Hafta letters: US elections, fascism, democracy

Great work on Hafta, NL team! I’ve been going through several of the archives that are available on video. 

The insights from the experts are welcome. Each of them gives great insight into their areas of expertise. I love the insights from Anand. He’s often the contrarian view on the panel. The recommendations and the helpful collation in the spreadsheet are an underrated benefit.

Still waiting for the TNM Hafta. It would be nice to have some coverage of Telangana on the TNM Hafta, which, as a resident of this state, I find lacking. Maybe it’s because nothing too exciting happens here, which I’m grateful for in a way.

I take back my previous criticism of Abhinandan about his comments on “fucking nerds”. Having watched more of the Hafta archives, he seems to get carried away frequently, but without malice. Let Abhinandan be Abhinandan!

By the way, I subscribed *after* the election. Your great joint coverage with the other independent news outlets and the free Hafta episodes drew me in.

Abhijeet

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Regarding the US elections, I do think there’s something very interesting going on with the Trump campaign, especially that maybe something we might see replicated in our elections (the next time we have it).

-There was one debate, and that’s it. Trump understood he cannot get the better of Kamala in that setting.
-The adversarial interviews with any of the media houses slowly became a ‘no-no’.
-Focus on white washing his image by screeching off some of the biggest pods on the internet (guess all of them are right-wing), the most recent being Joe Rogan (Kamala also did a few but not as extensive as Trump).

These pods have organic audiences built on trust, and they won’t be adversarial; media houses cannot claim that. It’s a way of curating what message the candidate wants to send out. Media won’t provide this organic audience.

In India, we saw a bit of it with Modi this time, but I assume by the time we have the next one, these pods would take over (BeerBiceps and the other sasta versions of it). 

Anonymous 

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Regarding Abhinandan’s repeated insistence that Israel is a “democracy” in #508: I don’t understand what purpose that actually serves. Here is a Gandhi quote that perfectly suits our times: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” 

Britain was also a democracy when they colonised and looted India. The US was also a democracy when they enslaved, killed, and terrorised millions of Africans. The right word to describe Israel is not democracy but “ethnocracy”. And to repeat the cliche saying, Hitler was also democratically elected. The great democracy in Uttarakhand hasn’t saved Muslims from facing ethnic cleansing in broad daylight. All this talk of democracy is a fancy way for the western liberals to deflect blame for their support of Israel’s genocidal actions. We don’t need to use that lingo.  

Karthik 

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Hi team, I feel like you cover US politics way too much. You’ve discussed the US elections in close to four of the last nine Haftas. There is a Sena project with Sreenivasan Jain, and you also have experts on US politics writing articles for NL. I really don’t see the need to discuss it so extensively on Hafta. I am guessing there’ll be another episode soon enough on the US election result, but please don’t drag it. This was my singular complaint. Thanks otherwise, looking forward to your coverage of the Maharashtra elections. 

Anonymous 

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Dear Newslaundry team, I recently watched an episode of Hafta 509, where Abhinandan discussed the idea that Americans might perceive only men as credible enough to address questions involving Russia. As a result, there was a suggestion that we should feature more female heroes in film media to counteract this perception. While I agree that representation is essential, I believe there’s an important aspect to consider. The trend in recent Marvel and Star Wars movies and shows highlights a challenge with the portrayal of strong female characters. The “Mary Sue” trope, where female characters are often overpowered, flawless, and face minimal meaningful conflict, has unfortunately made some shows less engaging. Thank you for your work in providing a platform for thoughtful discussions, and I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on this.

Mohammed Younus Siddiqui 

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Hi Team! Love your work and love Hafta! Just wanted to ask whether the Hafta is no longer available on YouTube. I love watching the video and would be great to have it back.

Rohini 

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Hi NL team, keep up the good work. Best wishes for the upcoming election-related ground reports. Previous election shows covered much of the issues faced by regular people, but what we see is none of the political parties take these issues seriously. It’s like they don’t care about it. I feel very disheartened seeing this. How do you guys cope up with it?

Sourav Kumar 

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You had mentioned that the USA still uses paper ballots, and it will take days to count votes if that is done in India. Just to clarify that even though we vote using paper ballots, they are scantron sheets, which are fed into a machine, which reads the votes and counts them. That is why results for most states are available on election night itself.

Mazahir Plumber 

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The word ‘fascism’ has been thrown around a lot lately. And being a bit too uninformed, I decided to read up on it, and rabbit hole took me to an article on Perron of Argentina. A sentence in the article was, “Nothing mobilises the masses like fascism.” I was taken aback by the line and am still processing it, but it did put everything I read and have seen in perspective. What are your thoughts?

Anuni Nonymous