Narendra Modi and the Donald Trump Parallel

I have these ongoing debates with my dad on Narendra Modi. And that got me thinking of the parallels with Donald Trump. No matter what they did or said, they are extremely popular during election campaigns. And even win. But how can that be? How can such things happen in countries with a free press, with freedom of speech? How can it happen in a growing country and a rich country?

Howard Kurtz points out how aggravating Trump is to his detractors:

“They struggle to understand why he pays no penalty when they blow the whistle. What they don’t quite grasp is that their attacks only make him stronger. This is not to let him off the hook for mistakes, just to recognize that Trump has completely rewritten the rule book, infuriating those who thought they enforced the rules.”

Those lines would apply equally to how many feel about Modi.

But why doesn’t all this “blowing the whistle” work? Matt Taibbi talks of an increasingly common approach these days:

“(A common approach is to) Blame the backlash on media bias and walk away a hero.”

Even if the candidate/PM doesn’t do it, his supporters on social media do take this approach.

Further, the rules of politics aren’t like the laws of physics. They change over time. What’s unacceptable yesterday can be the norm tomorrow. And that transition catches many unawares. As Jay Rosen wrote:

“The whole system rested on shared beliefs about what would happen if candidates went beyond the system as it stood cycle to cycle. Those beliefs have now collapsed because Trump “tested” and violated most of them— and he is still leading in the polls.”

So too did Modi during the 2014 elections.

Why is this happening? Mostly because voters are sick of existing candidates and their political correctness (aka “secularism” in Indian context). Katy Tur:

“I asked them what they think of Donald Trump and whether or not they’re bothered by his inaccurate statements and whether they think they matter. And not a single one of them said that they thought it mattered. They said they like him because they think he’s going to be a strong leader, and they think he’s going to bring the change to Washington that they want.”

That applies almost entirely to Modi as well. The danger, of course, is whether you get a strong leader like Winston Churchill or a strong leader like Adolf Hitler? But once a country votes for weak leaders who run the country to the ground, more and more people become willing to take their chances with a strong leader. And only time will tell which kind of strong leader they voted for.