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Excellent New Yorker piece about this (I submitted it to HN when it came out but it didn't get any traction): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blo

Excellent New Yorker piece about this (I submitted it to HN when it came out but it didn't get any traction): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil... Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the 'other' this time aren't Jews, they're Muslims.

kbenson 7y ago
With such a large percentage of the population of not just the country in question in the article, but also the entire world, I'm not sure they can be seen to be "the other" to the same degree as the Jews were, given how common they are. In 1933, there were an estimated 15 million Jews worldwide[1], 9 million or so in Europe. In Germany, with the largest Jewish population, they accounted for less than 1% of the populace. In India today, Muslims account for close to 15% of the population. According to wikipedia, they're very close to 25% of the entire world population. There may be some vilification going on, but when the other group is as large as that, I doubt you can expect a similar outcome or as much of a one sided narrative in the places where it's attempted. 1: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-pop...
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Jews weren't a small population of some European countries' population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland > One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, who constituted 90% of Polish Jewry, made up half of all Poles killed during the war.[15][16] Given that Germany at the time had an official policy of expanding into its neighboring countries, some with very high Jewish populations, your statement is at best misleading.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    > Jews weren't a small population of some European countries' population Yes, but those weren't the countries that had successful info campaigns against that sub-population, to my knowledge. It took Poland's defeat by Germany before Germany could enforce their own policies (developed in a nation with a much lower Jewish population). Indeed, your own source notes that in the pre-war period while there was increases anti-semitism, and some increased violence, there was nothing like what happened in Germany. > Given that Germany at the time had an official policy of expanding into its neighboring countries, some with very high Jewish populations, your statement is at best misleading. I don't think so, but I can see how you might think so. I believe I misinterpreted what the top level comment was trying to express, and as such my comment isn't really addressing that. I think because of this you're also inferring that my comment is meant to convey something it's not. So, to clarify, yes, I believe Fascism is on the rise and targeted at Muslims this time. I don't think it's the same as what happened in Germany for the reasons I noted, which wasn't what was stated so it's a bit of a non-sequitur on my part, but it is where my mind went when I was reading it.
    - bzbarsky 7y ago
      > Yes, but those weren't the countries that had successful info campaigns against that sub-population, to my knowledge. Yes, the Poles were not trying to kill all the Jews in Poland. But "othering" Jews in Poland was _very_ par for the course, as was violence directed at them, discrimination against them, etc.
- Despegar 7y ago
  Some things happening to Muslims in the world today (in addition to India) off the top of my head: -Genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar -Ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China Then there's just garden variety xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries in the US to the electoral gains of various far right parties in Europe because of the refugee crisis. Pretty wide spread there, but clearly fascism is on the rise.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    I didn't want to imply fascism wasn't on the rise, just some differences I saw. That said, as I covered in a cousin comment, I believe I was misinterpreting what you were trying to express to some degree.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    > Then there's just garden variety xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries in the US Yes, I did not agree when Obama selected those countries.
  - artificial 7y ago
    Communists gonna communist and slaughter just like in the past? How many people died to that ideology in the past century compared to Fascism? Multiples, yet it isn't viewed by the West with similar distain (see Che shirts). Historically the biggest threat to Muslims are other Muslims, they're not a giant uniform block, the sects have been warring with one another for close to 1500 years and aren't slowing down.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Rohingga are split Muslims and Hinduism. So it’s not about a specific religion, but rather an ethnic group. Similarly Jewish is an ethnic group with many Christians and atheists being killed in the holocaust.
  - newfriend 7y ago
    > xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries Countries included in the travel ban: * Iran * Libya * North Korea * Somalia * Syria * Venezuela * Yemen What do these countries have in common? Hint: it's not Muslims.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  They are other with respect to status as minorities in certain populations. They are also other with respect to minority influence or substandard representation in national and international affairs.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  > In Germany, with the largest Jewish population Uh... you mean if you ignore Poland, Romania, and the USSR? > they accounted for less than 1% of the populace From the same article you cited, it was 9.5% in Poland, 3.4% in the USSR (which had a larger population than Germany), 4% in Romania, 4.9% in Latvia, 7.6% in Lithuania, 5% in Hungary. The fraction of Jews in Poland, or the other countries I menioned, did nothing to prevent them being seen as "the other" there, if you read some contemporary accounts.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    > From the same article you cited, it was 9.5% in Poland, 3.4% in the USSR (which had a larger population than Germany), 4% in Romania, 4.9% in Latvia, 7.6% in Lithuania, 5% in Hungary. Yes, I was mistakenly going from numbers presented for Western Europe. > The fraction of Jews in Poland, or the other countries I menioned, did nothing to prevent them being seen as "the other" there, if you read some contemporary accounts. As I covered elsewhere, I was (because of my own misinterpretation) approaching this more from a Nazi Germany standpoint, and trying to highlight differences from that. I think there's a reason why Jews were able to be scapegoated to the degree they were in Germany, and why it wasn't as bad elsewhere, and I think a lot of that is to do with relative population sizes. At ~1%, you can force your will on a people. At 15-25%, that's a civil war if you try, and there's enough people of that population that it's very hard to not have exposure to a degree that deflates some of that "the other" rhetoric. It's like if the same were applied to latino and hispanic people in the United States, which account for just over 16% of the population in the 2010 census. Not illegal aliens, but all people of that race. That's a really hard sell, because almost everyone knows someone personally that falls into that category that helps go against that narrative just by existing and having contact. I'm willing to bet it's easier in some areas of the world with similar percentages because the influx of Muslims is more recent and less established, but I'm not immediately convinced it's enough to get to what we saw in Germany. If you want to restrict the discussion to a very vague "the other" that's less extreme, then I'm not really in disagreement. I do believe there are attempts to use Muslims as convenient scapegoats. I'm just not sure to what degree it works in a lot of places, given how many Muslims there are there (and to the degree it works, I think the number of Muslims means there will be a very different response from them if some group attempts to ramp it up).
rayiner 7y ago
> Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the 'other' this time aren't Jews, they're Muslims. As someone from a Muslim country, this comparison strikes me as facile and ignorant. It’s not just a group of people being viewed as “the other.” Even Muslim majority countries are facing challenges. In Bangladesh, the government is taking actions that people in western countries would probably liken to “fascism.” E.g. banning Muslim political parties. The problem these countries are grappling with is that they’re not just dealing with a group of people who happen to be different. There is a political ideology that crosses national borders and seeks to supplant existing institutions and governments. There is a lot of foreign money flowing into Bangladesh, to fund madrasas (schools) that teach hard line religion. Egypt and Turkey both fought these forces for decades, struggling to maintain secular, western institutions, and ultimately lost. That is not to say that I don’t find Modi’s actions, or Bannon’s rhetoric, etc., troubling. I do. It’s just that there is a lot more here than you can understand through shallow analogies or the lens of western politics.
- x1ph0z 7y ago
  Yeah the madrasa funding from S.A and others is a real poison pill. As a Bangladeshi, it was really disheartening to go through the countryside and see poverty in villages with oppulent mosques.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  Fascism will always seed as a reactionary impulse against competing traditions. And it is competition, on a culturally genetic level. The choices for all immigrants are assimilation or coexistence, and the latter is a strong lightning rod for the anxieties of neighbors wary of anything different.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  The question is does Sheikh Hasina think that she has free hand from India to be anti democratic as long as she keeps these guys in line? It’s kind of hard to tell these religious types that death penalty for blasphemy is a no go when you’re handing it out to your political opponents.
jammygit 7y ago
Trump likes to target Mexicans too and openly has said he would like to be in Putin’s position with a dynasty. A surprising number of Americans are okay with this. Next election is going to be dramatic. Then there’s China and its minorities being swept into mass concentration camps. Reminds me, I wonder what is happening in Hong Kong right now Edit: update on hk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/hong-kong-retailers-are-struggling-as-anti-china-protests-rage?srnd=businessweek-v2 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/hong-kong...
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > Trump... openly has said he would like to be in Putin’s position with a dynasty. A surprising number of Americans are okay with this. Would you count the Bushes as a dynasty? The Clintons (had Hillary won)? The Adams? A surprising number of Americans do not see being president as disqualifying your close relatives from ever being president. [Edit: Trump has said that he would like a third term. I don't know of any Americans that are actually OK with this. A surprising number are still OK with Trump after he said that, but that's not the same thing. You can support Trump and still expect - even demand - that two terms will be the limit of his power.]
  - happytoexplain 7y ago
    >Trump has said that he would like a third term. I don't know of any Americans that are actually OK with this. Boy, we must not hang out in the same bars.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Resubmitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131786 I just finished reading it, it took me the better part of an hour but it’s certainly worth the time.
noarchy 7y ago
>Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the 'other' this time aren't Jews, they're Muslims. This calls to mind the recent debates over Bill 21 in Quebec, that banned religious symbols for many government employees. It was clear that it was motivated by anti-Islamic sentiment, but it was disguised as a move toward "secularism".
- samiru 7y ago
  Are you sure? The motivation for this could be interpreted as pro-Islamic too, in the sense that old religious symbols (in this case Christian) are removed from public places as the proportion of muslims in the population grows. This is happening in Nordic countries and my feeling is that we are paradoxically moving away from secularism at this point.
  - noarchy 7y ago
    >Are you sure? The motivation for this could be interpreted as pro-Islamic too, in the sense that old religious symbols (in this case Christian) are removed from public places as the proportion of muslims in the population grows. Very sure. Originally, the National Assembly was not going to remove the crucifix that had long been hanging in their chamber. Only after some uproar did they backpedal on this. More recently, the Premier of the province made the mistake of being caught suggesting that all French-Canadians are Catholic. This effectively exposes the lie that this was about secularism, rather than a bunch of white Catholics being afraid of a growing minority. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/catholic-quebec-california-fran%C3%A7ois-legault-gavin-newsom-1.5393170 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/catholic-quebec-cali...

kbenson 7y ago

With such a large percentage of the population of not just the country in question in the article, but also the entire world, I'm not sure they can be seen to be "the other" to the same degree as the Jews were, given how common they are. In 1933, there were an estimated 15 million Jews worldwide[1], 9 million or so in Europe. In Germany, with the largest Jewish population, they accounted for less than 1% of the populace. In India today, Muslims account for close to 15% of the population. According to wikipedia, they're very close to 25% of the entire world population. There may be some vilification going on, but when the other group is as large as that, I doubt you can expect a similar outcome or as much of a one sided narrative in the places where it's attempted. 1: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-population-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-pop...

bobthepanda 7y ago
Jews weren't a small population of some European countries' population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland > One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, who constituted 90% of Polish Jewry, made up half of all Poles killed during the war.[15][16] Given that Germany at the time had an official policy of expanding into its neighboring countries, some with very high Jewish populations, your statement is at best misleading.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > Jews weren't a small population of some European countries' population Yes, but those weren't the countries that had successful info campaigns against that sub-population, to my knowledge. It took Poland's defeat by Germany before Germany could enforce their own policies (developed in a nation with a much lower Jewish population). Indeed, your own source notes that in the pre-war period while there was increases anti-semitism, and some increased violence, there was nothing like what happened in Germany. > Given that Germany at the time had an official policy of expanding into its neighboring countries, some with very high Jewish populations, your statement is at best misleading. I don't think so, but I can see how you might think so. I believe I misinterpreted what the top level comment was trying to express, and as such my comment isn't really addressing that. I think because of this you're also inferring that my comment is meant to convey something it's not. So, to clarify, yes, I believe Fascism is on the rise and targeted at Muslims this time. I don't think it's the same as what happened in Germany for the reasons I noted, which wasn't what was stated so it's a bit of a non-sequitur on my part, but it is where my mind went when I was reading it.
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    > Yes, but those weren't the countries that had successful info campaigns against that sub-population, to my knowledge. Yes, the Poles were not trying to kill all the Jews in Poland. But "othering" Jews in Poland was _very_ par for the course, as was violence directed at them, discrimination against them, etc.
Despegar 7y ago
Some things happening to Muslims in the world today (in addition to India) off the top of my head: -Genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar -Ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China Then there's just garden variety xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries in the US to the electoral gains of various far right parties in Europe because of the refugee crisis. Pretty wide spread there, but clearly fascism is on the rise.
- kbenson 7y ago
  I didn't want to imply fascism wasn't on the rise, just some differences I saw. That said, as I covered in a cousin comment, I believe I was misinterpreting what you were trying to express to some degree.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  > Then there's just garden variety xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries in the US Yes, I did not agree when Obama selected those countries.
- artificial 7y ago
  Communists gonna communist and slaughter just like in the past? How many people died to that ideology in the past century compared to Fascism? Multiples, yet it isn't viewed by the West with similar distain (see Che shirts). Historically the biggest threat to Muslims are other Muslims, they're not a giant uniform block, the sects have been warring with one another for close to 1500 years and aren't slowing down.
- Retric 7y ago
  Rohingga are split Muslims and Hinduism. So it’s not about a specific religion, but rather an ethnic group. Similarly Jewish is an ethnic group with many Christians and atheists being killed in the holocaust.
- newfriend 7y ago
  > xenophobic polices like travel bans from predominately Muslim countries Countries included in the travel ban: * Iran * Libya * North Korea * Somalia * Syria * Venezuela * Yemen What do these countries have in common? Hint: it's not Muslims.
nashashmi 7y ago
They are other with respect to status as minorities in certain populations. They are also other with respect to minority influence or substandard representation in national and international affairs.
bzbarsky 7y ago
> In Germany, with the largest Jewish population Uh... you mean if you ignore Poland, Romania, and the USSR? > they accounted for less than 1% of the populace From the same article you cited, it was 9.5% in Poland, 3.4% in the USSR (which had a larger population than Germany), 4% in Romania, 4.9% in Latvia, 7.6% in Lithuania, 5% in Hungary. The fraction of Jews in Poland, or the other countries I menioned, did nothing to prevent them being seen as "the other" there, if you read some contemporary accounts.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > From the same article you cited, it was 9.5% in Poland, 3.4% in the USSR (which had a larger population than Germany), 4% in Romania, 4.9% in Latvia, 7.6% in Lithuania, 5% in Hungary. Yes, I was mistakenly going from numbers presented for Western Europe. > The fraction of Jews in Poland, or the other countries I menioned, did nothing to prevent them being seen as "the other" there, if you read some contemporary accounts. As I covered elsewhere, I was (because of my own misinterpretation) approaching this more from a Nazi Germany standpoint, and trying to highlight differences from that. I think there's a reason why Jews were able to be scapegoated to the degree they were in Germany, and why it wasn't as bad elsewhere, and I think a lot of that is to do with relative population sizes. At ~1%, you can force your will on a people. At 15-25%, that's a civil war if you try, and there's enough people of that population that it's very hard to not have exposure to a degree that deflates some of that "the other" rhetoric. It's like if the same were applied to latino and hispanic people in the United States, which account for just over 16% of the population in the 2010 census. Not illegal aliens, but all people of that race. That's a really hard sell, because almost everyone knows someone personally that falls into that category that helps go against that narrative just by existing and having contact. I'm willing to bet it's easier in some areas of the world with similar percentages because the influx of Muslims is more recent and less established, but I'm not immediately convinced it's enough to get to what we saw in Germany. If you want to restrict the discussion to a very vague "the other" that's less extreme, then I'm not really in disagreement. I do believe there are attempts to use Muslims as convenient scapegoats. I'm just not sure to what degree it works in a lot of places, given how many Muslims there are there (and to the degree it works, I think the number of Muslims means there will be a very different response from them if some group attempts to ramp it up).

rayiner 7y ago

> Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the 'other' this time aren't Jews, they're Muslims. As someone from a Muslim country, this comparison strikes me as facile and ignorant. It’s not just a group of people being viewed as “the other.” Even Muslim majority countries are facing challenges. In Bangladesh, the government is taking actions that people in western countries would probably liken to “fascism.” E.g. banning Muslim political parties. The problem these countries are grappling with is that they’re not just dealing with a group of people who happen to be different. There is a political ideology that crosses national borders and seeks to supplant existing institutions and governments. There is a lot of foreign money flowing into Bangladesh, to fund madrasas (schools) that teach hard line religion. Egypt and Turkey both fought these forces for decades, struggling to maintain secular, western institutions, and ultimately lost. That is not to say that I don’t find Modi’s actions, or Bannon’s rhetoric, etc., troubling. I do. It’s just that there is a lot more here than you can understand through shallow analogies or the lens of western politics.

x1ph0z 7y ago
Yeah the madrasa funding from S.A and others is a real poison pill. As a Bangladeshi, it was really disheartening to go through the countryside and see poverty in villages with oppulent mosques.
Psyladine 7y ago
Fascism will always seed as a reactionary impulse against competing traditions. And it is competition, on a culturally genetic level. The choices for all immigrants are assimilation or coexistence, and the latter is a strong lightning rod for the anxieties of neighbors wary of anything different.
selimthegrim 7y ago
The question is does Sheikh Hasina think that she has free hand from India to be anti democratic as long as she keeps these guys in line? It’s kind of hard to tell these religious types that death penalty for blasphemy is a no go when you’re handing it out to your political opponents.

jammygit 7y ago

Trump likes to target Mexicans too and openly has said he would like to be in Putin’s position with a dynasty. A surprising number of Americans are okay with this. Next election is going to be dramatic. Then there’s China and its minorities being swept into mass concentration camps. Reminds me, I wonder what is happening in Hong Kong right now Edit: update on hk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/hong-kong-retailers-are-struggling-as-anti-china-protests-rage?srnd=businessweek-v2 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/hong-kong...

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> Trump... openly has said he would like to be in Putin’s position with a dynasty. A surprising number of Americans are okay with this. Would you count the Bushes as a dynasty? The Clintons (had Hillary won)? The Adams? A surprising number of Americans do not see being president as disqualifying your close relatives from ever being president. [Edit: Trump has said that he would like a third term. I don't know of any Americans that are actually OK with this. A surprising number are still OK with Trump after he said that, but that's not the same thing. You can support Trump and still expect - even demand - that two terms will be the limit of his power.]
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  >Trump has said that he would like a third term. I don't know of any Americans that are actually OK with this. Boy, we must not hang out in the same bars.

ComputerGuru 7y ago

Resubmitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22131786 I just finished reading it, it took me the better part of an hour but it’s certainly worth the time.

noarchy 7y ago

>Fascism is gaining in many parts of the world today. But the 'other' this time aren't Jews, they're Muslims. This calls to mind the recent debates over Bill 21 in Quebec, that banned religious symbols for many government employees. It was clear that it was motivated by anti-Islamic sentiment, but it was disguised as a move toward "secularism".

samiru 7y ago
Are you sure? The motivation for this could be interpreted as pro-Islamic too, in the sense that old religious symbols (in this case Christian) are removed from public places as the proportion of muslims in the population grows. This is happening in Nordic countries and my feeling is that we are paradoxically moving away from secularism at this point.
- noarchy 7y ago
  >Are you sure? The motivation for this could be interpreted as pro-Islamic too, in the sense that old religious symbols (in this case Christian) are removed from public places as the proportion of muslims in the population grows. Very sure. Originally, the National Assembly was not going to remove the crucifix that had long been hanging in their chamber. Only after some uproar did they backpedal on this. More recently, the Premier of the province made the mistake of being caught suggesting that all French-Canadians are Catholic. This effectively exposes the lie that this was about secularism, rather than a bunch of white Catholics being afraid of a growing minority. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/catholic-quebec-california-fran%C3%A7ois-legault-gavin-newsom-1.5393170 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/catholic-quebec-cali...