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20th century, 21st century, BJP, Donald Trump, fundamentalism, George W. Bush, identity, Martin Luther King Jr., religion, Tim Alberta, United States
When Donald Trump first rose to rapid popularity in American politics, many people were shocked and had no explanation. I was not among those people, for a couple of reasons. Among them: one way to make a new phenomenon comprehensible is analogy. And having watched Indian politics for a couple decades, I found it easy to say: Trump is a BJP-wala.
“Wala” (or “wallah”) is just the modern Indian term for “person involved with”: a fruit vendor is a fruit-wala, a person from Delhi is a Delhi-wala and so on. So this is basically to say “Trump is a BJP guy.” In turn the BJP – Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People’s Party – is the political party that rules India, now led by Narendra Modi. But it has a much longer history; it has been around since 1980, and its predecessor the Jan Sangh was around since 1951. Both are closely tied to a grouping of organizations called the Sangh Parivar, whose fundamental ideology can be described as Hindu militancy or Hindu nationalism.
The Sangh Parivar’s ideology is also often described as “Hindu fundamentalism”. But to describe it that way is the easiest way to misunderstand it – for likewise, the ideology of Trump is not at all fundamentalist. The concept of “fundamentalism” only makes sense if it includes scriptural literalism – a belief that Bush at least came close to, but Trump, who cheats on his wife with a porn star and who can’t even pronounce the names of Bible books, is worlds away from. What Trump and the Sangh Parivar have in common is advocating a conservative nationalism based on ethnic identity which is not fundamentalist.
Little in BJP ideology has ever had to do with sacred texts, or with theology. At its heart has always been a suspicion of outsiders – with the paradigm outsiders being Muslims. Closely tied to that suspicion is nationalism: the Sangh Parivar advances a militaristic ideology of strong Indian nationalism, and one where the nation’s identity is defined in terms that exclude outsiders and especially Muslims. It is very much an identity politics: that is, a politics organized around identifying a particular group of people for whom it advocates, and promoting that group’s interests over any sense of common good. The contrast is to a politics like Martin Luther King’s, which was self-consciously not identity politics; King was always at pains to emphasize that white people’s oppression of black people was spiritually harmful to white people as well, that the good of the whole American society would be served by lifting black people out of oppression.

Trump’s ideology is remarkably similar. Very much unlike with George W. Bush – by all accounts a genuinely pious evangelical Christian – few if any believe Trump’s half-assed and rare claims to Christian devotion. Yet white evangelical Christians are as united in their support of Trump as they were of Bush. Why? Because he claims to fight for them. Tim Alberta has a masterful insider’s portrayal of the evangelicals’ embrace of such an un-Christian man on grounds of ethnic conflict:
they feel as though by playing by the rules of Christianity – by turning the other cheek, by loving their neighbor – that they have given away so much ground, culturally, that they’ve lost, and they’ve lost the culture wars and they’re in danger of losing the country. And so now, feeling as though they are marginalized and under siege and at the brink of extinction, almost, they have turned to someone who does not have to observe their etiquette, who does not have to play by their rules, who doesn’t believe in the things that they believe. And ironically, they will tell you that that sort of gives him – Donald Trump – the freedom to do things to protect their movement and to fight against their enemies that they, themselves, would never be able to do.
Bush’s right-wing evangelicalism had to do with ruling according to God’s law. But Trump’s is about grabbing power for evangelical Christians against non-Christians – just as the BJP has rarely claimed any traditional dharmic justification for itself, but only to be speaking up for Hindus against others. The political function of evangelicals’ evangelical identity now is much like that of their closely related white identity: it identifies an “us”, a group of people to whom the nation-state is really supposed to belong. India’s Muslims or the US’s non-Christians might not get kicked out, but the country is not primarily supposed to be for them.
The popular God Bless the USA Bibles, better known as “Trump Bibles”, vividly make the point of how much recent evangelicals are willing to put their fundamentalist faith below their ethno-religious identity. (Yet another of the problems with the concept of “religion” is the way it too easily conflates identity with faith: it can’t handle the Irish joke about the Catholic atheist and the Protestant atheist.) These Bibles, with an American flag on their cover and the Pledge of Allegiance within, are advertised as “the only Bible endorsed by” Trump. Here, the scripture itself is subordinated to nationalism and the leader.
There is one way in which Trump’s BJP-like politics does have a precedent in Reagan and Bush. Namely, just as Trump’s approach had predecessors in Asia, Reagan’s and Bush’s did too. In both cases, the Asian precedent first looked like some weird backwater aberration – yet a few years later would come to be the newly ascendant view at the heart of the modern West, the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, it had been assumed that secularism was ascendant everywhere; fundamentalism and other forms of conservative religion were the atavistic leftovers that would naturally wither away. The Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic fundamentalist takeover of Iran in 1977 seemed like a weird last gasp; Zia ul-Haq‘s similar takeover of Pakistan in 1979 was in a fringe corner of the world that could be ignored… until Reagan himself came to power by courting the conservative religionists of the Moral Majority, and then Bush would make a highly visible show of his evangelical faith. Likewise, a BJP-type majoritarian politics seemed highly alien to American civic nationalism… until Trump’s rapid rise in 2015.
India isn’t the only Asian precedent for Trump’s ethno-nationalist identity politics. The right-wing Buddhists that Engaged Buddhists would rather not talk about, like Burma’s Wirathu or the anti-Muslim monks of southern Thailand, are cut from a similar cloth: defining a nation in terms of its ethnic majority, with “religion” subordinated to that ethnic identity. We progressive Buddhists usually wish that such people would take their Buddhism more seriously. Likewise, I miss the evangelical politics for which Christianity had a moral content, rather than just serving as an ethnic identity marker. But the Asian world of ethnic conflict is now the world of the United States.
Perhaps your Eastern thesis on the Trump phenomenon is true. But, I don’t think so. Not here, anyway. Donald Trump, and his notions and behaviors, was just, uh, different. He is unapologetic and fully willing to express that interest, motive and preference (see my theory on IMPs, if you can find it). Trump’s outrageous behaviors struck home with a plurality of Americans, fed up with previous expressions of public policy. He has done things, associated with criminals and perverts and generally thumbed his nose at everyone who did not jump on his bandwagon. He is a convicted criminal, yet, will again sit in the coveted oval office. This is unprecedented and public opinion and policy allowed it to happen by overwhelmingly re-electing the reprobate. Look up *reprobate*, if you don’t know what that means. I do not know much about Eastern terms and traditions either. Let’s be real here. Donald Trump is a charlatan and a phony. Looks like the overhelming plurality is alright with that—again. Ugly. Seems to me…
And another thing…
ANTITHESIS appears to be what people want now. Rebellion is is not only for rebels. Mr. Trump got re-elected because the populus lost INTEREST in status quo. This is unprecedented, IMHO. And, I sense the rebellion was bound to happen. Remember what I have claimed around those IMPs—interests, motives and preferences. Well, IMPs can;do, change. There was a film, titled Network, in the last century. In the movie, a character proclaimed: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”. That line, and the sentiment(s) behind it, was prophetic, I think. Because we jumped down a rabbit hole, and, there we are.This is not specifically philosophy, see. It is not so doubtful or uncertain. Evidence is starkly in front of our faces, were we willing to admit it. As a former ALJ —administrative law judge— I learned to examine and evaluate facts and evidence. Not bad for a dumb country kid? People are mad as hell.Contextual Reality is destined to change…Thanks!
I think this does get at a lot of Trump’s appeal: people being fed up with the status quo, whatever it is. The following post on globalization speaks to the point: we were told for decades that there’s only one way to run a government, even when that’s not true. Trump is now exploring the question of what is possible – though through the sort of experiments that are likely to fail frequently and cause a lot of pain and suffering on the way.
Re-read your post. Not sure, but your premise seems close to mine, given our different backgrounds, experiences, etc. You, I presume, are East; I am West…different Imps, see. Comparative philosophy must have some goal, right? I Just don’t know what that is.
Always a pleasure to read
here.
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You have probably heard the latest misdirection from D.T. by now. The reprobate becomes more reprobative. The most amazing thing? People who voted him into office are gleefully gloating. These new-age pioneers don’t realize the perils of having someone like him in a position of power. Sigh, and, yawn.
Trump’s retribution runs deep. It does not matter who he attacks, or whether their ideology is offensive to him…if he did not put them where they are, they are. expendendible. That is not democracy, it is autocracy. Or, authoritariian populism, which scared the bejesus out of everyone, and the term evaporated. This is only re-beginning.
He will do more damage, in his name. Good luck America. You will need it…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just a continuing symptom of Trumpishness. He has done little, in comparison with ancestors, whereas Trump has done what his father intended—and more. A retired academic friend said something like: he (Kennedy) is the guy with a worm in his brain.I cannot imagine what will happen at health and human services, should Kennedy take the helm. I suppose we will find out, hmmmm?