The Thackeray-Swamy model to confront the Tech-Savvy-Colonial Mao & Lenin

Many commonalities between the communists and the modern-day tech-giants

At the outset of the regime change post the 2020 US elections; the world is confronted with the emergence of new-age colonialists cum communists i.e. the social media tech giants based out of the US.

The tech-giants who entered the internet space as a sober non-cancerous intermediary to give a voice to the common man in the 1st decade of 2000 have now spread their tentacles and have become a superstate tech-savvy police without any accountability.

By their recent moves, it has made sure that the voice of the common man is nothing but a select group from its own arbitrary choice of opinion. They have become so empowered that they could curb even US President Donald Trump’ social media accounts.[1]

Right now, the tech-giants of social media have established an unassailable lead in the internet space, a typical communist-style state monopoly.

A non-authorized unaccountable tech giant denied the freedom of expression, that each American is entitled, to the democratically elected President during the last few days. This action gives us an indication of what is set to come in the next decade.

There are many commonalities between the communists and the modern-day tech-giants. In principle, the communists and the tech-giants, are not what they say they are, are not what they stand for while they state they stand for and finally are not what they promise to do when they promise to do the ideal utopia.

Right now, the tech-giants of social media have established an unassailable lead in the internet space, a typical communist-style state monopoly. The sheer volume of users on their platform and their business model based on personal data of common man also resembles a typical colonial era where every country the colonizer entered was first in the name of ‘trade’ but later on, the colonizers started interfering in the internal affairs of the native country.[2]

The colonizers had various stages:

• First, they walked in as harmless tradesmen.
• Second, they destroyed all competitors in a country both external and internal.
• Third, they allied with natives who could serve their sinister and nefarious purpose.
• Fourth, they started interfering in the internal feud of the natives.
• Fifth, they supplied logistics, mercenaries and reinforcements to natives who were in their favor.
• Sixth, they deliberately provoked a fight between 2 factions and once a bloody clash was over they charged the winners a price i.e., to take them onboard into the territorial administration so that they can enjoy a full-scale daylight loot.

The world right now is in the fifth stage i.e., interference in the internal affairs and India is in a transition phase between stage 4 and stage 5. We have seen that the USA is already in stage 5 of tech colonialism, post the interference in US elections and their successful manipulations of public opinion.

Coupled with their ideological inclinations towards communism it won’t take much time to get it to the 6th stage and then, later on, we will see the ideal “Freedom” and “Liberty” of Lenin and Mao in full swing across the US.[3]

It needs the leadership quality of a firebrand demagogue and a disciplined intellectual, that is what I called as the Thackeray-Swamy model of politics, the politics of Bal Thackeray and Dr Subramanian Swamy.

These developments call for an urgent political and intellectual intervention in India as India has elections every year and each year the public verdict has an impact at the national level.

Given the state of affairs in India, the social media tech giants are bound to see this as an opportunity to impose their arbitrary alien views in elections thereby trying their best to undermine the real public opinion.

It is just a matter of time before these tech-giants start to interfere in national elections and state elections are the lab experiments for them.

Much needed Thackeray-Swamy model of politics

This being said, the way to deal with them in India is limited and it needs clarity and a strong will to do it. It needs both political and intellectual will power. It needs the leadership quality of a firebrand demagogue and a disciplined intellectual, that is what I call as the Thackeray-Swamy model of politics, the politics of Bal Thackeray and Dr Subramanian Swamy.

Bal Thackeray never went to the social media or even for that matter a normal television media, it was the media, which always went to him and he had his own rule in an ultra-modern financially powerful city like Mumbai.

If one does not budge to his style then he deals with them in a style that the person can never again explain it. Thackeray was the man who was on the ground with fire in his language and confidence in his heart. He felt the pulse of the people without the use of any intermediary. This made him the demagogue. He had a total disregard for media opinions and he was one who used unconventional language to attack the high and mighty.

The fear harvested by Thackeray especially on the high and mighty, which included the media, was the reason why Mumbai, which despite being a financial capital and an ultra-modern city, its residents were highly in favour of Thackeray.

India needs such leadership right now to fight the social media tech giants, a demagogue who can harvest fear in their minds.

Of course, if a demagogue is doing his style the media/ tech-giant is bound to cry out all the way from ‘existential threat’ to ‘human rights’ especially to the educated class so that they can get some sympathy and cause a trickledown effect. To counter this situation we need intellectual ammunition. These people will have to be defeated in this aspect as well and that is what I term the Swamy way.

Dr Subramanian Swamy although an economist with a PhD from Harvard he is also a politician who has also been very successful in changing the minds of the educated class right from Harvard to IIT Delhi to the educated middle class. His sharp arguments on the left-wing liberals have caused serious meltdown several times not just in public debates but also in the courts. The educated class in India looks at credentials and habits, they value success in terms of attitude, qualifications & track record and they give less importance to rhetorics, Dr Swamy fulfils a broad spectrum of these criteria and therefore the intellectuals fear him.

Just as Thackeray, Swamy also takes on the high and mighty except that the battle is often based on facts, unlike rhetoric. Both Swamy and Thackeray share the same spirit while it comes to harvesting fear among the high and mighty, the difference lies in the approach.

This combined harvesting of fear through political-intellectual strategy among the high and mighty tech-giants is the way forward. Basically, it is teaching them a lesson in their own style and giving the taste of their own medicine.

We can take this step based on a book written by Dr Swamy titled Corruption and Corporate Governance in India: Satyam Spectrum and Sundaram, where he states kicking around the high and mighty in the corporations.

These are some of the steps that can be taken by the government on these tech-giants as an intervention via both political and intellectual routes to guard national interests.

1. Parliament Panel should summon the tech-giants and ask them to submit their algorithms and their source codes that are live (in technical terms, it is the source code of the production environment) and as well as those which were live previously on production environment for an expert audit to check the neutrality and non-partisanship of these codes (European Union has done it recently)[4].
2. The government can issue an official G.O. stating that all the data that are and were used by Indians (retrospective) from the company’s inception should be stored only in India & this must include all sorts of data, even those that are collected via third parties. To state in simple terms, it means that the tech-giants should have their data centres here if they want to have their operations running and inter-continental data export should be banned.
3. Nationalize the entire India operations of these tech-giants using Article 300A and make their source codes public, it is giving them the taste of communism that they stand for. Along with this, blacklisting of tech-giants from hiring at IITs and other central institutions should be done. Making source code public and cutting off human capital supply, will pave the way for the emergence of a set of swadeshi social media platforms, which have so far not come up due to an unequal level playing field.
4. Bringing in a national level regulatory law (already Adv. Mehek Maheshwari has filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to give a direction to the government) on social media platforms. This should have a clause for a state-imposed penalty, which is 99 times the sum of revenue and the total tax due for it due to that violation or corrupt act or malpractice. We can take this step based on a book written by Dr Swamy titled Corruption and Corporate Governance in India: Satyam Spectrum and Sundaram, where he states kicking around the high and mighty in the corporations. Facebook recently had to pay a $5 Billion penalty for violations of privacy[5].
5. Giving a body blow to all the board members of the tech-giants and their heads by releasing their private information. All their chats, private conversations, illicit affairs(if any), sexual secrets and if need be much more like cutting off power supply, water and sanitation facility to the office as well as their residence if they don’t comply to guaranteeing the neutrality in social media space. Basically, this is nothing but once again giving the taste of their own medicine i.e., playing with their private information in public and forcing them to digest what they feed the public

Note:
1. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

References:

[1] Twitter bans President Trump permanently – Jan 09, 2021, CNN

[2] Global social media research summary August 2020 – Aug 03, 2020, Smart Insights

[3] Twitter trashes conservatives as @Jack gloats — this won’t end well for Twitter – Jan 12, 2021, The Hill

[4] Facebook: MEPs demand a full audit by EU bodies to assess data protection — Oct 10, 2018, Europa

[5] FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook — Jul 24, 2019, FTC

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Venkat Sudheendra

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