(In which Kedar wades into controversy.)
I have said this before: I am not a communist. And I most certainly do not believe in violent revolution or overthrow of the government.
Unfortunately, because of the way issues, opinions, and circumstances have aligned in the recent past, my own centrist liberal thoughts and principles have found an echo in people professing the communist ideology, some of them literal card-carrying communists who cult-worship Marx and Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot. They are apologists for Stalin and if push comes to shove, will end up defending North Korea.
They most certainly lean favourably towards Russia (Why? Nostalgia perhaps, or a yearning to return to Soviet times), China, Cuba, and Venezuela. In India, they are sympathetic to not just the Naxal cause (in which, I stand with them), but their methods (which I abhor). Indeed, they are sympathetic to most secessionist movements in India, even those that were and continue to be violent and terrorist-like.
If they spot a post on social media they do not like or agree with (this one for example), they will whistle for their hordes to come and attack the OP, some sea-lioning, some abusing, and some even taking screenshots and posting them on their groups so they can have a bit of fun at the OP’s expense, while they virtue signal and strut their righteousness.
They are generally all privileged, well-to-do, highly educated, urban-dwelling people living mostly in metros (some, even in Western capitalist democracies), having attended schools and colleges in private schools in India or in Western Europe or the USA, using their privileges of birth (caste and socio-economic class) at every turn of their lives, being part of clubs and old-tie-networks, using modern banking and business models to make and keep their money, employing (and paying no more than market price) for maids and drivers, using their contacts to get stuff out of turn, investing in the stock market and real estate (aka property), living in comfortable houses and having a comfortable income (and accumulated wealth, parts of which are, in many cases, inherited), with zero sense of intellectual dissonance.
They are out of touch with reality and dreamily wish for a Soviet Union-style ‘utopia’. If you needle them about the excesses of communist experiments, they’ll either resort to whataboutery or the ‘No True Scotsman’ argument, claiming that real (meaning whatever they think about it) communism hasn’t yet been tested or implemented everywhere, and if only they could do that, the world would be a better place. Their love for communism is topped only by their hate for everything capitalist. Indeed, their primary emotion isn’t pro-communist, but anti-capitalist. They have an internal vocabulary too, loving the prefix ‘neo’ and use it to abuse and disparage everything they do not agree with (as it was at one time with the word ‘counter’).
They position themselves as allies of the downtrodden and appropriate for themselves the Dalit and Muslim icons as well as centrist and liberal ones, though notwithstanding this selective appropriation, they do not hesitate to shit on these very past heroes if it suits their agenda. They’ll even appropriate entire ideas, claiming everything progressive as having its fount in their ideology. And not just the past, they’d appropriate anything progressive and good in the future too, claiming that anything good that had to be discovered or invented was either because of their heroes (and their thoughts and writing) or are derivative and by-products of that. Every move ahead that the human race has taken, every step forward, every advance will somehow be linked to their beliefs. And whatever is considered bad today, or was yesterday, or even will be tomorrow, will be shown as always having been opposed by their prophets and books, even if the evidence clearly shows otherwise.
Without doubt, neither they nor their heroes, gods, and prophets were or are perfect. But they demand perfection from everyone, in every word and deed, in every film and song, in every choice and opinion, in every tweet and essay, without either defining what this perfection will look like in real life, nor even coming up to their own standards in their own.
Indeed, they are more about what they don’t like and are not about than what they are. They are frightfully easily offended, shrill in their shouting down of other voices, and pompously (and mostly erroneously) righteous in their estimation of their own self. They purposely miss nuance and take extreme stances that have neither a grounding in reality nor are possible to implement in practice. Because of their excellent command of the language though, they are able to obfuscate and confuse where they are unable to find coherent and rational arguments.
Unfortunately, but coincidentally (as I will explain below) some of what they say makes sense due to the Overton Window having shifted so far right that anyone saying anything even remotely sane and opposed to today’s crazy atmosphere comes across as a reasonable person, and that makes them sound more reasonable than they actually are, or may be in the future. That means, if the tables were to be turned tomorrow (though I highly doubt whether it will happen in reality), they’d be as dictatorial, authoritarian, majoritarian, and tyrannical (and this is not a hypothetical scenario; we know exactly how they’ll behave) as the current lot that is diametrically opposed to them. But that does not make them any better. Just different. And in today’s circumstances, enough to be seen as sane.
So, while you’d love to have them come and agree on your posts because at the moment, your thoughts match theirs (because the way the Overton Window has shifted, your centrist stance seems way left of centre), they are fair-weather friends and will change spots the moment you actually stop and say about anything, ‘Wait a minute. Aren’t we over-reacting? Can we consider that this could be a grey area with much nuance built into it instead of black & white? Perhaps, we can consider diluting our extreme stance in view of, I don’t know, reality?’, whence they shall descend on you like a pack of wolves, using the very same smart, suave, sophisticated English to tear you apart, discarding the veneer of civility you believe they actually possessed.
This is one of the reasons I refuse to engage on my posts (not just here, but on other social media too, where they find themselves temporarily allied with me for politically expedient reasons, not mine, theirs) and would rather say my say in completeness and detail, share, and go about my life. I know they’ll come here too. I know they’ll blackball me. I know they’ll bring up unconnected and non sequitur issues. I know they’ll bring the full force of their debating skills to bear, not to change my mind, but as part of the peacocking they do to impress each other. They’ll throw about fallacies and ad hominems (see what I did there? LOL), with references to GDP figures and health data, historical this and literary that, CIA and WWII, using Latin and Greek terms, quotations from obscure texts, and many from their own holy books (it never fails to surprise me how Christians, as an example, think that quoting from the Bible to an atheist makes sense!), and many complicated and long-winded, several-syllabled words (used normally in more scholarly publications to obfuscate and show off rather than explain and simplify) that make them sound smart (no, not to others, but themselves, of which they are indeed quite full).
Indeed, they are extremely aggressive, arrogant without reason, and frankly, quite insufferable in every way.
To clarify, for those who came this far but haven’t got the point: I am not with them. I never was. I am not a communist. Do not confuse the temporary alignment of thoughts to mean more than it does.
And in every one of their ‘qualities’, they are equal to their equally aggressive, arrogant, and insufferable right-wing counterparts. In fact, I could write the exact same thing about the right-wingers on my wall (of which, to be honest, there are rather few, by design) with some changes in names, and it’d be a similarly apt description of them.
As I have said often, ideology की दुनिया गोल है, and right and left, both, saffron/green and red/blue, as they move more and more to their extremities, meet each other right at the back, merging and turning into a pitch black. In my mind, at their extremes, which is where the proponents of both opposing ideologies want to go, and which is where these ideologies, by definition, tend to go if given free rein, they would destroy the world.
So, honestly, even if serendipity has put me in the same boat as them in the given circs, the truth is I am not at all looking forward to them taking over (unlikely, given their pet theories have been tried over large scales of time, geography, and population, conclusively and severely discredited and are in operation only in extremely watered down versions like the Nordic Model, which by the way, I am personally a fan of) or acquiring any sort of power over my life or the future of this nation.
And now, the floor is yours. Go ahead. Shoot. And/or unfriend/block me. And/or dox me within your echo chambers. Whatever floats your boat, mates. I’ve said what I had to say. It’s been inside of me for far too long. But I am in the process of removing anything poisonous or toxic from my body and soul over the recent past, and this is just one more step toward that. I am not, just to be sure, going over to the ‘dark side’ or becoming a conservative or a right-winger or a Modi-bhakt. LOL. Far from it. I am only reiterating and reclaiming my ground in the centre. Here is where I am comfortable. Here is where I must stay to be able to sleep peacefully at night, and then, look myself in the eye in the mirror every morning without wincing. I remain socially left of centre but economically right, believing in capitalism with a gentle touch, much like the Nordic Model I keep bringing up. I am, to repeat, not a communist. Sorry, but not sorry. I am prepared for the brickbats, if that is the price of being honest about my principles, which are, like it or not, rooted in reality and human nature rather than some kind of utopian future where people are suddenly nice to each other and everyone is singing The Internationale.
Trust me, my heart is in the right place, as I am sure is yours. Just that I see through the hypocrisy and refuse to have anything to do with it. At the end of the day, remember, there are no good people, only good intentions. And mine, believe it or not, are as honourable as can be. That is all I have to say about myself. Rest is up to you. Troll me, sea-lion me, abuse me, mock me, unfriend me. Whatever, as I said, tickles your pickle. I am ready.
P.S: As a human and a friend, I love you. It is just your ideology that I cannot stand, and indeed, if it comes to that, I will oppose and fight against you should you try to impose it (and imposition, and the obsession with the use of force to get what they want, is one more thing that unites the left- and right-wingers, I must point out). I think in that way, I am an equal opportunity offender. I say this to my religious friends as well. Hate the sin, not the sinner.
P.P.S: If you think I say this because I have been influenced by Elon Musk’s childish (and laughable) attempts at positioning himself as some kind of messiah for the centrists by claiming that the left is steadily moving left while the right has remained where it has, you don’t know me. Or Elon.
