After being on left for past few years, I’ve come to terms with reality. Most youngsters who identify with left-liberal values live in a political bubble. They are so indoctrinated that they don’t even understand left and liberal are different concepts, often at loggerheads with one another. The left wants bigger government with control on natural resources and ultimately on the lives of citizens, while the liberal wants smaller government and resources are distributed such that it will yield maximum satisfaction to the society in general. You can see this playing out in India right now.
The Modi government is trying to privatize state owned companies which are performing badly. At the same time, Modi government is monetizing national assets by leasing them, thereby reducing the role of state in our country. A typical feature of liberal government. On the other hand, we have Rahul Gandhi vehemently opposing privatization and monetization policies of Narendra Modi. A typical feature of left. But as left has successfully associated itself with liberalism, many Gen-Z people thinks liberalism is leftism and vice versa.
The left doesn’t believe in borders, nationality and individuality while the liberal believe in nationalism, individual liberty among other things. Liberals are nationalists. In India, many leftist influencers and activists, mostly self proclaimed, call BJP supporters ultra/hyper-nationalists. But they are just nationalist people who love their country. On the other end, we’ve left celebrating China’s Vaccination drive while criticising our own. We have a left celebrating Pakistan’s victory over India in T-20 Match. Their argument is – it’s just a game, how does it matter whom do we support? Well, they should tell this to the family of Jawans who sacrificed their lives defending the motherland from Pakistani terrorists. They’re okay with an Indian supporting Pakistan, our enemy state. In fact, most of the Indians supporting Pakistan are leftists who thinks they’re being liberal by being a global citizen rather than an Indian one.
Liberals prefer individualism over collectivism for most of the time, which isn’t the case with left. Collectivism leads to an idealistic worldview; a dream of utopia which dictators in the past had promised to get into power. In Indian context, it’s not the most prominent feature of the left today, and it’s mostly because left hasn’t been in power for past seven years. But we can compare the modus operandi of left governments around the world to get an idea of how the Indian left, if get in power, would govern the society. The Biden Administration, a left leaning government of US, is effectively making it’s citizens lazy by giving them unemployment allowances. There was a labour shortage in US because huge number of workers had resigned from their jobs. Someone called it “A Great Resignation” by comparing it to the period of Great Recession during 1930s. The basic idea is to make majority of people feel entitled to things they’re not entitled to, thereby creating a false narrative of oppressed and oppressors to rule the hearts of majority.
Digital media space, which is mostly controlled by left leaning people, have helped in associating liberalism with leftism. Liberal values such as personal liberty has been ranked lower than collective welfare in this left-liberal model. It has also helped create the political bubble with false equivalances and one sided news bombarding. For example, you’ll see a news of Dalit or a Muslim getting beaten to death in Rajasthan less often than a Dalit or a Muslim getting beaten in Uttar Pradesh. Anyone getting beaten down isn’t a good thing. But the way left media portrays the scenario in UP and the scenario in Rajasthan is completely different.
For crimes in non-BJP ruled states, they avoid using disturbing photos and videos and try to spin it as law and order issue. While in BJP ruled state, they try to portray the same kind of incidents as communal. As videos have more reach than photos, they wouldn’t use videos of violence in Non-BJP ruled states. We’ve seen this playing out during post poll violence in West Bengal which was directed towards BJP workers and their families. Most news outlets avoided posting photos and videos from it. And now towards Bangladeshi Hindus. Their modus operandi is same.
Although you might have been introduced to some centrist influencers cum activists who claim to protect, among many other things, “democracy”. But in reality they’re Leftists disguised as centrists trying to grab power by any means. What they’ve achieved, over the years, is division in our society. Generally it’s the accusation from left towards Modi Government. But the left has been partially successful in dividing society into oppressors and oppressed. The same way Karl Marx had done it in his notorious book “Communist Manifesto”. He divided the society into bourgeoisie (industrialists) and proletariats (workers).
The only reason left is not fully successful is because they haven’t found an Indian version of Stalin or Mao to fight against Narendra Modi. Although Mamata Banerjee, to a certain extent, fit in the shoes of a Leftist dictator, but she lacks the mass appeal which is a precursor to take down Narendra Modi.
