*The Ranveer Allahabadia and 'India's Got Latent' Controversy: A Few Pertinent Observations.* ✍️ Progressive Artists' League 📱 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A7rxfmxRE/ ____________________ The people outraged, the police from Mumbai to Assam working on a war footing, the chief ministers of the biggest party in the world furious and calling for action against the perpetrators, from cyber cells to the human rights commission, all the agencies of the government are working overnight—not against the deaths of hundreds of people in the Kumbh, not against the lynchings of the minorities in the name of God, not against the institutional murders of the students and professors, not against the communal soldouts of the mainstream media, nor against the rioters and terrorists sitting in the parliament who are representing the offended people. The action on the part of police was rapid as instant FIRs were lodged and interrogations started. This same efficiency that was sound sleeping when it was BrijBhushan Singh or Kuldeep Singh Sengar for the women wrestlers had to sit on the protests demanding action, and the rape victim had to self-immolate herself in front of CM Yogi Adityanath’s residence to just register an FIR against the perpetrator. This time, the issue in focus, on which the members of the most sanskari party are creating a hullabaloo, is a crass joke made by a clown of the ruling party—Ranveer Allahbadia, aka beerbiceps, a YouTuber who was recently awarded the ‘disrupter of the year’ award by the supreme leader himself so that the legacy will be handed over to the next generation properly. The crass joke that mentions sexual relations between parents and children was made by Ranveer Allahbadia in comedian Samay Raina’s so-called dark comedy reality show ‘India’s Got Latent,’ a show that has already spread such misogyny, patriarchy, and objectification of women that it doesn't deserve more sentences here. The fact that the party that has its CM and PM at the forefront in making communal, misogynistic, casteist, and crass comments is suddenly taking a moral high ground condemning Ranveer Allahbadia’s crass joke is more dark a joke than the entire career of Samay Raina. The majority of the people and politicians who are outraging in the name of a joke on mother, or family, or culture are from the same Bharatiya Janata Party whose IT cell members last year gang-raped a woman student at gunpoint at IIT BHU. The same party whose close followers welcomed rapists of Bilkis Bano with garlands. The same BJP that has shielded BrijBhushan and has taken out a Tiranga Yatra in support of the rapists in Kathua. The same Bhartiya Janata Party whose ministers from Smriti Irani to S. Jaishankar and from Nitin Gadkari to Piyush Goyal have given interviews reminiscing about the good old days of their youth, creating a soft and positive image of RSS to Ranveer Allahbadia, the serious offender of the sacredness of the institution of family. These podcasts were a direct association between the government and the YouTuber, as content like this is instrumental in capturing the youth population, the reason why Modi gave awards to the content creators in a huge event held at Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam that was echoed with communal slogans as the supreme leader passed on his party’s cultural legacy to the current generation’s ideals at the same time, ensuring a huge chunk of votes from millions of subscribers and viewers of these creators. Ranveer Allahbadia, aka beerbiceps, was one of the few who received the award, as he earned it through years of propagation of pseudoscience and communal history that speeds up the fascist project of creating a purely ideological community as opposed to the false enemy. Now the vulgarity and obscenity being spread in Samay Raina’s show and even in the joke that is in contention must be condemned, but we also have to understand the material basis of these jokes and the ground prepared by the fascist forces through a culture industry that is hell-bent on reducing the critical thinking capacity of the people from all walks of life, especially the youth, and filling their minds with the misogynist, patriarchal content. Moreover, it is this profit-centric system in which the women are seen as commodities, in which rampant objectification of the women is done in the mainstream movies, and the people are trained to “enjoy” subtle to extreme vulgarity. From the west to the east and from the so-called developed countries to the countries in the so-called third world, capitalism has already past its thriving years and lost its progressive potential as we are witnessing a moribund stage of capitalism with cultural degradation and decadence on a vast scale. Thus even in the countries of the West, crass and vulgar content is being produced and consumed at the same or even greater speed. However in a country that has not witnessed a renaissance or where change occurred at a slow pace without any revolution, modernity’s most rotten elements coupled with the most conservative elements of earlier feudal society make it objectively difficult for the people to have rational and scientific temperament, the fact fascist forces and their puppets like Ranveer Allahbadia exploited through their pseudoscientific claims and uncritical interviews of the ruling party ministers. Thus the frustrated, unemployed, and alienated youth are systematically reduced by the fascist forces into docile subjects consuming decadent content and internalizing fascist ideology as conformity replaces consciousness. The content produced by the so called influencers along with other mainstream content that is created with a motive of selling products through the advertisements and with the motive of subtly planting fascist ideology in the people and creating a cultural hegemony so that the working people could not see or realize the contradictions in the society through a layer of ideology on their eyes that inverts reality and take them to a world of fantasy at the same time dehumanizing them to such an extent that their heart acts just as a muscle bereft of any humane concern, as for it the lives of other people are worthless and their own feelings are reduced to a decadent experience that they somehow “enjoy”. This includes the crass jokes, the so-called dank comedy, the pornography, and the erotic folk-inspired popular vulgar songs and communal songs with psychedelic beats and hypnotic rhythms that make people kill each other in riots and lynchings. Most importantly, the solution to this vulgarity does not lie in some kind of harsh regulations or ban since it is this capitalist system itself that has perpetuated and shielded this crassness generation after generation. Thus, any kind of regulations or ban would, in the last analysis, help the ruling class, as the BJP is already planning to somehow bring YouTube into the folds of censorship through a recently proposed broadcasting bill, and issues like these are just excuses to ultimately regulate the content on YouTube, including the relatively independent media that troubles the BJP. Moreover, the ban and boycott culture of the right would naturally extend its arms to restrict and punish any art or artists that depict the process of sex or nakedness irrespective of the historical political context behind these artworks. Thus M. F. Hussain’s Bharatmata will be vandalized, Six obscenity trials on Manto will be reopened, and Michelangelo’s Adam will be forced to wear a saffron pajama. The only solution to this is a change of this oppressive structure, and only with the removal of this profit-centric system with the rule of the working people can this rot and crassness be annihilated. Lastly, though we do not think Samay Raina’s show and the jokes made in it are important enough to deserve a long write-up, we take this as an opportunity first, to expose the ruling party that has sent its biggest ministers to Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcasts. Second, to present a clear image of the class character of the state, Third, to explain the process of capitalist decadence not just in India but on a global scale represented in india by the social media influencers, and lastly, an opportunity to clear our stand on comedy as a hammer that hits the fascists the most. As opposed to the incorrect understanding of comedy for the sake of making people laugh, we believe, humor and satire must be used to expose and ridicule the fascist state in front of the working people. Instead of the so-called dark comedy of India’s Got Latent, in the dark times we’re living in, we need satire and weirdness that clearly states its partisanship with the oppressed. The genre of dark or weirdness has been traveled by the likes of Goya to Kafka and from Brecht to Charlie Chaplin, humor acted as a tool to ridicule the image of the dictator. From Harishankar Parsai to Anwar Maqsood and Moin Akhter, a sense of responsibility as satirists has prevailed. The Progressive Artists’ League upholds these artistic traditions of humor as a tool that dents the fascists the most as we reject the joker tradition of comedy for the sake of making people laugh. At the same time, we reject the culturally decadent content not just in ‘India’s Got Latent’ but the general mainstream content industry from Bollywood to stand-up comedy that far from ridiculing the state mocks the powerless, makes casteist, misogynist jokes, and “makes people laugh” by mocking the already weak and voiceless people while taking all the state patronage and wealth, which ultimately is created by the same people who are being mocked.