How?
The ‘how’ howl is resounding around the world. How did Donald Trump, convicted felon, serial speech offender, sequential sex harasser and misogynist at large achieve such a landslide of a victory? A triumph that has swept away all political opposition, including in the Senate and in all probability, in the House of Representatives? The commentariat is hard at work decoding the how of it and what it reveals about USA’s state and society. Given that the media was a major engine deployed to achieve this electoral outcome, a supplementary but vital question is what does the victory tell us about its media landscape?
The Trump electoral machine could and did get to control information on an industrial scale through both legacy and social media. There is something to the lament of broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, whose partiality for the Democratic Party is no secret:
“Despite the fact that the US economy, under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, is the strongest economy in the Western world… Despite the fact that unemployment is at 4%, one of the lowest rates for 50 years. Despite the fact that real wages are higher now than they were when Trump left office. And yet people refuse to believe it”.
Now people may have refused to “believe it” because they were hurting from high grocery bills and could only remember that the price of gasoline was almost a whole dollar less in 2020 than in 2024, but it was also a fact that one of Trump’s favourite tropes on the election trail was that he would bring gas prices below two dollars. Fact checkers have been quick to point out that this would be impossible to achieve without seriously damaging the economy and environment, but his promise clearly hit home every time someone checked their bank balance and filled up their tank at a gas station.
Misinformation thrives on misery.
It also thrives on a large section among the emerging generation, given the appellation GenZ, going through this election without reading a single print newspaper and who depend on, according to one US newspaper, on a diet of “influencers, infographics, and memes”. They number 41 million, and many displayed a disturbing appetite for Trump this time. They were also perhaps put off by the Harris arrogance which ignored their genuine feelings – those hundreds of thousands of students who protested the ugly war in Palestine were not ghosts, they were very real.
Also remember that the Trump campaign was quick to turn even satire into memes that raised a laugh. Take that Trump assertion – immigrants are “eating the dogs and cats” in Springfield, Ohio. It got set to music and became a chart-buster.
This is where the larger than life role played by Elon Musk in this election needs to be factored in. By putting X, his $44 billion media machine, at the service of the Trump campaign and flooding the electoral narrative with all manner of conspiracy theories that consciously preyed on the anxieties of the average Joe and Jenny, he proved to be a one-man force multiplier. Musk was not always a Trump fan. In fact two years ago he had tweeted: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” But somewhere along the way he calculated the cascade of benefits that could come his way should he join this caravan.
What is Musk’s skin in the game? Cash of course – his net worth shot up by US $ 20 billion immediately after the Trump win. But Musk’s ultimate goal is power. Being South Africa-born, he is ineligible to attain the highest office of the country, but he could do the next best thing, use the power of the highest office to mould public opinion by – as British comedian Jonathan Pie put it – spreading “a flurry of slurry across the universe”. All this is to create a country faithful to his far-right libertarian vision of a dissent-free, technology-controlled USA with a yen for driverless cars and space travel. In his 2015 book, Elon Musk, Ashlee Vans, dripping with admiration for his subject, writes that here is a man who is “providing an example for other entrepreneurs hoping to harness a new age of wonderful machines.” For the moment though, it was the electoral machine that caught Musk’s fancy as the rocket launcher to becoming CEO of United States of America Inc. Through this one election he has proved that it is possible to capture government for personal aggrandisement.
It helps of course that platforms like X are hardly threatened by the corporate media giants of yesteryear. The Washington Post with all its liberal pretensions of being a strong voice for democracy implicit in its catchline: “Democracy Dies in Darkness” (remember the Pentagon Papers?), was right royally thrown under the bus by its multi-billionaire owner Jeff Bezos who demonstrated that democracy can, and often does, die under the morning sun if it is a question of the Amazon bottom line. While CNN, once considered the only force that can neutralise the vomitus of Fox News, is now owned by media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc, whose handlers ordered CNN editors to mandatorily include rightwing opinion in its chat shows. Even Fox News got a hammering from Trump for daring to feature Democratic Party advertising that targeted him.
It seems a no-win situation for journalism in the US. The Gallup poll has measured trust in media among the American public over a span of half a century. In the 1970s, such trust was in the region of 68-72%. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, it had dropped to 51-55%. A poll conducted this September was interesting: More US adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust in the institution.
As in India, the only hope for good, credible, critically engaged journalism to survive in Trump’s fundamentalist Christian, fundamentalist technocratic, fundamentalist rightwing kingdom is for small independent platforms to assert themselves and provide strong counter narratives. There are many who are ready and willing to take up this challenge.
This is The Intercept after the Trump victory:
“The corporate media and the Democratic Party have one thing in common: They have no idea how to handle Donald Trump.
“Sure, they’re happy to profit from superficial outrage over his increasingly bizarre rhetoric. But do they have any real intention of obstructing his agenda?
“More genocide in Gaza. An Orwellian scheme to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And perhaps even an effort to prosecute and imprison those who dare to dissent.
“Neither Jeff Bezos nor Elon Musk is going to reward politicians or journalists for exposing these injustices. That’s why we need The Intercept — today more than ever.
“Our mission remains the same: fearless, adversarial investigative journalism to hold the wealthy and powerful to account.
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Unravelling the genius of Abu Abraham
On his hundredth birth anniversary, we get a chance to consider the full breath and width of the satirical imagination of Attupurathu Mathew Abraham, known simply by his adopted nom de plume, Abu or rather abu with a small ‘a’, through a extremely well mounted exhibition, ‘Abu’s World’. It captured a collection of work – 300 in all– stretching over half a century from the early 1950s to 2002, the year of his death.
Much has been written about this exhibition since it got its first airing at Kochi’s Durbar Hall Art Gallery in March this year (‘Recalling the Political Genius of Iconic Cartoonist Abu’, The Wire, April 12) but catching up with it at its inaugural run in Delhi at India International Centre’s Art Gallery was special. Not only because Abu’s two daughters, Ayesha and Janaki, true custodians of their father’s legacy, were there, but because of the presence of historian Romila Thapar who inaugurated the event and shared a lovely vignette from her London days in the 1950s during which an “unknown Indian” struck her as someone “who really speaks his mind”.
It was a mind that also drew pictures in ways more incisive than speech. The Tribune (London) carried some very sharp critiques of the Vietnam war, for instance, including one of Lyndon Johnson, loaded with bombs and guns, berating an unarmed Vietnamese youth with the words: “You’re setting a bad example with your violence”. His editors gave him leeway. He would later recall: “Answering my queries about my freedom as a cartoonist, the editor (at the Observer) wrote: “It would perhaps be rash to promise that we will always publish whatever political cartoon you offer but I give you an absolute assurance that you will never be asked to draw a political cartoon expressing ideas with which you do not yourself personally sympathise.” They don’t make editors like that anymore!
Cartoons by Abu that appeared (from left) on the ‘Indian Express’ in 1979, ‘The Patriot’, ‘The Tribune’, and ‘The Daily’ in 1986, and ‘Indian Express’ in 1973.
It was only when he returned home to India, however, that Abu’s work could really get under the skin of the moment – and by extension under the skin of the characters who made up that moment. Mrs Gandhi was obviously this cartoonist’s absolute delight. Every line he drew of her indicated how he luxuriated in her hauteur and arrogance, whether it was in showing her confront the Old Guard within the Congress, comprising Nijalingappa and Kamraj, with the word, ‘Parkalam!’ (a signature phrase attributed to Kamraj, meaning ‘Let’s us see’) or a Mohammad Ali telling her that he is the greatest and the lady shooting back, “Oh really?’
The delicious irony of having a Mrs Gandhi out of power fuelled knife-sharp responses from Abu. There is this one of her with a travel bag at a railway station walking past a sign that read “CHICKMAGALUR Change Here For New Delhi, Rae Bareli, Lucknow, Patna, Jaipur and Generally All Destinations’ (October 1978); and another one of the lady consulting ‘Pandit Devraj The Renowned Urstrologer’, with a caption that read, ‘The son has a malefic influence on your stars’ (June 1979). Once back in power, we see her in her old, confident avatar, this time with Rajiv Gandhi by her side and a bunch of quarreling politicians in the background. ‘That’s a Brilliant Idea – A Free Nutritious Meal Scheme For Dissidents and Rebels’, the mother tells the son (July, 1982).
Siddique Kappan gets relief from the court
Sometimes a small news portal can deliver big. India Tomorrow, relatively little known, did a detailed interview with Siddique Kappan on the fourth anniversary of his arrest on October 5. In it Kappan pointed out that despite being given bail on January 23, 2023, he was in a manner of speaking still living a jailed life given the stringent conditions that had been imposed on him.
He spoke frankly about his life: “…The arrest and the subsequent 28 months in prison deeply impacted my personal life, my family, and my work. My children’s mental health and education suffered significantly, and our financial stability was shattered. I was unable to work due to the constant travel related to the case. It has now been two years since my release, yet due to the bail conditions; I continue to live as though I am in an open prison.”
He went on to say that he had approached the Supreme Court to seek relief, pointing to a stark anomaly: although the court recognised that he was jailed on false charges, he was still bound by impossible bail conditions which included having to report every week at a local police station in Uttar Pradesh.
In early November, the Supreme Court granted Kappan major relief, including striking down the arduous condition of having to present himself in a UP court every Monday. As for getting his passport back, the apex court also allowed him to seek remedy through another petition. Hopefully, he will now be able to put his personal and professional life on track.
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Readers write back…
Women’s voices, please
N. Jayaram fires a familiar missile at ‘The Interview with Karan Thapar’:
“We’ve been here before: Sir, kindly look beyond male interviewees. Can supply you with any number of female experts on ANY SUBJECT under the sun…That said, Great interview with Dr Barghouti the other day. And thank you for having restrained yourself from interrupting unnecessarily. Wonder if you’ve tried to get the great Naomi Klein on your show, or Amy Goodman. And then there is the absolutely brilliant Dr Assal Rad.”
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Why this disregard for Hindu gods?
Karthik K has an issue with “uncapitalised pronouns when referring to Lord Ram” in ‘Justice Chandrachud Should Not Blame God for His Own Awful Ayodhya Judgment’ (October 22):
“I sat before the deity and told him he needed to find a solution”… Hindus consider Ram as an incarnation of God, hence He should be referred with reverence thus: him should be ‘Him’; he should be ‘He’; Ram temple should be ‘Ram Temple’. Why such blatant disregard for Hindu Gods? Fix it, will you? And make sure that due editorial verification is done before publication.”
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Bring back communal harmony to the Hills
Hyderabad-based Sumanta Banerjee writes in:
“In ‘Backstory: If Some Media Outlets…’ (October 26), references are made to recent communal flare-ups in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. It saddened me to read it because I remember some of the best years of my life (2000-2016) were spent in Dehra Dun in Uttarakhand, living in a cottage built by my wife, Bizeth, at the foothills. During that period I also had the good fortune to spend a couple of years (2011-2012) in Himachal Pradesh, during my stint as a research fellow with the Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla. Whether in Dehra Dun or in Shimla, I never found my Muslim neighbours, friends and academic colleagues feeling threatened.
“The neighbourhoods harboured shops run by both Hindus and Muslim traders, living and working cheek by jowl. But now, the media reports emanating from these two states (which were always known for their beautiful natural surroundings and communal harmony) are alarming. Have the Sangh Parivar hate speeches dug deep into the roots of this traditional harmony and fractured it? How can the alternative and social activists restore and revive that spirit and social life of harmony? There is need for intervention at the grassroots level in order to resist and defeat the BJP’s attempts to destroy the tradition of communal concord in these two states.”
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Shutdown Bretton Woods institutions
Excerpt from a statement from a range of international civil society organizations, who argue that these institutions are beyond reform, as their governance structures and market-driven economic paradigms are too deeply embedded in the status quo to enable meaningful change.
“Close to 200 individuals and civil society groups, representing a wide range of social movements, campaigns, and grassroots organisations and campaigns in a statement have called for the creation of a new democratic and decentralised financial system that prioritises sustainability and equality. They are demanding the shutdown of the Bretton Woods institutions—the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)—to pave the way for more democratic, public-spirited institutions.
“For the past 80 years, the World Bank and IMF have globalised a model of development and financialisation rooted in the colonial logic of extraction and exploitation. These institutions have facilitated the continuous transfer of wealth from the Global South to the Global North while trapping nations in deep debt and depriving them of sovereignty over their natural resources.
“The statement strongly criticises the policies of the World Bank and IMF, which have led to the privatisation of essential public services, including water, electricity, education, healthcare, and transportation. Brought about steep cuts in social protection and welfare programs, labour market deregulation, drastic wage cuts, contractualisation of labour, and the reduction or elimination of food and agriculture subsidies which have resulted in widespread hunger and food insecurity. These policies have disproportionately impacted the rural and urban working classes, poor communities, women, small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples, and other marginalised groups…”
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