Elon Musk and Adani: A Nightmare for the Left

Twitter takeover by Elon Musk and Adani becoming NDTV’s major stakeholder: 2022 has been a tough time for Liberals

A misnomer

Two pivotal events, one in the USA and  the other in India, have shaken the foundations of the Left-Liberal world: Elon Musk’s acquisition of the microblogging platform Twitter and Adani Group becoming a major stakeholder in  NDTV.

To understand why these acquisitions have caused large-scale conniption fits among a certain entitled class one needs to understand the background of these platforms.

Let’s first talk about NDTV. It’s no secret that for multiple decades the channel has been a big-time propaganda machine against the BJP in general and Narendra Modi in particular. The channel tilts toward any party, entity, or organization that works to erode the roots of the BJP. It can be the Congress party. It can be the Left. It can be the divisive forces from minority communities. It can be the vicious, foreign-funded NGO cabal that aims to derail every major development project being carried out by the BJP governments at the state and the central levels. It can be the Naxalites waging war against the state and slaughtering innocent civilians. It can even be terrorists and separatists from Jammu and Kashmir, and across the border. For them, the end justifies the means, and they can be any means. They haven’t just blurred the line between right and wrong, they have yanked it out and burned it on the bonfire of journalistic ethos.

They are so vehemently and brazenly anti-BJP that they don’t even pretend to be otherwise.

Traditionally, NDTV has been in cahoots with the Congress party and the Communist party because many senior journalists and administrators in the so-called news media channel have deep connections with these outfits. It’s not just ideological inclinations that have the journalists and the management of the propaganda news outlet enamored with the Congress party and the Communists. Many senior journalists and people in top positions have direct relationships with the leaders of these parties.

Though, who is related to whom and whose spouse or relative or close friend hobnobs with which political outfit is a matter of personal choice, when these relationships and affiliations begin to bear upon your journalistic judgments, even those sitting on the fence are drawn to the center of the contention and begin to judge as well as analyze your propensities. For the context, hence, it becomes important to know who is related to whom in the quagmire of NDTV.

Radhika Roy, Prannoy Roy’s wife, is the co-founder and part owner of NDTV. Her sister is Brinda Karat, the wife of Prakash Karat, who is the ex-general secretary of CPI(M) – Communist Party of India (Marxist). Arundhati Roy, as per the information available on the Internet, is a cousin of Prannoy Roy, or at least she is a distant relative.

Senior editor Sonia Singh’s husband, RPN Singh, was Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Congress government, though, in recent times he seems to have distanced himself from the Congress party.

These are just a few examples. It is known that young journalists at NDTV were hired due to their close proximity to the Congress ecosystem or the side of bureaucracy that depends on the Congress ecosystem or the communists for its survival, prosperity, and unbridled power.

Sources in the NDTV have revealed that during job interviews it was specifically asked whether applicants had relationships or connections with people in the corridors of power, especially close to the Congress party, and if they didn’t, they were rejected.

NDTV has thrived due to these connections. Prannoy Roy was once so influential that he was able to sabotage a top-level meeting between Atal Bihar Vajpayee and Parvez Musharraf by smuggling out a secret videotape. The news channel celebrated its 25th anniversary in Rashtrapati Bhavan (President House). Never before had a private enterprise been allowed to hold a function in the iconic building.

Why does this information matter in the current context?

NDTV has been the pallbearer of the Left-Liberal ecosystem because it pedals a certain narrative that is antithetical to India’s nationalistic resurgence, especially advocated and accelerated by the BJP.

Why is it so, you may ask. Why is the Left-Liberal ecosystem against India emerging as a global superpower using its indigenous intellectual progress and a culturally Hindu bent of mind?

To understand this, you need to wrap your head around this whole concept of being Left-Liberal. Don’t get swayed by the lofty nomenclature “liberal.” Among these circles, being a “liberal” has nothing to do with being a liberal. They are the most illiberal lot when it comes to accepting different beliefs.

It’s all about politics, economics, and to an extent religion.

India is often subject to multidimensional attacks. People who have studied India, people who know its ancient history, know that what India achieved a couple of thousand years ago it can achieve again, in the coming decades. It can upstage any country. It just needs a spark to trigger its growth. Having been in the grip of foreign occupations – first Islamic and then European – the Indian civilisation has been battered physically and psychologically, elucidated in detail by the Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul in his book “India: A Wounded Civilisation.” Nationalistic parties like the BJP aim to reverse the psychological and physical impact.

Therefore, the forces that don’t want India to unchain itself from centuries of subjugation keep alive this Left-Liberal ecosystem to run an ongoing propaganda. The times of direct warfare are over. Most of the wars are fought through agenda via a nefarious web of non-profit organizations, activists, intellectuals, influencers, journalists, and politicians. Governments all over the world have been overthrown like this without direct military intervention.

How can India’s growth be curtailed?

Keep it communally divided. Crush its cultural and historical spirit. Keep it politically unstable. Don’t let it develop its own infrastructure. Strongly discourage manufacturing industries in the name of preserving ecology and the environment. Keep a big chunk of the population poor, illiterate, and backward.

The Left-Liberals are the foot soldiers of the forces inimical to India’s economic, cultural, ideological, and physical development.

The Left-Liberals need a well-oiled propaganda machine. For this cabal to succeed, it’s very important for them to mislead people. It is critical for them to tell false stories. It is important that they continuously propagate victimhood narratives among the minorities and keep the Hindu majority perpetually apologetic. They must paint doomsday scenarios because their favorite political masters are not in power. They need to continuously say that the country is in the throes of communal disharmony due to the divisive politics of the BJP.

So far, NDTV has been a critical component of this propaganda machine. It is also a significant source of (mis)information for the international network of media outlets that are dominated by a similar Left-Liberal coterie. NDTV publishes and broadcasts misleading news, and then international media outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times pick up the stories and provide them an international platform. It is a self-sustained, self-feeding ecosystem that produces and propagates agenda-driven stories. International propaganda activities are given a local twist and then distributed among the local audiences by outlets like NDTV, and national falsehoods are seeded by the likes of NDTV and then propagated by the international outlets. The cycle continues.

NDTV has also had a notorious reputation for playing into the hands of terrorists – during the 26/11 attacks, Barkha Dutt who was employed at NDTV at that time, was blamed by many observers for revealing the locations of the victims on live TV and consequently jeopardizing their lives. Her excesses during the Kargil war have been well documented during which she exposed Indian military positions. The Pakistani establishment used the statements made by Ravish Kumar to criticize the Indian government. Ravish had commented that the coverage of terrorism from Pakistan was advantageous to the BJP and the Indian media shouldn’t cover this aspect much.

The recent acquisition by the Adani Group seems to have thrown a spanner in the works. Typically, big business houses like Ambanis and Adanis cannot afford to have political affiliations. They need to keep all the politicians happy. Recently, Adani, often accused of being close to Narendra Modi, obtained lucrative projects in the state of Rajasthan, which is ruled by the Congress party, and in the state of West Bengal, which is ruled by the Trinamool Congress party.

So, it would be naïve to say that  a seasoned businessman like Adani  would directly display his political connectedness and meddle too much with day-to-day affairs of the news network. Nonetheless, according to the popular perception, he is known to be close to the Modi government, and just the fact that someone close to Modi has purchased a large stake of the channel is likely to give sleepless nights to many. This is not just a matter of paranoia; recently, veteran Modiphobic  Ravish Kumar resigned from NDTV and he and his acolytes say Adani’s purchase is the reason why. In fact, in a recent interview with Karan Thapar at the Leftist propaganda website The Wire, Ravish Kumar said that Adani spent crores of rupees just to shut him down.

Whether the acquisition is going to have an impact on the editorial policy of NDTV remains to be seen, but the  purchase itself is being seen as a great setback by the Left-Liberal clique.

But the biggest upset has come with the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. Without mincing words, Elon Musk has repeatedly said that he has bought Twitter to protect freedom of speech, which had been heavily compromised by the Twitter management overrun by leftist and woke people. He has repeatedly stressed that politically, he has a centrist view, but the way he has been un-suspending right-wing accounts, alarm bells are ringing all over the place.

Twitter wasn’t biased  at the start.

In the beginning it took some time for the Left-Liberals to understand the true power of social media. They have had a very tight control over newspapers, magazines, TV channels, the film industry, and the book publishing business for more than a century. Communists in general and leftists in particular have long recognized the overarching significance of thought control by controlling people’s access to information. Goebbels said that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it, and this is what leftist intellectuals have been doing. Before the advent of social media, it was these leftist intellectuals, authors, and journalists who decided what people read, what type of movies they watched, what type of political opinions they had, and what literature they read. Alternative thought existed at the extreme fringes and most of the intellectuals who did not subscribe to this narrow, leftist point of view were relegated to oblivion, with no scope for any professional success.

Social media suddenly turned everything upside down. The information began to flow unrestricted. Those who could not express themselves before were able to do so. Writers, journalists, and independent observers who couldn’t get published in mainstream newspapers and magazines started publishing their own blogs, and these blogs generated more views than the established newspapers and magazines.

Then came Twitter as a microblogging platform. People posted messages and others, who followed these people, responded to these messages with their own thoughts and opinions. Diverse thoughts and ideas began to spread like wildfire. The Left-Liberals were caught off guard in the beginning. Suddenly, they could not control the flow of information. Everybody could share everything. News was being broken on Twitter faster than in mainstream newspapers and TV channels. This news was unfiltered. It was not manipulated. It was not one-sided. It was not wrapped in leftist packaging. It was being posted as it was.

Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, was blamed for Narendra Modi’s elevation to national politics from regional politics and for the sudden rise of Trump in America.

Soon, the Left-Liberals realized how important it was to control Twitter. The platform had become a major source of news and information, and since for over a century they have been controlling news and information, they realized they would lose their grip if they didn’t control Twitter.

Techies are traditionally Left-inclined. They like to believe that they are liberal and support progressive thought. Most of the American techies are anti-Conservative and consequently, anti-Republican, and in India, they are anti-BJP. To show their disdain against their political and ideological opponents, they can go to any length, as long as they can justify their actions as being for the “greater good.” In their effort to demonize their opponents, they themselves end up indulging in acts they blame their opponents for indulging in. They repress information. They twist facts. They curb freedom of speech of their opponents. They sabotage careers. They justify acts of terrorism. They cancel people in the name of acting against bigots and extreme right-wing. It’s no holds barred.

Therefore, when Left-leaning vested interests began to infiltrate into the workforce of Twitter, it was a cakewalk. It was easy to make them believe that they were champions of marginalized communities, minorities, transgender people, and democratic values. And to champion the cause, it was fine to go to any extent. People with opposing views began to be shadow banned. Twitter users who did not subscribe to the Leftist ideology and expressed their opinions openly began to lose followers. Followers of certain politicians and commentators wouldn’t see the tweets.

Project Veritas, an initiative to investigate and expose the deceptive tactics followed by the mainstream media to mold public opinion, secretly taped Twitter employees admitting that Conservative Twitter handles in America and Twitter handles that openly supported the BJP in India were shadow banned, and their tweets were prevented from reaching a wider audience, manually and algorithmically. Popular right-wing Twitter handles have been complaining for years of their limited reach and their followers not being able to see their updates. During a Congressional hearing Jack Dorsey, the then-CEO of Twitter, denied that Twitter was taking extra steps to put Conservatives and Republicans at a disadvantage.

In the name of curbing hate speech, they have been severely curtailing freedom of speech of many prominent thinkers and politicians, and have been allowing open threats of mass killings by certain leaders.

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602370518585221120

They banned Trump merely on conjecture. They didn’t allow people to share links of the Hunter Biden sex tape and corruption cases because it could tilt the election results in favor of the Republicans. On one side they would suspend Right-wing accounts at the drop of a hat, or merely out of spite, and on the other side, they would allow the most obnoxious comments from the Left-wing unaffected by moderation. A video of a victim of pedophilia was posted on Twitter but since it was in agreement with the Left-wing ideology, even after multiple requests by the victim, the video was not removed by Twitter. Many comments opposing pedophilia were deleted by Twitter. Child sexual exploitation content on Twitter was rampant as many liberals claim that pedophilia is a mental condition and not something to be judged negatively.

They even banned Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian-origin Stanford University professor, who had said that Covid lockdowns would harm children. He was placed on a “Trends Blacklist.”

When Elon Musk took charge, he fired the entire moderation team that was heavily Left-tilted. Vijaya Gadde, the then-head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter, and who played a big part in banning Trump, was summarily dismissed within the first week of Musk taking over. Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Twitter, left one week after Musk took over and started unsuspending accounts. 

Successive “Twitter Files,” aside from revealing how freedom of speech was repeatedly violated in the name of “stopping misinformation,” have also revealed that the American government paid millions of dollars to Twitter to suppress certain information. The FBI under the current government specifically colluded with top executives at Twitter to discredit the Hunter Biden expose.

All these capabilities to control the flow of information handed immense power to Left-Liberals. They felt powerful. They decided who could read what. They decided who could post on Twitter and who could not. They behaved like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

Those who control information control the narrative and those who control the narrative decide who gets to form the government in the country. Left-Liberals have known that for more than a century now. What makes Twitter powerful is that information can be disseminated extremely fast and in a succinct manner. It merely takes a few seconds for someone to get an update. This is what scares the hell out of the Left-Liberal groups. Due to its ability to disperse news fast, it is much more powerful than other media.

Musk is not as subtle as Adani. He made his intentions clear when he walked into Twitter headquarters holding a sink and then tweeting “Let it sink.” He is one of the richest people on earth, and also one of the most powerful. He doesn’t mince words when showing people the door. He is revamping Twitter. His programmers are going through the code that shadow bans people based on their political and ideological affiliations. He is reviewing accounts that have been suspended or canceled. He has reinstated many accounts that are vocal against wokism and Left-wing extremism. He is allowing accounts that post content against the transgressions of liberals.

Left-liberals like to wield complete control. They curb contrary opinion with unyielding ruthlessness. To propagate their falsehoods, they need to control every possible media channel, including social media. There should be no chinks. Every instance of dissent must be squelched.

There is no scope for difference of opinion. It is just their way or the highway. The moment you say something that is contrary to what they are saying, you immediately become a bigot, a fascist, a supremacist, a right-wing extremist, or a homophobe. You are to be dealt with severely. They practice 100% intolerance.

Twitter is just one platform that has been taken out of their clutches. Most other platforms, like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and even Google search, are still heavily Left-controlled. Similarly, it is just one news channel, NDTV, that seems to have slipped out of their hands, but there are many more news channels that are still controlled by them.

When it comes to Left-Liberals, there is no concept like difference of opinion. This is the reason why losing control of a single platform or a single TV news channel sends them into a tizzy.