CLUELESS CELEBRITIES AND AGENDA DRIVEN ACTIVISTS

 

Celebrities have an unenviable role to play in social media. They have to comment and take sides in issues that neither concern them, nor do they know anything about them. Climate change is one such topic and farmer’s protest is another. Social media has made them poster boys and girls and every time competing and contrasting echo chambers want them to air their views in their favour lest they will not hesitate to troll them and castigate them as sub-humans. Even Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar and the legendary Amitabh Bacchan are not out of the reach of their venomous spit!

The hypocrisy: The activism propounded in social media has the unique ability of creating the awe inspiring images of icons of righteousness like Great Thunbeg. She was so angry with the way that the elders were mistreating mother earth that she gave up going to school, sailed in an alleged “zero emission yacht” transatlantic since she refuses to fly, given the carbon footprint of air travel, and reached the Unite Nations office in New York to deliver the now famous “how dare you” speech. What the climate activists forgot to tell you however was that a crew of 5 to 7 people had to be flown transatlantic in order to bring this alleged zero emission yacht back to Europe with the associated  5 to 7 times increase in carbon emission!

Friends, you will have to understand that Greta Thunberg is not a person; she is a carefully crafted image of the left and left of centre activists of the world who have an agenda to fulfill so that they remain accountable to their sponsors. So it was not unsurprising when the same Greta Thunberg  wads into the Indian farm imbroglio—supporting farmers of Punjab and Haryana who not only are responsible for some of the worst annual carbon emissions anywhere on earth through their crop burning, but also for significant health problems, including asthma and cancer.

In the name of ‘green revolution’ these farmers have systematically destroyed crop diversity and hence our food security by going exclusively for water guzzling crops, which are of mediocre quality, which the government is forced to purchase paying minimum support price for our public distribution system. Their unsustainable irrigation practices will cause Punjab’s water table to get depleted in the next 10 to 15 years, and their rampant use of chemical fertilizers has poisoned the soil. As if this was not enough these farmers also grow Eucalyptus as a commercial crop and this extracts more water from the ground that anything else known to man, further playing havoc with our ground water. And now when you see Greta Thunberg and all the climate activists whom she represents oppose our farm laws you will have no difficulty in understanding the magnitude of their ignorance or the scale of their hypocrisy or  the conspiracy of destabilizing our democracy or all three.

The celebrity factor: Celebrities have an important role to play in any movement, but for that to happen there are a few preconditions. The celebrity must understand the issue thoroughly and their soul should endorse it. If they truly believe in what they are doing they can do winders. When a religious minority in our villages was discrediting our polio drops as a drug which will make the minorities infertile Amitabh Bacchan was roped in for his legendary ‘Do boond zindagi ki’ advertisement and his image was enough to bring the polio campaign back on rails and we eventually succeeded in eradication of the disease. Again it was the same star campaigner who spearheaded the campaign against open defecation by his ‘Darwaza bandh to bimari bandh’ call in our now famous ‘Swachata Abhiyan’ and we succeeded in making most of the country open defecation free.

The problem crops up when the celebrities endorse a movement without understanding what the movement is all about. How many right wing news channels and Hollywood stars endorsed the eccentricities of Donald Trump? They even chose to find faults with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and were fanatically pitching for ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Proud Boys’ all the way. Then Trump’s goons laid siege on the U.S. Capitol, ransacked it and searched frantically for Vice President Mike Pence to hang him! Now that they have made a complete fool of themselves, where are those celebrities today?

So every time a new law is passed, celebrities need not take sides. Not until they have not understood the law in all 360 degrees. This is not their job. They are experts in some other field of life. They need not be expert in agriculture, military warfare, refugee crisis, terrorism, and marriage and divorce laws. If they have a large social media following, it comes with an even larger responsibility. If their half cooked half baked knowledge leads to their audience getting misinformed, they cannot absolve themselves of their responsibility. Worse still, if because of their ignorance, groups with vested interest take them for a ride, they will have nowhere to hide!

Misuse of Celebrity status: Rihanna’s tweet supporting the farmers’ agitation in India is a perfect example of how vested interest groups are using the celebrities. She naturally knows nothing about the three new farm laws and neither is she expected to know. A  certain Mo Dhaliwal, the founder of the Canada-based Poetic Justice Foundation (PJF) which has Khalistani links, and that also created the controversial ‘toolkit’ tweeted by Greta Thunberg, is one of the Directors of the PR firm – Skyrocket which allegedly paid $2.5 million (Rs 18 crore) to Rihanna for this tweet. Khalistanis obviously care two hoots about the farm laws, they just want to destabilise Punjab for their own nefarious reasons and Rihanna fell for it hook line and sinker! Now Shiv Sena wants to misuse Bollywood and cricket celebrities, but they are smart and not falling for their bait.

Khalistan, for those who do not know or do not remember, was a violent movement behind waves of terror attacks in the ’80s, including the assassination of then India Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Indian agencies have repeatedly flagged how Pakistan’s ISI is trying to re-organise the movement from foreign soil, most prominently Canada, the US and the UK.

Incidentally Rihanna, who considers herself to be a climate activist, or at least her tweets make her look like one, has a few skeletons in her cupboard.  Her love for animal hide can be seen in the internet. There are enough photos of her to have butchered an entire herd of cows to satiate her fashion needs. Her fleet of cars includes Chevrolet Suburban SUV, two Porsches (a 997 Turbo and 911 Turbo S), a Lamborghini Aventador, a Mercedes SLR McLaren, and a Mercedes Maybach limousine. Now nobody would ever describe them as remotely sustainable or remotely eco-friendly.

Agenda driven Celebrities: While you can excuse High School dropouts like Greta and Rihanna for not understanding the three Indian farm laws when educated intellectuals choose to oppose the law only because they oppose Prime Minister Modi ther is a problem. Celebrities like prominent historian Mr. Ramchandra Guha, who cannot be clueless about the environmental consequences of Punjab’s unsustainable farming practices are also fighting these laws tooth and nail. He is one of the most authoritative environmental historians of India. While one would expect him to exercise a calming influence on clueless celebrities, clueless celebrities are influencing scholars like him to tacitly support the ecocide in Punjab through calculated and deliberate acts of omission. And this suits his anti-Modi stance and endears him to his echo-chamber in the social media.

Agenda driven Climate activists: Our own home grown agenda driven climate activists Disha Ravi, Nikita Jacob and Shantanu Muluk too are agenda driven. Otherwise despite working in the climate sphere for a few years now why are they unfamiliar with the climate rot perpetrated by the Punjab farmers? Why are they in cahoots with Mo Dhaliwal, a Canadian Indian who is an open supporter of the banned terror movement asking for a separate Khalistan? Why were they planning to target India’s symbols like tea and yoga? Why was the toolkit talking about physical action outside Indian embassies and offices? Did Disha, Nikita and Shantanu not see that the document, purportedly created by themselves, called for “economic warfare against India and certain Indian companies”? Is this just a contrarian point of view that should be considered under ‘freedom of expression’ or is this open treason and sedition?

The violence that happened on India’s Republic Day on January 26 could not have been spontaneous. It takes immense planning and resources to push hundreds of armed lumpens posed as farmers into Delhi. It is very important to understand who the people who authored this toolkit are. Why are the same faces cropping up in all agitations against Triple Talaq, Article 370, CAA and now farm laws? Who is sponsoring them? Where is the money coming from? This is a dangerous ongoing saga and the ignorant celebrities should stay away from this lest they burn their fingers.

The 2006 cult classic ‘Idiocracy’ had drawn linkages between celebrities and environmental collapse, long before this farce played out on Twitter and TV. The movie predicted that the climate will only get worse if we listen to the policy prescriptions of these shockingly untutored “celebrities” instead of environment experts. When a comedy movie predicts the future of climate change more accurately than seasoned experts, you know you’re in serious trouble.