Indian stars to perform for Basket of deplorables

Donald Trump is the vilest major party candidate to have run for the office of the President of the United States ever. His faults are too innumerable to recount in one newspaper col-umn. He is a conman who cheated millions of people out of their money.

He is a racist and a misogynist who made offensive comments about every group of people imaginable – from Muslims, Indians, Mexicans, blacks and women to disabled people and army veter-ans. Everyone except white men. He is a foul-mouthed vulgarian, who openly boasts about fantasising about his own daughter and sexually assaulting women. He is an igno-rant war monger, who wonders why the US does not use its nuclear weapons indiscrimi-nately. He is a demagogue who wants to demolish institutions like NATO and WTO.

Trump is an unashamed conspiracy theory propagandist who by some estimates lies ap-proximately every 3 minutes and 20 seconds. His attacks and deceptions are so numer-ous that some of the world's most respectable publications like the Washington Post have come up with entire books to list them all. He is also the first person aspiring to be the leader of the free world in recent times who is unambiguous about his affinity to white su-premacy.

At the time of writing, due to a leaked tape from 2005 in which he boasts of as-saulting women in the most vulgar language imaginable, even those Republican party leaders who hesitantly endorsed him in the name of party unity are publicly condemning him while taking back their support and running for the hills in hopes of salvaging their political careers.

As his poll numbers slip and as his own party abandons him, it looks like there are only one group of people who are going to steadfastly stand with him. That group includes white nationalist organisations like the KuKluxKlan, their modern Internet savvy avatar called the 'alt-right' and our own Telugu film stars Ram Charan Tej and Akhil Akkineni. Yes, you read it right.

This October 15th, when Ram Charan Tej, Akhil Akkineni, Prabhu Deva and Sriya Saran to name a few, take to the stage in New Jersey they will not only be rooting for the Republican Hindu Coalition and Donald Trump but will also be metaphori-cally standing proudly with the likes of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of KuKlux-Klan.

The Republican Hindu Coalition itself is a curious example of the newly empowered natio-nalistic Hindu forces in India trying to strengthen their ties with their ideological counter-parts in the US with a shared and deep animosity towards the adherents of Islam. The In-dian Diaspora in the US has traditionally been a supporter of the Democrats with a stag-gering 81 per cent voting for Barack Obama when he ran for his second term in office.

But the new nationalistic, jingoistic mood in India is leading to similar sentiments in at least parts of Indian Diaspora and the man hoping to cash in on that craze seems to be Shalab Kumar, the founder of the Republican Hindu Coalition. Shalab made headlines as one of the mega donors of Trump in a year when most of the major donors of the Republican Party shunned their nominee.

With close ties to RSS and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shalab is one of the biggest supporters of Modi in the US and also was the man behind the high-level Congressional and Business delegation that visited Modi in March, 2013 at a time when the US government was avoiding Modi like radioactive sand. Not surprisingly, Shalab is a very enthusiastic supporter of Trump and his Muslim ban.

In a viral speech last month, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who is poised to be-come the first historic woman President of the United States next January, described a section of Trump supporters. She said, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it.”

Whether it is ignorance or due to some ulterior motives, some of our Tollywood and Bolly-wood stars are eager to jump into the ‘basket of the deplorables’. While Trump will inevita-bly lose on the 8th of November and go back to his casinos and gold resorts or even to a newly created Trump TV, our stars will forever be remembered as the Deplorables.

By Adarsh Matham