Jason Stanley on Trump's India visit

Jason Stanley writes in the Guardian-

In the early 20th century, the US deployed citizenship strategically to exclude non-whites and non-Christians, which impressed Hitler.

In 1905, Britain passed a law, the first of its kind, to end or greatly reduce Jewish immigration. An Indian Member of Parliament voted for it as did some Jewish MPs.
Why did Britain and America exclude 'colored' immigration? The answer given at the time was they wanted to protect the proletariat from low wage competition. In other words, immigration controls were linked to popular sovereignty. Furthermore, the working class genuinely did not like people who did not look similar to themselves. This was Democracy in action. What impressed Right Wing Germans was America's relative freedom from Communist subversion. Furthermore, there appeared to be a 'scientific' basis for things like segregation and eugenic laws and Henry Ford's rabid anti-semitism- all of which the Germans believed helped contain the Red Menace while also pandering to working class prejudices.

Hitler was a windbag thoroughly indoctrinated in an anti-semitic ideology by the German Army and the ultra-Nationalist Professors it hired for the specific purpose of combating Leftist propaganda. It was not admiration for the US or any other country which caused Hitler to pursue an evil agenda. However, it must be said, Hitler improved the lot of the German working class. That is why his people had blind faith in him as the Divinely inspired Fuehrer.

In Part II of Mein Kampf, he decries the idea of a state in which “race and nationality” play no role in citizenship, proposing a “national state”:

Stanley may be surprised to learn that no contemporary of Hitler thought a State could be constructed on any other basis than 'race and nationality'. Stalin's theory of Nationality was actually more stringent than Hitler's.

“Anything crazier and less thought-out than our present laws of state citizenship is hardly possible to conceive. But there is at least one state in which feeble attempts to achieve a better arrangement are apparent: the United States of America, where they absolutely forbid [the] naturalisation of certain defined races, and thus are making a modest start in the direction of something not unlike the conception of the national state.”

Mein Kampf is a little misleading as to Hitler's true opinion of America. As subsequent events showed, he thought it was too mongrelized to present a genuine challenge.

It should be remembered that Germany and America imposed similar immigration barriers at around the same time- i.e. the 1890s. Indeed, the American policy of returning anyone they didn't think would be productive, forced European countries, as well as the steamship companies (who were forced to repatriate rejected candidates at their own cost) to make things harder for those seeking to cross borders- even if the final destination was America.

Imperial Germany had tough rules on residency and work permits. It frequently expelled foreigners- Russian Jews in particular- in their thousands. The first world war greatly worsened the conditions of 'resident aliens'- more especially those from enemy countries. Concentration Camps for 'enemy aliens' sprang up. Oddly, the Brits were worse than the Germans in this matter. Even more oddly, the first politician to interest himself in the plight of the internees was Sir Oswald Moseley.

My wife’s great-grandfather Takayuki Yaokawa Sato was a fisherman by trade. At our family gatherings, we show an old American photo of him, with a fishing pole, proudly holding a large fish. Sato, a Japanese immigrant, married Grace Virginia Woods, a US citizen, in the early 20th century, when the country was gripped by fears of a “yellow peril” and the supreme court declared Asians ineligible for naturalisation. In concert with the 1907 Expatriation Act, which revoked citizenship to American women who married non-citizens, this deprived Woods of her citizenship. She only regained it upon her husband’s death.

In 1931, an amendment to the Nationality Act restored citizenship to American women who had married an Asian immigrant who was not eligible for Naturalization.

Why bring up Japan? Historically, they have been the least hospitable to immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Japanese women who married non Japanese men in foreign countries were not allowed to bring their children back with them to Japan. Thus there many 'stranded wives'- e.g. in Manchuria.

US immigration policy was a source for Hitler’s “national state” vision.

No. That lunatic thought the US was already too mongrelized but, in 1925, did not think it politic to say so. Why? Germany was dependent on American loans. Furthermore, America was admired. However, Hitler's true opinion of America was revealed when he quite gratuitously declared war on it though his pact with the Japs did not oblige him to do so.

On the other hand it must be admitted that the American policy of wearing clothes did influence Hitler who would otherwise have roamed around in the nuddy. This would have seriously impeded his ascent to power coz he had a tiny dick.

In September 1935, the German government realised this vision with the Nuremberg Laws, which prohibited non-Aryans from marrying those of “German blood” and created a category of second-class citizenship for Jews. Here too, Hitler was influenced by American ideology, in particular the Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws. At the time, my Jewish father was a German citizen in Berlin, where he had been born in November 1932. On 15 September 1935, he became a second-class citizen.

By October of 1933, Jews had been excluded from many professions and even the ownership of land. They were already treated as 'non-Aryan' subjects without even the sort of 'second class' rights the Americans gave Black people in the South.

Stripping minority groups of the state protection associated with full citizenship leaves them vulnerable to brutal treatment.

Nonsense! Killing and robbing them with or without the color of law is all that matters. There are plenty of countries which, on paper, have wonderful laws. Yet minorities are massacred.

In Hannah Arendt’s phrase from The Origins of Totalitarianism, citizenship is “the right to have rights”.

Rwandan Tutsis had the 'right to have rights'. This did not stop their being slaughtered on a massive scale. They then fought a war and won. That's what gave them back their right to have rights.

The Nuremberg Laws coincided with the building of large detention centres – concentration camps – for those affected by them. The US Holocaust Museum describes a concentration camp as a zone where the legal norms of arrest and imprisonment do not apply.

What about the massacre of the Armenians? There were no Camps and no 'legal norms'. Yet millions died. Laws don't matter unless there is an incentive compatible mechanism for their enforcement.

The European-American concept of a national state had influence outside Europe. VD Savarkar, the Indian political theorist who ushered in Hindu nationalist ideology, was influenced by European ethno-nationalism.

So was Gandhi who quoted Mazzini. But Savarkar was a disciple of Shyamji Krishna Varma who in turn was associated with Swami Dayanand who was the disciple of Virajanand Dandeesha who was the disciple of Purnanand Giri and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that Savarkar was influenced by the European habit of gaining nourishment by eating food. Had he not copied the European in this respect the poor fellow would have starved to death.

He took the Nazi treatment of German Jews to be a model for eventual Hindutva policy towards India’s Muslim residents.

Nonsense! Savarkar's anti-Muslim views date from the early Twenties. There may be people who want to kill all the people of a different faith but they don't want to do it in the expensive way that the Nazis did. Mob violence is cheaper.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is a Hindu nationalist movement dating back to the mid-1920s, many of whose members venerated Savarkar.

But so did most Indian Nationalists. Why? The guy had spent a lot of time in prison for trying to fight the British.

The RSS was set up by a Doctor in imitation of the Congress Seva Dal which had been set up by another Doctor and to which Jawaharlal Nehru belonged.

Senior leaders, such as MS Golwalkar, were influenced by Mussolini and Hitler.

But it was Mahatma Gandhi who met Mussolini and was greatly taken with him. The cretin said he thought Mussolini was working towards the same goal as himself. In 1938, Govind Vallabh Pant, Premier of U.P- the largest state- said 'Italy has its Il Duce. Germany has its Fuehrer. We have the Mahatma'.

Senior Congress leader Netaji Subhas Bose actually went to Berlin to meet Hitler and gain his help. Bose and Nambiar recruited Indians who ended up in the Waffen SS. By comparison, the RSS was a weak sister to the muscular Hinduism of the Congress Party.

The Bharatiya Janata party, the political wing of RSS and now India’s ruling party, has begun to implement changes in citizenship laws that echo the Nuremberg Laws.

The BJP is not the political wing of the RSS. Indeed, the only reason the RSS has preserved its ethos and remains respected is because it is not political.

India’s new Citizenship Amendment Act allows for a fast-track to citizenship for non-Muslim migrants, thereby discriminating against Muslims.

India has always granted citizenship to refugees from Islamic persecution. It has always denied citizenship to economic migrants from Islamic countries. However, it must be said, under Nehru, some non-migrant Muslims were unfairly deprived of property which was taken over by 'the Custodian of Evacuee (later 'Enemy') Property'. Thus, deprived of resources, they were forced to migrate to Pakistan.

It is not discriminatory to recognize that Muslims don't have a well founded fear of persecution in an Islamic Republic. However, as a matter of fact, not theoretical speculation, non Muslims in some such places have been forced to abandon their property and flee so as to preserve their life and their religion.

The proposed national register requires residents to prove their citizenship with documentation – which many in India lack.

But they will get the documentation when they register. It is worth having because it enables them to access benefits and entitlements. It is sufficient for the vast majority of Indians to speak in one's mother tongue to be immediately freed from any risk of being marked as a 'doubtful' case.

Together, these laws place Muslims without documentation in a quandary.

It only places people with an entitlement to documentation from their country of origin in a quandary.

Large detention centres are being built to house India’s Muslim residents who are declared ineligible for citizenship.

Why? Because the Supreme Court undertook to compile a Nationality Register which had been promised by successive Governments but which they had failed to deliver. Wikipedia states- ' The first detention centre in Assam had come up in 2008 under orders of the Gauhati High Court.^[4][12]  In 2011 the Assam government, when Congress was in power both at the Centre and in the state, had set up three detention camps^[a] with hundreds of illegal immigrants.^[14] In 2018, Rs 46 crore was sanctioned for a detention camp by the Narendra Modi government.^[12]
Why did Modi's government sanction money for this purpose? The answer is that they knew that the Supreme Court was going to publish the Nationality Register. This would set off a furore in Assam and perhaps spark a pogrom like the Nellie massacre of 1983 which forced Indira, and later Rajiv, Gandhi to bring in laws to protect the indigenous people of the North East from demographic displacement.

Like the US immigration policy so admired by Hitler, these laws are a mask: they are designed to privilege Hindus in the citizenship laws of the world’s largest democracy.

This idiot thinks Hitler needed a mask! The guy kept saying 'Aryans are great. Non-Aryans are shit' but nobody understood what he was saying. So he had to pass some laws. Then Jason's grandpappy was able to discover that 'Jews were second class citizens'. Hitler didn't like Jews. He didn't want to hug and kiss them. He was actually a nasty anti-semitic piece of shit.

Hindus are already privileged in India. Muslims are not. Everybody with eyes in their head can see this for themselves.

Trump leads an administration that seeks to return the US to the national state of Hitler’s adulation.

Rubbish! Hitler shot himself. Nobody wants to emulate that cretin.

In many respects, Modi’s India is considerably further along this path. The student has become the teacher.

When was India America's student? Never. We thought Americans were stupid, vulgar, racist, cunts. They emulated us by adopting things like affirmative action twenty years after we paved the way.

In what respect is Modi's India ahead of America? America, with a quarter of India's population, detained about 400,000 people a year under Obama who deported 3.2 million people. By comparison, India has scarcely deported anyone and its Detention Centers currently house little more than a thousand people.

There is more to fascism than changing citizenship laws. Fascist movements seek one-party rule: over the courts, the police, the military and the press.

So, Modi's India- where Detention Centers and Nationality Registers are set up on the orders of the Bench- is not Fascist at all. After all, the same thing happened under Manmohan Singh.

By contrast, Obama and Clinton- who deported more than Obama- are Fascists. The American President gets to chose Supreme Court nominees. The Indian Prime Minister has no such power.

They involve a cult of loyalty to a single leader and nostalgia for a mythic past when the nation was dominated by the privileged group.

So, the Republican Party is a Fascist organization.

But the core of fascist ideology is realised in changing citizenship laws to privilege a single ethnic group.

Thus when Britain changed its citizenship laws in 1983 to privilege people of British ancestry and discriminate against those born in Britain to foreign parents,  it was expressing the fascist ideology at its core.

This is why we regard the Nuremberg Laws as a defining moment in German history, and the concentration camp as the defining Nazi institution.

Stanley is wrong. The Nuremberg Laws weren't even a defining moment in German legal history let alone German history per se. Too much had already been done. It was clear that the Nazi regime was a lawless one. Some may have found it in their interest to pretend otherwise. But the truth is self-evident.

Other countries- the British in South Africa, the Americans in the Phillipines, had used Concentration Camps. What makes the Nazis uniquely evil is the gas chambers. But where in the law books of the Reich can you find any provision for them? Perhaps Stanley is a Holocaust denier. If there is no law permitting a thing, it could not have happened.

History has been rightly horrified by the Nuremberg Laws and their consequences.

The Nuremberg Laws did not matter. Nazi murderousness- with or without legal sanction- is what horrifies us. It is an easy matter to pass nice Laws but to behave like a beast.

Why, then, are so many countries going down this path?

Which countries? America? Trump is building gas chambers is he? Congress should deny him funding.

Fascism thrives during moments of perceived crisis, which can be represented as a zero-sum battle for group survival.

Fascism was thriving in Spain during the Fifties and Sixties. There was no 'perceived crisis' at the time.
Why did Fascism thrive in the first place? The answer is that the Communists were even more horrible.

The climate crisis, already taking the form of water wars between Indian states, is an example.

Tamil Nadu is acutely affected by 'water wars'. Why isn't it 'Fascist'? How come it isn't clamoring for immigrants to be deported? Assam has too much water. But it does want the Bengalis to leave.

The solution is international agreements, which recognise that we humans share similar fates – that our similarities far outweigh our differences.

Very true. Which is why we must support the Islamic Caliphate. Only conversion and strict adherence to the true faith can save us from an eternity of Hell Fire. Our similarities outweigh our differences, so we must all learn Arabic so as to be hear and obey the orders of God's Viceregent on Earth.

This liberalism is denounced as “globalism” by figures such as Trump, while liberals and leftists who defend India’s secular constitution are denounced as “anti-national” by the BJP and its acolytes.

 There appears to be an 'international agreement' amongst academics of a certain type that denouncing Trump and Modi is a salutary thing. However, there is a countervailing global agreement that such academics are cretins who can't argue their way out of a paper bag.

Trump’s triumphant visit to India demonstrates just how global ethno-nationalism, and its more violent sibling, fascism, has become.

But anything which is 'demonstrated' to Stanley is hopelessly wrong because he is a cretin. All nationalism is 'ethno-nationalism' because ethnos means 'Nation'. Since the fall of the great Empires, the whole world has consisted of nothing but Nation States. Fascism is not the sibling of Nationalism. Hitler and Mussolini wanted to conquer and rule over other Nations. Even Franco wanted to conquer Portugal.

Trump's visit to India demonstrates the same thing as Obama's visit or Dubya's or Clinton's. India is growing in importance. That's it. That's the whole story.