barkha dutt (@BDUTT) tweeted at 0:26 PM on Fri, Sep 08, 2017:
Unbearable polarization over the murder of #GauriLankesh – when argument & ideology makes Grief a contestation we have lost our humanity
(https://twitter.com/BDUTT/status/906048665524985856?s=03)

Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) tweeted at 1:24 PM on Fri, Sep 08, 2017:
Bad enough society polarised; but now journalists getting divided over death of colleague leaves me angry/depressed. Yeh kahan aa gaye Hum?
(https://twitter.com/sardesairajdeep/status/906063188386488320?s=03)

This is in the aftermath of the murder of Gauri Lankesh, a person who was bringing out a low-circulation Kannada weekly in Bengaluru. Almost as soon as the murder happened, the pseudo-liberals – of which Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai are prominent members – started to blame the votaries of Hindutva for the crime. When the Hindutvavadis retaliated to the slander, the pseudo-liberals changed their tune to saying that the Hindutvavadis are celebrating the murder. No mention is made that it was actually the pseudo-liberals that were cheering because they thought that they had a new stick to beat the votaries of Hindutva, when every previous stick they picked up turned out to be a straw.

And an Internet Hindu interpreted Dutt’s tweet as follows:

miss mumbai (@missmumbai1) tweeted at 1:04 PM on Fri, Sep 08, 2017:
Meaning – Hindus have defeated us in creating false narrative over unknown activist Gauri Lankesh https://t.co/Ig3072YYo4
(https://twitter.com/missmumbai1/status/906058177086672897?s=03)

However, there were some amongst their own gang who realised that what appeared, within the first hour, to be a wonderful opportunity for them, also turned out to be a straw in the very next hour. So we have this tweet from another prominent member of the pseudo-secular gang:

bhupendra chaubey (@bhupendrachaube) tweeted at 9:36 PM on Wed, Sep 06, 2017:
Last few tweets of #GauriLankesh, her brother’s views seem to be building different narrative than what many of our liberal friends building.
(https://twitter.com/bhupendrachaube/status/905462209823653888?s=03)

Instead of backing off and try to intelligently organise their forces, the pseudo-liberals barreled ahead without any thought.  Their objective was not justice for Lankesh, or freedom of speech, or anything so hallow.  Their objective was to manufacture a false narrative that they have been so unsuccessful in doing over the last three years. Every time they thought that they had a wonderful weapon, it turned out to be a dud. And now, they are getting seriously desperate.

However, some in the gang had moments of sanity, as in case of the following:

Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) tweeted at 11:29 PM on Wed, Sep 06, 2017:
My humble request to fellow journalists. Let’s keep all politicians out of our protests. Last thing we need is our platforms seem partisan https://t.co/AqiPdYBU4n
(https://twitter.com/ShekharGupta/status/905490647511048192?s=03)

It must be said that even Barkha Dutt had this flash of sanity:

barkha dutt (@BDUTT) tweeted at 5:58 PM on Wed, Sep 06, 2017:
Spoke at Press Club protest for #GauriLankeshMurder but wish all politicians had stayed away and it was a Journalist only event. https://t.co/mGzRXSh2C1
(https://twitter.com/BDUTT/status/905407346133745664?s=03)

Gupta, at least on this subject, kept his sanity intact.  Dutt could not, as can be seen in the tweet at the top of this article.  Or, maybe she thought sanity would be against her own agenda, and had to be quickly discarded.  If the organisers wanted the politicians away, it was a simple thing to do.  The flashes of sanity by Gupta and Dutt seem to be after-thoughts, coming from a realisation that things were slipping out of their hands, and that the Hindutva Troll Army was once again bringing out the truth in the matter.

Like Gupta, I am sure that the pseudo-liberals in the mainstream media know what the truth is. But the new political dispensation in the centre, along with the rise of social media, has disturbed them no end.  It is not just that their power to influence decision making has ended, but they are no longer able to play their parlour games of the past.  They are still not used to the change in the rules of the game.  Or they think that the rules can be bended as they did in the past.

But the relentlessness of social media does provide sparks of sanity amongst some of the pseudo-liberals.  And the fact that they find it necessary to express these sparks in the open – even if inadvertently – has made the rest go even more ballistic.

Chaubey in his tweet says that the pseudo-liberals were building a narrative.  What does building mean?  Clearly, there was an attempt to thrust a falsehood on society. This is what the pseudo-liberals have been doing all this time, with little care about how it was impacting society. It is not that the people at large have awakened after the advent of the internet. What the internet has done is that it has provided an avenue to society to express themselves without being censored by the pseudo-liberals.

It is time that the pseudo-liberals wake up and smell the coffee, or whatever else they imbibe the first thing in the morning.  And start dwelling on the fact that they themselves are responsible for the polarisation.

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