Bloggers

"But apart from the violence, what triggered the Sanghi in me during those days was an article by Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in The Indian Express, barely a week after the rioting at Azad Maidan ... The hypocrisy was staggering. Setalvad and her husband were virtually arguing that the police did the right thing by letting the Muslims vent out their anger against perceived injustices. Well, that’s exactly what they accused Modi of saying and doing — that he asked the police in Gujarat to let the Hindus vent out their anger over the Godhra train carnage."

"In such a scenario, responsible journalism meant airing reports about how the lives of common people were being negatively impacted by the VHP drama. It also meant airing reports that argued that people didn’t care about mandir politics. It would have been the best to air reports about Hindu–Muslim unity to show how the VHP didn’t have any popular support and how they were dividing people... The local reporter had sent a report about some Muslim garland sellers who used to supply garlands to a few temples in Ayodhya. The report claimed that these garland sellers had been doing this job over many generations and they didn’t want their work to suffer. In fact, the handwritten report claimed that the garland sellers didn’t want to stop serving the Hindu temples, as they apparently derived some divine pleasure from it. Do note that what was aired was fabrication and manipulation, but it was a fair thing to do because in our minds we were acting responsibly. I had essentially helped create a fake Hindu–Muslim harmony story, similar to the various stories I had grown up hearing. This is how a particular narrative is kept alive. You don’t even realize that you become an active player in keeping this narrative alive. The story was aired multiple times on the TV channel. It was a script I had written and it had my voice-over too. Again, I received rewards that come naturally when you toe a particular line. That’s how the system itself is designed to perpetuate a particular narrative."

"I feel the reason is the same—normalizing an Islamist mindset. Kashmiri terrorists are inspired by nothing but the two-nation theory. They are fighting for Nizam-e-Mustafa, that is, the Shariat rule. And they have been fighting for this for decades. And to hide this fact, smokescreen of ‘Kashmir is a political problem’ is created. Human rights, army deployment, rigged elections—everything is talked about and analysed threadbare, except the Islamist mindset that drives and keeps terrorism alive."

"Even though I had followed many ‘Internet Hindus’ on Twitter, it didn’t really turn me into one. The ‘credit’ for triggering the Hindu in me actually goes to the mainstream media and its approach towards two incidents in 2012, both of which were related."

"The first social media handle that had attracted my attention was that of Pagal Patrakar, that is, Faking News —for his understanding of politics. I can guarantee that most people missed the nuances of his narrative, but got a macro idea of where he was trying to lead them—a shakha. But this shakha wasn’t what one would want to believe. This was the shakha of modern info-war. The swayamsevaks were ‘mad’ social media activists. This was a modern war of identity, narrative and Bharat. And Rahul displayed enough pagalpan to be a successful patrakar in this info-war and battle of narrative building. In fact, I have learnt a lot from his political acumen during the many conversations and collaborations I had with him."

"This was because his haters, like always, were hyperactive in shielding Muslim aggression, and ended up exposing the double standards of Indian secularism. Not only that, they elicited reactions that made an average secular Hindu feel like an ‘Internet Hindu’. The Hindu identity in me too was triggered due to these incidents."

"I won’t say that I was immediately attracted towards these handles and initiatives, but they gradually exposed me to a counter-set of views, many of which sounded logical and convincing to me. Instead of countering them on facts, many of the celebrity journalists decided to discredit and label these voices by using terms such as ‘Internet Hindus’ and ‘trolls’— which was not a very smart strategy, as it made the Sanghis appear to be victims of vilification."

"I remember that during one of the tiffin breaks, while we kids were playing some silly games, a Muslim boy caught hold of a big empty earthen pot, which was used to store drinking water for the students during summers, and raised it with both hands shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He was imitating the Ramayana TV serial scene where Lord Hanuman raises big boulders and throws them at Raavan’s army. Today, forget Muslims, our intellectuals are busy teaching even Bengali Hindus that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not part of their culture and they shouldn’t chant this phrase."

"To give you a small but recent example, in December 2019, a statement in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—an act that enabled non-Muslim refugees living in India but originally hailing from the three neighbouring Islamic nations to seek Indian citizenship—was released and signed by hundreds of academicians and researchers across various universities and institutes. The statement, along with the names of signatories, was published on OpIndia, a website run by the company I currently head. Within 24 hours of that statement being published, I was approached and requested by those who coordinated the campaign to collect these signatures—something that could happen only because Modi had returned to power and some people could feel a little secure in opining ideas that did not conform to the leftist worldview—to remove the link to a public document that contained the full names of all the signatories, because one of the signatories was hounded by his leftist colleagues and students to the extent of being threatened of physical assaults and fake sexual harassment charges. He finally gave up and asked his name to be removed from any publicly accessible document. We obliged."

"The first one was the Assam riots that took place in July 2012 between ethnic Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are seen as illegal settlers from Bangladesh. The mainstream media was not reporting about it in detail while multiple claims were being made on social media about the violence. Many pictures and short videos were uploaded on Twitter and other social media platforms, where it was alleged that the Muslims were the main aggressors in the riots. Many claimed that the rioters had modern assault rifles, hinting at the involvement of terrorist groups."

"I'm not Extreme Right Because Extreme Right stands for fascism. which is revolutionary, violent and anti-democratic. I am none of the three. I am an anti-fascist. I get really mad when people call me fascist or racist. Others in my party would shrug, not me. I think that's defamation."

"The majority of Muslim Afghans have similar radical Islamic ideas as the Taliban."

"If a large majority of Afghan Muslims hold shariah views on women, non-Muslims, apostates, free speech, democracy and homosexuals, then it is obvious that such Muslim fundamentalists will also find themselves in the asylum stream."

"I call on the Flemish Government to screen specifically for Muslim fundamentalists and Taliban supporters and to tighten the integration conditions."

"Muslims, among other things, unequivocally distance themselves from Sharia. In addition, they must promote principles such as the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equality between men and women and the right to follow a different religion or no religion at all.."

"Characteristics of Islamization that you sometimes see even more than in certain cities in the Islamic countries of origin, which indicates a rejection of our culture. For example, countless Muslims, according to research even a majority, put the Koran or the Sharia above our culture, free society and democratic constitutional state."

"In addition to rejecting Islamic rules and laws and endorsing our norms and values, it is of course also necessary that people speak Dutch in order to be eligible for naturalization or residence on our territory. And the latter of course applies to all newcomers, not just Muslim immigrants. Otherwise it will be impossible to become part of our society and community. In any case, signing such a declaration has mainly symbolic value, and is therefore no guarantee of successful assimilation."

"[N]obody has yet been fool enough to accept his argument that the attacks on New York and Washington were part of a pre-arrangement involving the United States government."

"Professor Jones didn’t write his paper to support a prior ideological-conspiratorial agenda -- he wrote it to point out that to date, conventional scientific explanations of the WTC collapses remain flawed and inadequate. The molten deposits found at Ground Zero, and the failure of the official narrative to account for them, represent an anomaly that should be investigated impartially, not dismissed for reasons of political convenience -- or arbitrary standards of the boundaries of sanity."

"On reflection and on a rereading of his "book," I would change my original article and remove the word "risible." A more apposite term for both the author and his illiterate pages would be "contemptible.""

"Five years on, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we still don’t know what really happened on 9/11. And this dismal, pathetic state of affairs should not continue."

"It is agreed by all that the fires never burned hot enough to melt the steel columns. Whether or not the steel was hot enough to buckle, the official account fails to explain the deposits of molten metal found after the collapses. If not the fires, what could have caused the steel to melt?"

"I know a ‘swimming pool’ where these ‘young people who disturb’ can go and swim separately following their ‘own schedule’: the Mediterranean Sea."

"Geert Wilders was my first teacher. I had the opportunity to work for him for half a year. An incredibly educational experience. Then I became spokesperson for Filip Dewinter, one of the most influential politicians of the past decades. It is a great honor that I can succeed him as party leader in Antwerp."

"If authors have any responsibilities in the face of disaster, the greatest of them is to bear witness...I’ve always cared about how the weak survive great upheavals. The individuals who are left out — they’ve always been my chief concern."

"Why has our space of debate become so narrow?...The new coronavirus infection is totally under control in China. What is it (China) scared of, despite that?"

"This basket exists for one reason: the free and open sharing of personal-grooming items. For many of us, most of us, this basket has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Help protect it now. Please make a donation"

"The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know. Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table. If they are not at the table, we don't benefit from their crumb."

"Sue Gardner, who is apparently still a special advisor to the wmf, is giving a keynote speech."

"Sue came in when we were very tiny. We were based in Florida, still a handful of employees. She deserves credit for building the Wikimedia Foundation from, I’m going to venture to say, probably five or six employees, into quite a large organization after several years of time."

"The heart and soul of everything the Wikimedia project does is volunteer driven, it's volunteer energy, volunteer time, altruism, people's commitment to create this massive educational endeavour that's really available to everybody"

"Assume good faith. This is so easier said than done ;/ But for real, assume good faith. When someone asks a question and you think they are trolling, it’s entirely possible they are not. (Maybe they are 15 years old, or their English is imperfect, or they have an impairment of some kind.) Even if they are trolling: there will always be onlookers who don’t know it, and who, whatever the provocation, will recoil if you are curt or unkind. Trolling also gives you an opportunity to equip onlookers with reasonable arguments that they can go on to use themselves."

"Since 1995 what the data says is each new generation of young people has become successively less supportive of democracy than the generation that preceded it."

"It [Wikipedia] was built 10 years ago and hasn’t changed that much, [but] we are looking for ways to increase serendipity. We are happily dependent on the inventiveness of the people who join us of their own volition."

"A good rule of thumb is that if a society requires a vast secret police network, multi-million death tolls, and expendable prison labor to operate, it definitely doesn't work."

"As the great-grandson of a Party commissar, I resent Stalin avatar tankies for appropriating my culture without even doing the research (becoming an alcoholic, dying before the age of 50)"

"Just because you’re doing something for someone else doesn’t mean it’s impersonal. We do things for others every day that have completely personal reasons. I mean, this isn’t some selfless, saintly movie! Obviously there is ego and hubris involved, things you’re doing because you think they’ll look cool. Often, those are the things that don’t really turn out right"

"I hate Adolf Schicklgruber. This is a vile rascal and all that. But was he really wrong, sending this abomination [homosexuals] together with gypsies [...] into gas chambers and for sterilization???!!! What do you think - return the article for sodomy now - will then the number of sick youngsters and "stars" with broken asses decrease?"

"Gypsies are the filth of the world. Europe is gradually waking up, and under the outraged cries of tolerasts, it begins to clean the dirt. When will we wake up?"

"On March 24, Anatoly Shariy published a post with a spontaneous confession about his old statements:"

"In Iran, after the 1979 Islamic revolution, over 4,000 lesbians and homosexuals were sentenced to death. The clerical regime also executed many women for extramarital sex. [...] I believe that in Iran with prostitution, pedophilia and rape the situation is hundreds of times better than in our extremely cultured and civilized country."

"Unpleasant information came to me that in Kyiv, the inhabitants of Western Ukraine suddenly began to tell the people of Kyiv how they should behave, how they have to love Ukraine, how they need to sing the anthem, walk with the flag. I have several friends from Western Ukraine, I respect these people, I am proud of friendship with them, these are quite sane people. I ask my appeal to the irresponsible women not to consider him chauvinism and racism and something else. In fact, until the 39th year you were nobody. You were instead of oxen, you were like marmots on their holes dug in the mountains. Or buried, you were dug in the 39th. Do you understand? The regions of Kyiv, Zaporizhzhya, Poltava have something to hate Stalin. You do not, you have to put Stalin a golden monument in one of your villages. And you have to pray at this monument in fact, because you saw civilization in the 39th year. You started to wipe your ass in the 39th. When they tell me they served soups to the Poles, I say this is impossible. They served soups to farm laborers of the Poles. Because no one would have allowed them to the Poles. You did not have land. You... I am Ukrainian, and you are not Ukrainians. You second... there, second... well, I don’t say second grade, no, you are just half-breeds. Three-timers, foursquads. You are half fucking Poles, half you are Hungarians, half you the devil knows what you are really. Do not tell the people of Kyiv how they should behave, how they need to love the country, love their flag. Because it is not your flag. You have no flag. You are not Ukrainians."

"The danger is that sometimes skinheads want to join the movement, [our] movement has nothing to do with that… They [homosexual people] should sit and be happy that they are not getting killed. (…) From their side should be respect; on my part there is nothing to respect them for, [they are] sick people."

"Not so long ago, I got into an argument with one of the readers, who is also my friend. She ardently defends the rights of gays and lesbians, whom I, in her words, “unjustly insulted” in many articles."What do you care about them ?!" - once again, like hundreds of commentators on articles before her, the girl asked. And for the umpteenth time, like hundreds of commentators, I answered - I don't care about them. I do not distinguish them from the dog shit on the side of the road, I do not care about them, but I do care about my children and the future of the territory with which my life is connected..."

"Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win."

"There is no doubt in my mind this man was a brave fighter against corruption, for justice, for democracy. Look what Putin's Russia did to him – they trumped up charges, they imprisoned him, they poisoned him, they sent him to an Arctic penal colony and he's died – that is because of the action that Putin's Russia took."

"A courageous dissident beyond xenophobic and fascist ideas, which in Italy would have landed him in jail for incitement to racism under the Mancino law."

"What are the chances that I'll survive this morning? I don't know; six out of ten? Eight out of ten? Maybe even ten out of ten? It's not that I'm trying not to think about it, closing my eyes and pretending the danger doesn't exist. But one day I simply made the decision not to be afraid. I weighed everything up, understood where I stand – and let it go. Russian: Какие шансы у меня выжить сегодня утром? Не знаю: шесть из десяти или восемь из десяти. А может, и все десять. Дело не в том, что я стараюсь об этом не думать, зажмуриваюсь и делаю вид, что опасности не существует, – просто однажды я принял решение не бояться. Я всё взвесил, понял и отпустил."

"[N]ow, secretarians and marginals are in power. Generally, they have no ideas. Their only goal is to cling to their seats. Perfected hypocrisy allows them to adapt and adopt any disguise, thus polygamists have become conservatives, members of the Communist Party have become Orthodox Christians, owners of golden passports and offshore accounts have become aggressive patriots. Lies, lies, and nothing but lies. It will collapse and fall apart. Putin's state is unviable. One day, we'll look at its place and it will be gone. Victory is inevitable. But for now, we must not give up, and hold on to our convictions."

"Today, on this stage, receiving this high amazing award for my father, Aleksei Navalny, I thank you and through all of you I welcome the Europe of ideas and principles. The European Union is an incredible miracle created by nations whose whole history is an endless war with each other. Despite all the difficulties and problems, however, the EU has encountered and will encounter, I believe that in its future one day my country will become a part of it."