Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

So Tova O’Brien was looking for a click-bait opportunity to draw in listeners to her podcast and she found the migrant activist and Green Party politician Dr. Sapna Samant to pick on. In a gotcha moment, Tova shared with the Green Party co-leader James Shaw a series of posts made by Dr. Samant on whiteness, Hindutva, and multiculturalism, asking him if the tweets were OK. We don’t understand from listening to O’Brien’s podcast if her research team actively researched Dr. Sapna Samant’s social media posts, or whether these selective screen captures of Dr. Samant’s tweets were sent to her by someone wanting to target Samant. The thoroughly unresearched piece is poor journalism, reflective of the mediocrity that is perpetuated by whiteness , the hegemonic values of the dominant white culture in settler colonies. If indeed her research team had discovered the tweets, it’s worth interrogating why the social media posts of a migrant woman activist on whiteness are of interest to O’Brien’s po

Gandhi's experiments with truth offer a powerful register for resistance to the communicative resources of deception that form the essential infrastructures of Hindutva.  As Gandhi invites us to critically interrogate our own relationship with non-violence, peace, service, relationship with the community, and resistance to colonization, he offers anchors for life as practice, lived through struggles for truth.  These anchors of life as practice, realized through struggles for truth stand in resistance to the deceptions that shape the cognitive, affective, and material resources of Hindutva.  Consider the deception played by Hindutva propagandists in mobilizing violence targeting Gandhi, resulting in his murder, in the ongoing vilification of Gandhi within private spaces while simultaneously upholding Gandhi as an Indian cultural icon in its public messages to the world. As a fascist ideology, Hindutva thrives on the production and circulation of lies, continually at work to vilify

Globally, the information technology (IT) sector forms the core infrastructure for the accelerated production and proliferation of far-right extremism.  While regulatory frameworks responding to this global challenge often work with the assumption that the proliferation of hate is one of the side effects of transformations in information technology (IT), our research and policy advocacy at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) points to a far deeper problem, the intrinsically profitable nature of hate.  Particularly salient here is the collaboration between global tech and far-right extremism, with hate being an intrinsically profitable resource for the IT sector.  Hate multiplies exponentially on technologically mediated platforms, generating an ever-expanding audience base for advertisers and this forms the business model of big Tech. In the context of the far-right fascist ideology of Hindutva, the proliferation of the IT sector in India in the f

Author: Mohan J. Dutta ( Mohan Dutta is Dean's Chair Professor at Massey University ) The far-right's targeting of academics has gained exponential momentum with the rise of authoritarian populism . From fascist Hindutva politics to white supremacy to far-right Zionism , the targeting of academics through disinformation-based hate campaigns drives both political markets and profits. These campaigns, building up and amplifying conspiracy theories , are largely funded by dark money , and mobilized through astroturfs , think tanks , and media influencers  (digital).  The power of the disinformation campaigns is held up by the networked structure , generating swarms , mobilizing   email campaigns and complaints targeting academics . Such swarm-based campaigns are accompanied by wild conspiracy theories , propaganda messages inciting violence, death threats and rape threats . Having experienced the targeted attacks of the far right across the three key drivers of disinformat

This opinion piece is the third of a five-part series on the intertwined webs of the far right mobilised to attack communication and media studies pedagogy. This piece is written in solidarity with other Communication and Media Studies academics, researchers, and practitioners who have been targeted by the far-right.  The Far-Right wants to cancel Communication and Media Studies. The entire discipline. Yes, you read it right, the entire discipline! A platform titled "The Centrist" published the article, "Abolish communications and media studies (Karl du Fresne)," opening with: "Writer Karl du Fresne says abolishing the department of communications and media studies at every university will vastly ease the financial crisis of those unis while neutralising a key source of division in the culture wars." This irrational rant would be comical if not for the violence such rhetoric promotes, the direct effects of which are experienced by academics , particularl

The far-right thrives on hate .  Hate is both a political and an economic tool. It drives profits, both for the producers of hate and the platforms carrying the hate.  Hate delivers an ever-expanding global market of readers/viewers/listeners. Moreover, it delivers a political market . That's why hate proliferates in election cycles, building up to elections. Whether it is Modi's Hindutva , Bolsonaro's Brazilian Christo-fascism , or Trump's white supremacist Christian nationalism , far-right authoritarian strategies depend on hate to take over democratic processes and spaces. One of the cornerstones in the political mobilisation of the far-right across these movements is the attack on education and learning, seeking to replace critical education with propaganda upholding the majoritarian ideology (consider here the convergence in the attacks on history curricula), activated around drummed-up fears of what the youth are being fed in schools. Moreover, the ideology seek