Search engine optimisation (SEO) and the propaganda war
If you google "Narendra Modi", it's depressing how far down the list you have to go (at the time of writing) before you come to anything critical. It seems that the forces of communalism know more about SEO than their opponents. I don't know much about it, but the key seems to be Google's PageRank algorithm (named after a co-founder of Google, Larry Page, and not after web-pages). The details are rather complicated, but in short it works like this: if you want your site or blog or facebook page to appear high up in searches you need a lot of other sites to link to yours. This pushes up your ranking - it gives your site points, if you like. Moreover, if you can get sites which themselves have a good ranking to link to your site then that ups your site's ranking even more. So web-people opposed to communal fascism in India in the run up to the 2014 election: even if you have strategic differences, please link to each other's sites.
Showing posts with label Modi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modi. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 September 2013
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Why do young people love Narendra Modi?
Apparently Modi has "rock-star appeal" and young people love him. If it's even half true, what's that about? Perhaps they swallow the nonsense his PR machine spews out, but that doesn't seem enough to explain it.
So here's a nice simple-minded theory. We have a complicated relationship with authority and power in India. Pecking orders are everywhere and many people switch easily between fearful respect towards one person, and haughty superiority towards another. Grovelling and terrorising in quick succession. (Sometimes it's not clear cut - two people meet and they both think, "is this a grovel moment or a terrorise moment?") The fear and respect starts early, with parents; and teachers; and elders; and the police; and the military; and other representatives of the state; and people with power and money; and so on. Since it starts so young, maybe we end up so emotionally confused that love and fear are nearly indistinguishable. We resent our weakness and long for a higher power to come along to torment our tormentors. The hero film-star rescuer.
Maybe that's what Modi is to some people. A fantasy born of general impotence - the father you're supposed to love - benevolent and kind, provided you are sufficiently fearful and respectful. The people who claim to love him are then mostly just afraid, however cheerfully they announce their adoration. The Modi love-fear certainly transcends class - a quick trawl through the web shows that Modi has a significant "educated", middle-class following. It also transcends all reason, since the grubby, bloody reality of his rise to power is no superhero story.
One lesson could be that there's not much point being earnest and reminding people about the Gujarat violence of 2002 or encounter killings or the historical links of the RSS to Nazism - this just reinforces the love-fear. Maybe the careful and precise analysis you'll find on Kafila is mainly for the converted. More hope perhaps of toppling the idol in other ways like they try at the recently created http://pheku.in, a website which makes a point of "cussing" him - attacking him irreverently with cartoons and satire. And even if such attacks just wind the Modi-maniacs up, that's good enough for me. Well done to those who conceived it.
Apparently Modi has "rock-star appeal" and young people love him. If it's even half true, what's that about? Perhaps they swallow the nonsense his PR machine spews out, but that doesn't seem enough to explain it.
So here's a nice simple-minded theory. We have a complicated relationship with authority and power in India. Pecking orders are everywhere and many people switch easily between fearful respect towards one person, and haughty superiority towards another. Grovelling and terrorising in quick succession. (Sometimes it's not clear cut - two people meet and they both think, "is this a grovel moment or a terrorise moment?") The fear and respect starts early, with parents; and teachers; and elders; and the police; and the military; and other representatives of the state; and people with power and money; and so on. Since it starts so young, maybe we end up so emotionally confused that love and fear are nearly indistinguishable. We resent our weakness and long for a higher power to come along to torment our tormentors. The hero film-star rescuer.
Maybe that's what Modi is to some people. A fantasy born of general impotence - the father you're supposed to love - benevolent and kind, provided you are sufficiently fearful and respectful. The people who claim to love him are then mostly just afraid, however cheerfully they announce their adoration. The Modi love-fear certainly transcends class - a quick trawl through the web shows that Modi has a significant "educated", middle-class following. It also transcends all reason, since the grubby, bloody reality of his rise to power is no superhero story.
One lesson could be that there's not much point being earnest and reminding people about the Gujarat violence of 2002 or encounter killings or the historical links of the RSS to Nazism - this just reinforces the love-fear. Maybe the careful and precise analysis you'll find on Kafila is mainly for the converted. More hope perhaps of toppling the idol in other ways like they try at the recently created http://pheku.in, a website which makes a point of "cussing" him - attacking him irreverently with cartoons and satire. And even if such attacks just wind the Modi-maniacs up, that's good enough for me. Well done to those who conceived it.
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