IThis holiday season, let’s act lazy and see what another commenter wrote about the prime minister last summer. “Their mission is what they say is to restore (their country’s) faith in itself, to fight … ‘incompetent and desolate and hopeless’ defeatism.” And yet, “for many, (he) … is the embodiment of the collapse of public standards and … the face of post-truth politics … to his sharpest critics, he … a traitor. One who lied his way to the top, one who jeopardizes democracy… and who believes in nothing but his own advancement… He is the one who has made the most radical changes to his country’s economy (and) the electoral map. Leading through…”
Our commenter noted: “There is clear appeal in his argument for patriotic optimism”, but “wonder whether it hides more cynical impulses. Were acting in the country’s interest or his own? … in one of our conversations.” , (he) said that people need to feel part of something greater than themselves … and they should not be patronized for worrying that their traditions and ties are dying out.
The prime minister has been severely criticized for his handling of the pandemic. But “people are more patient with him, they are more forgiving of him, because he is not a typical politician”. The opposition is disappointed. He said, “It seems that nothing (of him) drives his opponents mad… Time and again, when controversy has surrounded him, he has gone unpunished. Part of his electoral brilliance is his own. Therein lies his ability to stop opponents from thinking straight: in their hatred for him, they cannot see why he is popular, nor what to do about it.
“… to them, the point of politics – and about life – is not to dispute facts; it is to present people a story they can believe… Humans are creatures of fiction. ” So he has created a populist, nationalist “… revolt against an apparently unfair system, filled with anger”.
The problem is that it’s dreamy to use Joan Didion’s word. So the prime minister must now “solve problems that cannot be solved by faith alone. If his domestic economic project fails, some fear the country will turn to xenophobic identity politics.” .. Even a close aide of his expressed concern that the Prime Minister does not think systematically about (the country’s) problems, that he relies too much on unshakable faith.”
In case you haven’t guessed it by now, none of this is about Narendra Modi, though it may apply to all or most of him. The quotes are from Tom McTeague’s profile of Boris Johnson, published in the Atlantic, You must have thought that no two people can be more different from each other. Johnson is from Eaton and Oxford. In contrast to Modi’s carefully braided hair and always serious demeanor, his British counterpart is meticulously disheveled and witty. When compared, Modi is usually paired with Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – all autocratic populists. So the thing is that populists have formed a club even in the famous bastions of democracy.
Johnson’s membership candidacy is thus aligned with that of Donald Trump. Eric Zemour may not join the club as the next French president, but one can hear the general refrain. “Neo-liberalism” is over and an interventionist government has arrived; Immigration is over and anger has begun; Culture trumps economics, and the politically incorrect must be chested. McTeague aptly quotes John Beau, Johnson’s chief foreign policy adviser and author of PoliticsZeitgeist is “the most important factor in determining the trajectory of a nation’s politics”. This is true even if Trump is out of office, and the water in the tub is running on Johnson.
By special arrangement with Business Standard
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