, a 1988 movie. Julius (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Vincent (Danny Devito), separated at birth, are twins from an experiment gone wrong. When they finally meet after decades, Julius is shunned by Vincent till loan sharks try to rough up the latter to collect an outstanding loan. As Julius beats the loan collectors, Vincent too kicks one from behind Julius’s legs saying, ‘If you mess with me, you mess with my whole family’.
Trump set a template for aspirants around the world to ride into office on the fire-breathing dragon of Islamophobia. In his inaugural address, Trump vowed ‘to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth’. He also ordered a ban on traveling citizens of seven countries of which the US has bombed six – Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya; Iran remains perpetually in the cross-hairs.
‘Destroyers’, in Nietzsche’s words, ‘are they who lay snares for many, and call it the State. It is even a colder monster that espouses hate in its people and calls it nationalism’. It was Nietzsche again who professed morality as nothing but a human illusion. British biologist, Richard Dawkins, went a step further branding humans as mere ‘survival machines and robots blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes’.
This mindset is prevalent in the NRG Stadium duo and their selfish approach towards a large segment of persecuted humanity that continues to suffer the fallout of their preached and practiced ideologies.
On individual levels its fallout saw ghastly acts like Brenton Tarrant murdering 51 Muslims in the Christchurch mosque attacks, Cesar Sayoc, dubbed the ‘Trump super-fan’ sending 16 pipe bombs to prominent Trump critics, Robert Bowers killed 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in US history and 21-year-old Dylann Roof murdering nine African Americans in an attack at a weekly prayer meeting at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Church. There have been repeated supremacist mass-killings in America and Europe but rightly never dubbed as ‘Christian terror’.
In this cauldron of hate, the Trump/Modi commonalities are eerie; both are narcissists, both vehemently anti-immigrant, both have been branded racists and xenophobic within their own countries, both are hyper-nationalists and classic cases of a duo suffering from the extremely malignant strain of Islamophobia and both see coercion as the means to bringing non-compliant governments to heel.
Both, Trump and Modi, are pursuing acts that could lead to horrific wars and devastation. Trump has gone over-board with its Israel appeasement and goading Iran persistently after withdrawing unilaterally from the nuclear pact. The Iranian Revolution continues to haunt all US administrations as Tehran refuses to become a Washington vassal and has kept its oil and gas under state control. Modi, riding the ‘Islamic terrorism’ bandwagon has brutalized Muslims within India and turned Occupied Kashmir into the planet’s largest internment camp.
At the time of his death, Maj Gen Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in US history. In his booklet titled ‘War is a Racket’, Butler wrote, ‘In World War 1 a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict; at least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the War’.
He goes on to write: ‘The trouble with America is that when the dollar earns 6 percent only over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent; then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag’. The American military-industrial complex imposes wars and occupations; its policies have been the affliction of a multitude; the New Age or New World Order has seen demagoguery against Islam and the global genocide of Muslims.
Robert Pape is a leading political scientist and expert on the rationale behind suicide terrorism and has a database of each suicide attack from 1980 to 2004. In his book ‘Dying to Win’, Pape rubbishes the belief of Islamic fundamentalism fomenting suicide-bombings. He asserts that ‘the strongest motivation is to compel modern democracies (read Washington and Delhi) to withdraw military forces from the territory the ‘terrorists’ view as their homeland. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide attacks in Lebanon; once the US and Israel withdrew their forces, there were no more attacks. If stopping terrorism is a goal we seek; cease the occupation of foreign lands and suicide missions will cease’.
Trump and Modi should heed this advice as Washington’s wars and the former’s much-vaunted deal-making skills fall flat the world over. Narendra Modi, the self-declared conjoined Trump twin, also believes that the only way to Hindutvize Kashmir is through coercing Pakistan into submission.
Both Iran and China put an immensely large premium on self-dignity; thankfully Pakistan too under Prime Minister Imran Khan has made a forever-awaited but very welcome entry into this club.