Leah Feiger: Which are coming towards us, it’s so ominous.
Vittoria Elliott: Thread.
Leah Feiger: And that’s probably true. Nilesh, thank you so much for joining us today. Listeners, again, if you see instances of generative AI in the wild this election year, anywhere in the world, you can tell us using the reporting form in our show notes. We’d love to hear from you. After the break, Tori and Nilesh will share with us their favorite conspiracies of the week.
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Leah Feiger: Welcome back, this is the Conspiracy of the Week. The part of the show where each of our guests gives us the best theory they’ve come across that week and I choose my favorite. Tori, what did you find?
Vittoria Elliott: Last week, our colleague David and I did a story on the website OpIndia, which is a right-wing website associated with the BJP that spreads Islamophobic conspiracy theories. One of them is Love Jihad, or Muslims trying to marry or kidnap Hindu women to force demographic change. We made a substantial story about them. Apparently we forced them to move to a subscription model.
Leah Feiger: Read this story in our show notes, guys, it’s good.
Vittoria Elliott: But I always love when I find a local flavor of an internationalized conspiracy. When we were researching this article, one of the articles that appeared on OpIndia and that I saw was that our friend George Soros, the favorite target of the right wing around the world…
Leah Feiger: It’s really impressive, honestly, that it’s gone global.
Vittoria Elliott: Normal? He is everywhere. In fact, his real point is that he is not, as the US right wing might claim, part of a global cabal. Often they will focus on his identity as a Jew, as an immigrant. But in India it is specially a white man.
Leah Feiger: Vivid.
Vittoria Elliott: And that he finances anti-India and anti-Hindu initiatives.
Leah Feiger: Wow.
Vittoria Elliott: Because he ultimately engaged in undermining India and Hindu identity. Again, I always think it’s amazing to see these global characters get a local twist to how they factor in the conspiracy here.
Leah Feiger: To our situation.
Vittoria Elliott: Yes.
Leah Feiger: The globalization of conspiracies is something I could talk about forever. Needy George, he just has no idea.
Vittoria Elliott: He just wants to finance some democracy initiatives.
Leah Feiger: It’s so wild. Okay, this is good. It was unexpected. Incredible. Nilesh, what have you got? What’s your conspiracy of the week?
Nilesh Christopher: I wanted to talk about Love Jihad because it was making all the headlines.
Leah Feiger: Vivid.
Nilesh Christopher: But more specifically, I was fascinated by a variation of this method called Vote Jihad. During one of the recent political rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself mentioned Vote Jihad. This gave credence to the long-standing conspiracy that Muslims would vote in immense blocs, which would undermine India’s Hindu character and, in the long run, undermine Hindu rights. It’s a conspiracy that has to do with India’s demography. Currently, Muslims constitute less than 15 percent of India’s population. But this conspiracy, as Tori said, is global and much of the Hindu right is constantly worried about it. This takes the form of a future What’s App where Hindus are constantly reminded that Muslim voting blocs will come together and elect Hindu candidates, otherwise they will ensure that Hindu rights are undermined.