Mukul Kesavan - Right not rabid: Respectable conservatism in the time of Trump

By Dilip -

In these majoritarian times, some conservative pundits, embarrassed by the feral Right and keen to seem ideologically respectable, have found an all-purpose rhetorical manoeuvre which goes like this. Progressives are to blame for the enthronement of racist, communalist and majoritarian political parties because it is the left’s ‘wokeness’, its elitist disdain for the anxieties of ordinary people and their common sense, its infatuation with minority politics that prepared the ground for the rise of the ‘hard’ right. 

This was the burden of Chetan Bhagat’s arguments in the course of a long interview with Karan Thapar. In country after country, fastidious, hem-raising conservatives are making the same case. Bhagat’s American counterparts argue that the reason majorities of white men and women in America voted for Donald Trump in two successive presidential elections had more to do with the smugness of liberals than the sense of white grievance that the Republican Party has cultivated since Richard Nixon inaugurated its southern strategy in 1968. By harping on racism and minorities and police brutality, progressives had driven a politically orphaned rust belt into the arms of a racist president. Had Democrats and progressives mobilized in an inclusive way, had they attended to the material needs of an alienated white working class, had they been nicer to them, Trump might never have carried the day in 2016 or have come so close to winning again. 

It is notable how writers (righters?) embarrassed by brazen bigotry become materialists, reproaching progressives for being culture warriors, obsessed with race and identity politics instead of constructing a broad colour-blind liberalism focused on economic well-being and social welfare. …

https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/right-not-rabid-respectable-conservatism-in-the-time-of-trump/cid/1798933#.X8Npj_xDFo8.mailto

Mohammed Hanif: The rest of the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise

You're fired ! Americans taunt Trump with his own catchphrase

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ends truce by warning ‘incompetent’ Democratic party

George Monbiot: Ayn Rand - A Manifesto for Psychopaths

Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World

Donald Trump: Democracy’s mirror image? By Philip Manow / David A. Bell - Fascism or Caesarism?

Jonathan Freedland - Donald Trump's plot against democracy could break America apart

Debt: The first five thousand years. By DAVID GRAEBER

HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home

Jill Lepore  A History of America’s military spending

Jonathan Freedland: Trump is destroying democracy in broad daylight // Chauncey DeVega: Vigilantes are preparing ‘to launch a coup’

Chauncey DeVega: Trump is mentally ill but our real sickness runs much deeper

America isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is Different. By Dahlia Lithwick

Black and Unarmed and Killed by the Police…an incomplete list…This is America….

एक बात हमेशा ज़हन में सवाल खड़े करती है A question that stays with me... / Ravish Kumar's Speech at Berkeley (2019)

Joint Statement of Religious Leaders On “Supreme Court order on Section 377”

RSS backs Supreme Court order on gay sex // Vikram Seth slams Supreme Court order on Section 377

Fahad Hashmi: Homophobia & Islamophobia – The Jamaat e Islami Hind & the SC’s Decision on Section 377

 A mother and a judge speaks out on section 377

Lakshmi Chaudhry - SC verdict on 377: Why Indians, gay and straight, must all despair

Patriotic hooligans on the rampage: Shiv Sena, MNS workers thrash North Indian migrants in Kolhapur // VHP vandalizes art gallery in Ahmedabad

What is to be Undone

Suhas Palshikar - Disenfranchising The ‘Other’ // Ajaz Ashraf interviews Ashis Nandy on the future of India

The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: Inquiry Commission Report (1969)
The Abolition of truth

The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar

A whiff of evil

एक बात हमेशा ज़हन में सवाल खड़े करती है A question that stays with me... / Ravish Kumar's Speech at Berkeley (2019)


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