Desk Report,
Post-coup cultural fascism
After the July mass uprising, people are able to speak without fear. Those words that would have led to oppression and coercion, or even the threat of disappearance, are being said with ease. There are many arrangements to create a narrative all around. It seems that behind all these narratives, are we losing the important truth? The exact reason why the dictatorship fell, looking at the events of the year after the uprising, it seems that we have forgotten it.
Post-coup cultural fascism
Seeing the power of the uprising and its scale, many thought that the political force emerging from it would be the task of taking the uprising forward towards revolution. It would act as an organized force for the country’s social, economic and cultural revolution. Such expectations must be called ambition. However, it was difficult to imagine that after the unthinkable events of the uprising, a new authoritarianism would attack popular culture and many people would be killed through planned mob violence. Many such incidents have occurred. The homes of Sufi saints, Pirs, Dervishes, and Bauls and Fakirs have been attacked and set on fire, and the houses of minorities have been burned down in communal violence. The Awami League turned the Liberation War into its fascist cultural ideology. Their fabricated narrative was a powerful weapon in identifying the enemy. With the fall of the Awami regime, the Awami narrative of the Liberation War also fell, there is no doubt. But it is by no means the fall of the Liberation War; nor is it a victory for the anti-Liberation War forces. Those who are pitting the 24th Uprising against the Liberation War are in a way legitimizing the fascist narrative of the Liberation War and in this process are trying to secure political benefits by attacking the Liberation War. We have seen that these anti-Liberation War forces are trying to destroy all the signs of the Liberation War by erasing the commemorative icons of fascism. It should not be forgotten that the Liberation War does not mean the Awami narrative. The Liberation War and its cultural ideology are part of our independent being. Cultural ideology is one of the ideologies that sustain a party or class in state power. After the coup, it is natural and positive that all political parties will want to build their own cultural ideology. As a cultural expression, festivals and ceremonies connect people in society with each other, creating spiritual bonds between them, which makes a state stand on a people’s foundation. For this reason, the return of Eid processions like the Baisakhi procession is also a hopeful event. The popular culture of this country is also enriched by the organization of ghazals, hamds, naats, qawwalis, and nasheeds. But why should other expressions of popular culture be destroyed in order to build a cultural ideology? Such an attempt is called cultural fascism. Attacking Baul-fakir hideouts in groups, burning shrines, stopping Urs ceremonies, and demolishing Khankas is pure cultural fascism. A widely used strategy to establish fascism is to brand a section of the population as an enemy and then use the anger and jealousy of others to make them loyal and organized. Authoritarian rulers always use this strategy of fascism to some extent. In India, Narendra Modi’s Hindutva fascism has identified the Muslim population as an enemy. The BJP has been so successful in implementing this strategy that for some, the life of a cow has become more important than that of a human. The Dadri lynching incident in Uttar Pradesh is proof of this. This incident has shocked sensitive people. A villager named Mohammad Akhlaq was killed in Dadri on suspicion of sacrificing a cow on Eid-ul-Azha. All anti-Muslim activities including the cow protection movement, NRC, and CAA are part of Modi’s fascist strategy. On the other hand, the main enemies of religious fascists in Bangladesh have become the Sufis, dervishes, Pirs, Auliyas, Bauls, and Fakirs, as well as the country’s leftists and feminists.
