Planting and circulating disinformation is one of the key strategies of the far right.
Disinformation propels hate, often through the juxtaposition of information.
Juxtaposition in the context of disinformation places two pieces of information side-by-side, creating a frame that seeds doubt, manufactures ulterior motivations that seemingly drive the target of the hate, and places a label on the target.
In the attacks launched by Hindutva on me, my scholarship, and the work of CARE, I have witnessed closely the ways in which juxtaposition is deployed to create false frames, which are key ingredients in the mobilization of hate.
Globally, we witness the deployment of juxtaposition by Hindutva trolls to target academics, activists, communities, and other dissenting voices.
The violence of Hindutva both online and offline, both in India and in the Indian diaspora, draws upon the strategic creation of frames that cast the targeted person as "anti-Hindu" "Hinduphobic" "anti-Indian" and/or "anti-national." The labels "left-liberal" "sickular" "JNU types" "urban naxal" etc. are mobilised by the Hindutva hate ecosystem to mobilize targeted campaigns directed at voices laying claims to India's constitutional values of secularism, socialism, and democracy. We have witnessed the ways in which hate generated through juxtaposing frames mobilizes Hindutva extremism, including murders of journalists, rationalists, and other dissenting voices.
During the early part of the attack targeting me in August 2021, one such element of juxtaposition that was being crafted by Hindutva drew up my supposed linkages with China, and by extension, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Driven by a Hindutva extremist account from Australia that has played a key role in the Leicester violence, the juxtaposition crafted and arranged a range of information to craft the narrative [This Hindu extremist account has interlocuted with the far-right hate-based media platform OpIndia, inciting violence in Leicester]. In the rest of this blog post, I will examine how the Hindutva extremists used the official information act (OIA) to craft the false narrative.
At the outset, let me state that I have no relationships with the CCP. I have had many doctoral students from China who have gone on to become successful academics. As an international scholar, I have lectured in various parts of the world, including in China. I treasure my relationships with Chinese academics and have enjoyed delivering lectures at a number of Chinese Universities including Tsinghua, Peking, and Shanghai Jiao Tong.
The framing of the disinformation started by placing my scholarship on Hindutva in the backdrop of positioning Massey University's relationship with China. Consider the following post {Exhibit 1} as an example:
Note here the two claims, framed as questions, "is this professor a Maoist," and "Are these morons funded by China?" These two frames, "Maoist conspirator" and "China (foreign) funded" are central frames that have been deployed by the Hindutva regime in India to target academics and activists, and incarcerate them. Note also the ways in which these frames align with the white supremacist narrative that crafts accounts of Chinese influence to target Asians.
The emergent campaign targeting me gets picked up by the disinformation handle Stop Hindu Hate Advocacy Network. This handle is also connected to a disinformation website that operates anonymously, has been linked to the Hindutva-led violence in Leicester, and targets voices critical of Hindutva.
Note here the call to Hindus to write to Massey University. This forms the backdrop of the digital hate campaign targeting me and Massey, and the email campaign and petitions launched by Hindutva-aligned organizations in Aotearoa. The digital platforms of CARE come under targeted attacks, raising security concerns for early career researchers, largely women and gender-diverse researchers at intersecting minoritized identities, expressing concerns about safety. This leads to the digital team at CARE having to take preventive measures, including removing posts that plant disinformation.
In September 2021, I receive an email in my mailbox from an account titled "Vaidik Raj" that complains about not being engaged:
In October 2021, an official information act (OIA) request is filed to Massey University, from a V. K. Raj, according to the OIA website.
The OIA request is a classic example of juxtaposition as an organising tool for spreading disinformation.
The OIA request begins by asking questions related to the funding of CARE, the various funding sources of CARE etc., then turns to ask for details about the proposals submitted by CARE for our funded projects. It gives away its Hindutva agenda with the question,
"Massey University was a co-sponsor of the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” Conference. How much funding did it receive for sponsoring this event, and how much money did Massey Uni spend on co-sponsoring the event?"
Note here that the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference brought together scholars who work on South Asia from across the globe concerned about the far-right Hindu extremism in India and in the diaspora. Paradoxically, and perhaps offering strong support for the motivation for putting together the conference, the academics associated with the conference became the targets of attacks by far-right Hindu extremists.
It then goes on to ask questions about where to raise complaints.
The second part of the request then turns to Massey's relationship with China and Chinese organisations. For instance, question 21, asks,
"Does Massey University still have an agreement with iFLYTEK (a blacklisted company for human rights violations) and if so, how much funding does it receive from them? If the agreement is canceled, how much funding did Massey Uni receive from them when the agreement was in force?"
Similarly, question 25 asks,
"What companies/organisations and/or funding bodies does Massey currently have a relationship with that are located in the People’s Republic of China? Does Massey have any ongoing relationships with blacklisted groups (from China or elsewhere)?"
What is salient here is the placing of these two lines of questions about two entirely unrelated issues together within the same frame. Hindutva and Chinese funding are introduced together and given legitimacy. This legitimating role of juxtaposition then holds up the disinformation narrative that can be deployed to mobilize further hate.
Consider the hate account from Australia crafting narratives around the OIA requests to Massey regarding China,
Attend here the construction of the disinformation that makes the claim to the University's links to Communism and then places my work on Hindutva within these supposed links of the University. The suggestion here is of a sinister plot, sponsored by the University, working along CCP and the Communist agenda to target Hindus.
The frame then is circulated through the powerful far-right platform, OpIndia, a key node in the Hindutva hate infrastructure emergent from India (see exhibit below)
Official information act (OIA) requests are important to accountability and transparency in democracies. They can serve as important tools in holding power to account. However, in the global climate of disinformation and hate, far-right hate groups, funded by powerful political and economic interests can manipulate OIA processes to circulate disinformation and hate. As I have demonstrated, such disinformation, tied to the global networks of hate, raises salient questions of foreign interference in academic freedom, foreign interference in democracies including democracy in Aotearoa, and foreign interference in manipulating democratic processes such as OIA to serve far-right propaganda.