Over the last decade, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has cultivated an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism and hyper-nationalism – and to launch vicious attacks on its opponents. Now, a BJP leader has become a victim of the party's own monster.
NEW DELHI – Social-media platforms are often criticized for their susceptibility to toxic dialogue and vicious attacks. It is a problem that India knows well. Just ask External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, whose recent vilification by members and supporters of her own ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a case in point.
Swaraj has developed a reputation for responding on Twitter to citizens’ appeals for the foreign ministry’s services. What prompted the recent attacks, however, was the punitive transfer of an official who had made bigoted remarks to an interfaith couple when they applied for a passport.
The transfer decision was taken by the Ministry’s senior passport officials, while Swaraj was out of the country. But that did not stop BJP members and supporters – who largely share the penalized passport official’s anti-Muslim bigotry – from unleashing a flood of excoriating tweets against her, referring to her disparagingly as “Begum” (a Muslim honorific) and urging her husband to beat her for getting out of line.
Over the last decade, the BJP has cultivated an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism, contempt for minorities, and hyper-nationalism, including through ferocious attacks on political opponents. This process began when the BJP was in opposition, and its point of view was supposedly being marginalized in the mainstream media. By the time the BJP took power in 2014, social media “trolls” had become vital foot soldiers in its political campaigns.
This cyber army now amounts to a well-oiled machine with a formidable presence on Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. As Swati Chaturvedi explained in her 2016 exposé I Am A Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army, cyber cells of well-paid trolls, each operating multiple accounts, have been established in India and abroad.
These paid political pawns flood social media at all hours with attacks on “sickulars” (secularists), “libtards” (liberals), and “Khangressis” (the Congress Party, with its allegedly pro-Muslim leanings). Anyone or anything deemed inimical to the BJP’s political interests or hostile to its bigoted, anti-Muslim ideology is immediately placed in their crosshairs. Indeed, these cyber hit squads are so pervasive that it is difficult to express a liberal opinion on Indian social media without being assailed by insults and abuse – a reality that I regularly experience firsthand.
As a leading member of the BJP, Swaraj had never faced the wrath of her party’s troll army until the recent debacle. When confronted by it, she rashly conducted a Twitter poll, in an attempt to secure her followers’ support against the harassment; a startling 43% supported the
Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-social-media-bjp-trolls-attack-swaraj-by-shashi-t
NEW DELHI – Social-media platforms are often criticized for their susceptibility to toxic dialogue and vicious attacks. It is a problem that India knows well. Just ask External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, whose recent vilification by members and supporters of her own ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a case in point.
Swaraj has developed a reputation for responding on Twitter to citizens’ appeals for the foreign ministry’s services. What prompted the recent attacks, however, was the punitive transfer of an official who had made bigoted remarks to an interfaith couple when they applied for a passport.
The transfer decision was taken by the Ministry’s senior passport officials, while Swaraj was out of the country. But that did not stop BJP members and supporters – who largely share the penalized passport official’s anti-Muslim bigotry – from unleashing a flood of excoriating tweets against her, referring to her disparagingly as “Begum” (a Muslim honorific) and urging her husband to beat her for getting out of line.
Over the last decade, the BJP has cultivated an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism, contempt for minorities, and hyper-nationalism, including through ferocious attacks on political opponents. This process began when the BJP was in opposition, and its point of view was supposedly being marginalized in the mainstream media. By the time the BJP took power in 2014, social media “trolls” had become vital foot soldiers in its political campaigns.
This cyber army now amounts to a well-oiled machine with a formidable presence on Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. As Swati Chaturvedi explained in her 2016 exposé I Am A Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army, cyber cells of well-paid trolls, each operating multiple accounts, have been established in India and abroad.
These paid political pawns flood social media at all hours with attacks on “sickulars” (secularists), “libtards” (liberals), and “Khangressis” (the Congress Party, with its allegedly pro-Muslim leanings). Anyone or anything deemed inimical to the BJP’s political interests or hostile to its bigoted, anti-Muslim ideology is immediately placed in their crosshairs. Indeed, these cyber hit squads are so pervasive that it is difficult to express a liberal opinion on Indian social media without being assailed by insults and abuse – a reality that I regularly experience firsthand.
As a leading member of the BJP, Swaraj had never faced the wrath of her party’s troll army until the recent debacle. When confronted by it, she rashly conducted a Twitter poll, in an attempt to secure her followers’ support against the harassment; a startling 43% supported the
Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-social-media-bjp-trolls-attack-swaraj-by-shashi-t