Thread by @gauravsabnis

Diwali is around the corner, so prepare for a most bizarre outcome of American "soft power". The made-up "war on Diwali" that Indian fascists have blatantly copied from Fox News types. The war on Diwali is like the war on Christmas. It doesn't exist. It's a fascist tantrum.

The origins of the "War on Christmas" are very recent.
It's simple.
The American constitution prohibits the govt from favoring a religion.
So ACLU and other constitutional rights activists said, it should not be officially celebrated by govts.
Courts agreed. Logical argument.

All that meant was that govts could not say "Christmas display" cos USA has no official religion, but something like "Holiday display" was cool because most people celebrate that time.

Christmas is still THE biggest holiday in America, if not the world. Except in govt offices.

Christmas is all around us. But govts and also companies and also normal people who care about other people, thought that thinking of it as "Holiday Season" is a nice overall compromise rather than thinking of it as "Christmas Season". Simple, right?

But Dubya became president.

Dubya screwed up Afghanistan, Iraq, Gitmo, New Orleans, the economy, basically everything. He was just a bad president.

His cheerleaders like Fox News needed a distraction. And that's how the "war on Christmas" craziness started.

Fox said Christmas is under attack!!! 😳😳

They started selling the victimhood narrative that just because many govts are following the constitution and making their December holiday displays non-religious, there is a "war on Christmas". It was a nice distraction from the fact that Dubya was wrecking the world.

Also, the fact that America is so diverse meant that many other groups had events in late December. Many companies and people thought "Happy Holidays" is a more efficient greeting than "Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanza or Happy New Year or just Happy Happy."

Christmas was and continues to be a behemoth of an event in the US. And the world. But to distract from Bush's continuing horrific failures, his minions created this myth that somehow there was a "war on Christmas". It was illogical. By design. And it worked.

Bush himself never really participated in this "war on Christmas" nonsense. He left it to his minions. But it was effective. A lot of people started believing, contrary to any real evidence, that Christmas was under a wide attack.

So much that Trump decided to campaign on it.

Again, a completely made-up war. Christmas is as dominant in US holidays as the Pentagon is dominant in worldwide military budgets. But many people bought into the lie that somehow there was a war on Christmas. There wasn't. But still, that's what Trump sold, they bought.

Cut to India.
Until 2014, Diwali was a wholly apolitical celebration and THE behemoth in the Indian calendar. Everyone, from general public to corporates to Bollywood to social media were united celebrating it.

There were some real issues to tackle though. Bipartisan issues.

The issues, that all parties until 2014 (even the BJP) recognized were
- Excessive use of cheap dangerous fireworks, causing short term air and sound pollution
- Incessant cacophony of unregulated fireworks, that grew as India grew richer
- Child labor used to make fireworks

From my childhood to 2014, the general consensus in India was
- Let's not buy fireworks made from child labor
- Let's try to reduce the air and sound pollution

Because Diwali literally means a festival of lights, not smoke or sound.

Firecrackers on Diwali are a modern thing.

There was no "war on Diwali" ever. The general push was towards making Diwali celebrations "green and sustainable" in today's parlance.

Until Modi won, this was a complete non issue in India. Making me Diwali cleaner and greener. There was no politics there.

Until Modi won.

Once Modi won, his own "fox news", which is basically most of Indian media, suddenly started talking about the war on Diwali. The worse the economy did or the more China swallowed Indian land, it seemed like the "war on Diwali" got worse.

WhatsApp University was crucial to it.

Following the Fox News template of whipping up the majority into thinking something they like is under attack, the Modi media & social media started the work of convincing India that THE biggest, brightest, most opulent, most dominant, almost secular "Diwali" is under attack!

Of course, no one was actually attacking Diwali. At least in US, there were ACLU suits & court decisions removing nativity scenes from govt buildings.

India didn't have even that. Literally no one was against Diwali. Even non-Hindus celebrated the festival of lights.

But the sangh needs a constant supply of enemies. And "war on Christmas" was an attractive template to follow, if they wanted the public to not focus on whether the Prime Minister was actually doing anything useful. They needed to whip up a war on Diwali. And maybe even Holi!

So they turned the until-then apolitical, universal, logical activism of making Diwali cleaner and greener into a "liberal leftist communist Chinese CIA ISI war on Diwali."

People used to think child labor bad, pollution bad. Sangh said that is "anti Hindu". It wasn't.

The sangh, using its extensive media and social media, started selling the lie that reducing air and noise pollution, combating child labor in fireworks production was somehow a "war on Diwali". Again, Diwali is the festival of lights. But fascists don't care about facts.

In just a couple of years of Modi being in power, many of the same dudes I knew who in our childhood used to volunteer in childhood for promoting greener Diwali, greener Holi, etc started posting FB messages on how they would be bursting extra fireworks to "pwn the libs" etc.

So in 2021, Diwali is politicized like it wasn't until 2014. All from the sangh. Only from the sangh.

Literally no one has any problems with Diwali except the pollution. Which even sanghi orgs were on board reducing. Until Modi, Shah, their whole Fox News loving gormint.

They have sold India so completely on this non existent war on Diwali that their idiot bhakts now spend more and more money each year to burn more and more firecrackers causing more and more pollution for themselves and their kids.

To what end? Just to keep the sanghis happy.

And of course, the way they sell it is whataboutery & fake victimhood. Every July 4 when I'm posting about fireworks here, sanghi Twitter is like "look at this sepoy sahib, likes July4, hates Diwali".

They know that scheduled 30-45 mins of govt fireworks on July4 is different.

Very different from almost every household letting of firecrackers at all time of day and night, every street, for 5 days.

But they know that. They are just gaslighting, like fascists do.

They know this whole "war on Diwali" is absurdly fake.

But hate sells big in India now.

So that's the context of where this tweet from my once favorite batter comes from. He is a total sangh man now.
Instead of just talking cricket about a cricket match, he's pushing anti Muslim hate & randomly bringing in war on Diwali.

To win brownie points with Modi-Shah.

Here's the Fox News playbook that godi media and sanghis have used to create a non existent war on diwali.

https://twitter.com/jburkespraker/status/1452685632040538116?t=tCBfvgby7Hwnh2Ty0uLQRw&s=19

Exactly. Even the pre-Modi sangh did not have problems with what they suddenly decided to have problems with. And WhatsApp University sold people like this Pratyanshu guy on the whataboutery, exactly copying the fox news playbook. It's horrifying!

https://twitter.com/mynkgoel/status/1452743456753950723?t=brf2h4BiBbc_VG8Fi6JgNg&s=19