The struggle of the right-wing influencer…

Like many of you, I have avoided social media content produced by those referred to as ‘right-wing influencers’ — more colloquially called ‘bhakts’.

There was no occasion to do so in the period after 2014, because we already had the government beating its own drum. Why listen to the melodies of those participating in the chorus?

But after the Bharatiya Janata Party lost its majority on 4 June, I felt I should examine how the prime minister’s most dedicated ambassadors were taking it. So much of my last week has been spent in watching this content. What follows is a collection of reflections.

First, it is important to note that the biggest figures among them are not large in number. Many are anonymous and even the most popular among them often struggle to get a fraction of the views that people like Ravish Kumar and Dhruv Rathee get.

The reasons for this appear, to me, to be twofold. One, that at the core, they repeat the government’s claims (on things like its performance and delivery), and so their base audience is limited. Why should one listen to sycophancy second-hand when the primary source is available? The other is that they seem to be always angry or sulking, and that does not make for particularly watchable content.

The second thing to note, and this is unfortunate, is that the right-wing influencers remain, even in the first week of September, quite shattered by the results of 4 June.

Supporters of another party, any other party, would be delighted to have retained office and kept all its ministers. But the right-wing influencers require the master to have total domination of the sort that 240 seats cannot give him — or, by extension, them. They are baffled at the result and unable to contextualise it because all the ’new India’ stuff and the rest of the propaganda has vanished overnight.

The third thing is that the right-wing influencers are convinced that it was conspiracies by the Opposition’s social media teams that led to the loss of the BJP’s majority. In particular, the two items of allegedly fake news that were spread, they claim, were that the BJP would end reservations and that it was trying to change the Constitution of India.

Indeed, it is extraordinary the extent to which they seem to think that narrative and media affect voting patterns. Their belief is that if this ‘fake news’ had received a firm response from the BJP, it would have won 300 seats again, if not more.

It should be noted that these creators are themselves anti-reservation. This is because they are urban upper-caste people protecting their class interests. It does not appear that they are conscious of the fact that they, Modi’s bhakts, speaking angrily against reservations would likely affect voters.

Their upset also targets an individual named Amit Malviya, who apparently runs the BJP’s social media, but I could not understand why they were angry at him.

The fourth thing to note is that they have a dislike of the turncoats that the BJP has taken into the party in states like Maharashtra. Here one must agree with them that it has harmed the BJP. However, their sentiment is driven as much by a rejection of corruption as by a desire for ideological purity.

This is linked to another aspect, which is their hatred of any talk of inclusion and secularism by the BJP. Party president J.P. Nadda spoke during the campaign of the BJP not needing the RSS, of the BJP not being synonymous with saffron and of the BJP’s aim of ‘sabka saath’. This has not gone down well.

The fifth thing is that the right-wing influencers appear to feel personally humiliated at all the U-turns the Modi government has taken since the results were announced. They have not registered the fact that the decade of top-down ideological government has concluded and that the prime minister needs to find a new form of governance. Matters like the Waqf Bill and the withdrawal of the lateral entry announcement have them particularly agitated.

The sixth thing is that, notwithstanding the above, Prime Minister Modi’s image remains intact with them. Perhaps they see this setback as a passing phase, but it is hard — even after going over hours and hours of their content — to find any criticism of the prime minister or his manner of functioning. Actual issues, like employment or inflation, do not seem to them to be important. They have only praise for Modi’s ability to govern. The corporate capture of politics and of media and the nepotism inside the BJP also do not seem to register with these right-wing influencers.

Perhaps that is one reason for their bafflement. That the election result was the voters’ rejection of Modi, his performance over the decade and his guarantees for the future does not appear to have crossed their collective mind.

The seventh and final thing is that they are quite rabid. And this I say not only because of their views but also their words. The language they use for minorities, for marginalised communities and so on, is nasty. Their worldview is dark and does not accommodate any middle ground, compromise or moderation.

I have come away from the experience with disappointment at how shallow the right-wing influencer environment is.

Intellectually, it is stunted and does not offer to the viewer or listener (or reader) anything particularly useful. It does not and will not be able to offer support to even the prime minister as he navigates a new path of inclusion.

Indeed, these right-wing influencers will likely add to his troubles as he tries to do something fresh. For his devotees ache for an era that has passed.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s writing can be read here