The constantly growing similarities are too stark to be denied. Are we awoke?
Categorisation, quite often, helps one in making sense of an unfolding process. However, an obsession with labelling based thereon may even actually hinder as it induces one to overlook, or belittle, the specificities of a particular situation. For example, in India, the RSS is almost a century-old organisation committed to install a Hindu supremacist state - stripped clean of any vestiges of substantive democracy and pluralism, which has spawned a multitude of organisations and permeated into the pores of civil society via diligent work over decades and decades. While it constantly tries to fan the fire of hatred - against the dreaded and hated "others", mainly linked to religious faultlines and related collective memories, it keeps itself very much out of the control of any acknowledged religious institution and, thereby, eschews concomitant rigidities and maintains its freedom of action. That has no parallel anywhere else in the world. Incidentally, Guha has drawn attention to the difference between the Italian and German case. Hence, a "label" is no magic shortcut - an easy escape from hard thinking, and the need for "concrete analysis of the concrete situation" can never be dispensed with. With that rider in mind, the Italian example is highly revealing and enriching. <<Reading further into Rizi’s book, I found this passage: “By the end of 1926, liberal Italy had died. Mussolini had consolidated his power and created the legal instruments for the continuation of his dictatorship. Political parties had been outlawed, and freedom of the press destroyed. The opposition had been disarmed and Parliament reduced to impotence. By 1927 it had become almost impossible to undertake any political action; it was also dangerous to express critical opinions in personal letters or in public places. Civil employees could lose their jobs if they expressed views contrary to government policy. "Besides a powerful and revitalized police division in the Ministry of the Interior, under the direct responsibility of the chief of police, a new and efficient secret police organization, ominously and mysteriously called OVRA, was created with the aim of repressing any sign of anti-fascism and controlling any expression of dissent. In a short while, it collected files on more than one hundred thousand people, including Fascist leaders, and built an impressive web of special agents, spies, and informers whose reach extended throughout the country and even abroad.” As I was transcribing these words from Rizi’s book, news came in of the home ministry demanding, from the Finance Commission, a sum of Rs 50,000 crore to fund what it called “real-time surveillance” of citizens. This at a time when the states are being denied the money owed to them by the Centre; and while the home ministry has already dangerously abused its powers through the foisting of fake cases on independent thinkers, activists, and journalists. And here is Rizi’s description of the Italian Parliament, c. 1929: “Parliament had become a rubber stamp of the government’s decisions. Speeches of the few remaining members of the opposition were ignored, or more often shouted down to jeers from the floor and from the public galleries.”>> (Excerpted from: < https://scroll.in/article/972934/ram-guha-reading-about-mussolinis-italy-in-modis-india >.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZiXRo35cqnN3tB6KCqKPkA3V03tgAaD%2B_zB1wf3V9RsYQ%40mail.gmail.com.
