Leah Feiger: That are coming our way, that is so ominous.
Vittoria Elliott: Woof.
Leah Feiger: And probably so true. Nilesh, thank you so much for joining us today. Listeners, again, if you are seeing instances of generative AI out in the wild this election year, anywhere around the world, you can tell us using the submission form in our show notes. We’d love to hear from you. After the break, Tori and Nilesh are going to give us their favorite conspiracies of the week.
[break]
Leah Feiger: Welcome back, this is Conspiracy of the Week. That part of the show where each of our guests give us the best theory they’ve come across this week and I pick my favorite. Tori, what did you find?
Vittoria Elliott: Last week, our colleague David and I did a story on a website called OpIndia, which is a right-wing BJP-aligned website that spreads Islamophobic conspiracy theories. One of them being Love Jihad, which is that Muslim men are attempting to marry or kidnap Hindu women, to force demographic change. We did a big story on them. We apparently forced them into a subscription model.
Leah Feiger: Read the story in our show notes, guys, it’s a good one.
Vittoria Elliott: But I always love when I find a local flavor of an internationalized conspiracy. When we were doing research for the piece, one of the articles that came up from OpIndia that I had seen circulated was that our friend, George Soros, favorite target of the right everywhere in the world—
Leah Feiger: It’s kind of impressively, honestly, that it’s become global.
Vittoria Elliott: Right? He’s everywhere. That actually, his real agenda is that he is not, as the right in the US might claim, part of a global cabal. They oftentimes will focus on his identity as a Jewish man, as an immigrant. But in India, it’s that he is a white man specifically.
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Vittoria Elliott: And that he is funding anti-India, anti-Hindu initiatives.
Leah Feiger: Wow.
Vittoria Elliott: Because he is ultimately invested in the undermining of India and the Hindu identity. I, again, just always think it’s amazing to see how these global figures get that local flavor of how are they factoring to the conspiracy here.
Leah Feiger: To our situation.
Vittoria Elliott: Yeah.
Leah Feiger: The globalization of conspiracies is something that I could talk about forever. Poor George, who just has no idea.
Vittoria Elliott: He just wants to fund some democracy initiatives.
Leah Feiger: That’s so wild. OK, that’s a good one. That was unexpected. Amazing. Nilesh, what do you got? What’s your conspiracy of the week?
Nilesh Christopher: I was going to talk about Love Jihad, because that has grabbed all kinds of headlines.
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Nilesh Christopher: But more specifically, one I found fascinating was a variation of it called Vote Jihad. In one of the recent political rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself mentioned Vote Jihad. This has lent credence to this long-standing conspiracy that Muslims will vote in large blocks that would undermine the Hindu nature of India and it will undermine Hindu rights in the long term. It’s a conspiracy that relates to India’s demographic. Currently, Muslims constitute less than 15 percent of India’s population. But this conspiracy, as Tori said, it’s global where most of the Hindu right wing constantly keep worrying about it. This takes the form of What’s App forwards, where Hindus are constantly reminded that Muslim voting blocks will get together and vote out the Hindu candidates, or they will ensure that Hindu rights are being undermined.
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