<story><title>In India What We Are Seeing Is the Symptoms of Fascism: Noam Chomsky</title><url>https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/in-india-what-we-are-seeing-is-the-symptoms-of-fascism-noam-chomsky</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Despegar</author><text>Excellent New Yorker piece about this (I submitted it to HN when it came out but it didn&amp;#x27;t get any traction):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;blood-and-soil...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the &amp;#x27;other&amp;#x27; this time aren&amp;#x27;t Jews, they&amp;#x27;re Muslims.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the &amp;#x27;other&amp;#x27; this time aren&amp;#x27;t Jews, they&amp;#x27;re Muslims.&lt;p&gt;As someone from a Muslim country, this comparison strikes me as facile and ignorant. It’s not just a group of people being viewed as “the other.” Even Muslim majority countries are facing challenges. In Bangladesh, the government is taking actions that people in western countries would probably liken to “fascism.” E.g. banning Muslim political parties. The problem these countries are grappling with is that they’re not just dealing with a group of people who happen to be different. There is a political ideology that crosses national borders and seeks to supplant existing institutions and governments. There is a lot of foreign money flowing into Bangladesh, to fund madrasas (schools) that teach hard line religion. Egypt and Turkey both fought these forces for decades, struggling to maintain secular, western institutions, and ultimately lost.&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that I don’t find Modi’s actions, or Bannon’s
rhetoric, etc., troubling. I do. It’s just that there is a lot more here than you can understand through shallow analogies or the lens of western politics.</text></comment>
<story><title>In India What We Are Seeing Is the Symptoms of Fascism: Noam Chomsky</title><url>https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/in-india-what-we-are-seeing-is-the-symptoms-of-fascism-noam-chomsky</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Despegar</author><text>Excellent New Yorker piece about this (I submitted it to HN when it came out but it didn&amp;#x27;t get any traction):&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;blood-and-soil...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the &amp;#x27;other&amp;#x27; this time aren&amp;#x27;t Jews, they&amp;#x27;re Muslims.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>With such a large percentage of the population of not just the country in question in the article, but also the entire world, I&amp;#x27;m not sure they can be seen to be &amp;quot;the other&amp;quot; to the same degree as the Jews were, given how common they are.&lt;p&gt;In 1933, there were an estimated 15 million Jews worldwide[1], 9 million or so in Europe. In Germany, with the largest Jewish population, they accounted for less than 1% of the populace.  In India today, Muslims account for close to 15% of the population.  According to wikipedia, they&amp;#x27;re very close to 25% of the entire world population.  There may be some vilification going on, but when the other group is as large as that, I doubt you can expect a similar outcome or as much of a one sided narrative in the places where it&amp;#x27;s attempted.&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;encyclopedia.ushmm.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;encyclopedia.ushmm.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;jewish-pop...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>