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We are living in utterly horrific times right now. Ever since Donald Trump was sworn in for his second presidency, schoolchildren have been detained straight from the classroom, certain birthright citizenship protections have been nullified, and the country as a whole has become a domestic and geopolitical ball of hostility to a degree that can only be called historic.
The signs are all there, folks — extreme nationalism, hatred for minority groups, cult of personality. Whatever conceivable line was separating “Trump” and “fascist” has all but vanished with these misanthropic extremes that too many voters gave him permission to carry out. It’s not too late to push back, however — TikTok‘s @alsomiska’s home country of India recently faced similar affronts, and she’s now hoping to inform American public how they can still get things under control the way the people of India did.
In the video, Miska points to a period in 2019-2020 where India gained international attention for mass public protests against the Indian government. These protests were in response to a bill — the Citizenship Amendment Bill — that critics deemed an attempt to target Muslims and render them stateless.
More on that in a moment, but Miska also notes in the video that India made it to the seventh step of fascism. This is in reference to Naomi Wolf’s 2007 book The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, wherein she outlines 10 steps that fascist countries of yore (Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Russia) have followed. Step seven is “target key individuals” — Muslims in India, immigrants in the United States.
Per the BBC, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, passed in the Indian upper house of parliament in 2019, would have fast-tracked the citizenship process for undocumented immigrants of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian faith, so long as they could prove that they came from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh. Typically, undocumented immigrants are jailed and/or deported, but the aforementioned groups would have exemption on account of the bill.
Here’s where it gets scandalous; the bill does not name Muslims as a protected faith in the bill, which just by itself is a form of religious discrimination. More to the point, however, it would essentially divide undocumented immigrants into two groups: Muslims and non-Muslims.
Miska then also names the proposed National Registry of Citizens, which would compile all legal Indian citizens so as to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, as a key element in the CAB’s alleged anti-Muslim mandate. Those undocumented immigrants would have protection under the CAB, but only if they belong to one of the faiths listed above. Muslims, therefore, would not.
The bill, however, ultimately could not be enacted. This is because, as Miska points out, the citizens of the country protested relentlessly against it in what’s now known as the Citizenship Amendment Act protests. They took to the streets, with some cities organizing 24-hour sit-ins, and prevented the government from enacting a bill that would have targeted their neighbors, friends, and families. The EU eventually intervened after months turned into a year and change, and Indian fascism has been on hold ever since.
The question is, what will the American public do to protect their neighbors, friends, and families from Trump’s relentless, ICE-enabled campaign that has floated the idea of using Guantanamo Bay as a camp? What indeed?