Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File   In carrying out the work of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in mapping the flows of hate, the effects of hate on human health and wellbeing, the effects of hate on social cohesion, and communicative strategies for countering the effects of hate, one of the powerful lessons is tied to the response of hate groups. I am sharing these thoughts as reflections on my own experiences being targeted by hate groups and drawing on in-depth interviews I have been carrying out with academics negotiating the challenges to academic freedom. A wide array of hate groups, be it white supremacists or Hindutva supremacists will attack the work through the deployment of a wide array of strategies. These strategies will range from violent attacks including death threats and rape threats to deploying institutional mechanisms to target the anti-hate work. The response of the hate groups is carried out both online and offline, supported...

The political ideology of Hindutva is built on the infrastructure of hate, and in turn, holds up the circulation of hate.  The hate that is circulated on digital platforms is created, produced, and funded by brick-and-mortar organizations. In this sense, the hate that is rendered viral through digital platforms is rooted in material presence.  The online world is sustained by and held up by the offline world.  Digital infrastructures are integral to the consolidation of Hindutva hegemony. The digital armies of Hindutva deploy social media infrastructures to circulate hate.  These social media infrastructures pick their targets, draw on their networks to create campaigns, and continue to amplify the messages of hate. Threats of sexual violence are key tools in this infrastructure of hate. An overarching rape culture produces the threat of rape, amplifying toxic messages of othering. The recent targeting of the nine-month-old daughter of the captain of the Indian cric...

 Community voices at the "margins of the margins" threaten the hegemonic status quo. The status quo works through the ongoing erasure of community voices, creating and circulating logics of power and control that retain power in the hands of the elite. The communicative act of erasure of subaltern voices is deeply intertwined with the maintenance and reproduction of power and control.  The state, private capital, an d the professionalized non-profit sector profit from the everyday erasure of the subaltern voice. Through its control over funding flows, the state reproduces its oppressive structure, reified through civil society that must rely on state patronage to sell the subaltern to the market. State bureaucrats, educated in the techniques of producing discipline, on one hand, perform the narrative of addressing the needs of communities, while on the other hand, cultivating networks of professionalized NGOs that whitewash the strategies of power and control to serve the pre...