Tag: Religious Nationalism

India

India’s BJP: The rise of the world’s biggest political party

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters wear masks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The rise of Religious Nationalism is detrimental to the principles of Democracy

India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has more members than most countries have people.

The unit’s latest report says there has been “a serious deterioration in the quality of democracy under leader Narendra Modi, whose Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has presided over increased intolerance and sectarianism towards Muslims and other religious minorities” and that a failure to “crack down on the persecution of religious and other minorities by Hindu nationalists continues to weigh on India’s democracy score”.

To rise from the fringes of Indian politics to become the world’s biggest party has been a stunning achievement. But can Indian democracy flourish with a political behemoth like the BJP?

Source: India’s BJP: The rise of the world’s biggest political party

Israel

Kahanism’s triumphant makeover

Supporters of MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit party, during his visit to the Blich High School in Ramat Gan, September 6, 2022. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

In Israel, the Star of David is fast becoming the equivalent of the Swastika

Itamar Ben Gvir is thriving off a national discourse that allows him to accomplish what his predecessors could not: bringing Kahanism to the mainstream.

There will be no victories against Itamar Ben Gvir. Politics is about making coalitions and isolating rivals, and the right has been skillful in putting aside its public ideological conflicts in order to organize and take over power. The left, with all its fragmentation and purism, is abetting its own isolation.

Amid this setting, Ben Gvir and his allies have stormed through the door opened by Netanyahu, and they are here to stay. Ben Gvir is now a symptom that has turned into a cause: as Palestinian citizens rise up to assert their rights, more Jewish-Israelis are turning to candidates who promise to further shrink the country’s democratic space and champion the fight against shared living. In some twisted way, Kahane — who predicted this choice would come — was right.

Source: Kahanism’s triumphant makeover