One would need to have an IQ lower than that of a jellyfish to lie and say the exact same thing one was fact-checked and ridiculed for just a week back. Or one needs to be just a brazen, sinister politician who knows he can get away with it. Case in point: Rahul Gandhi.
On February 17, 2021, just days before Congress government in Puducherry collapsed, Rahul Gandhi had promised to give the fishermen their own ‘ministry’ in Delhi. Considering Rahul Gandhi’s history of gaffes, one would just dismiss it as his lack of knowledge about how things run in India. You see, the ‘ministry of fisheries’ which he promised to the ‘sea farmers’ was already established in 2019 and Giriraj Singh currently holds the portfolio.
Responding to Rahul Gandhi’s seeming gaffe, Singh had taken a jibe at him in Italian that perhaps Rahul Gandhi was referring to Italian politics. Rahul Gandhi’s mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi hails from Italy.
However, it was not just something Rahul Gandhi was unaware of. You see, before he promised a ministry which already exists, Rahul Gandhi had put up a question in the Lok Sabha regarding the same. As per the Lok Sabha records, Gandhi had questioned the Ministry about Fisheries Infrastructure and Aquaculture Development Fund on February 2, 2021.
But how many ‘neutral’ fact-checkers and media houses call out this lie by Rahul Gandhi?
Rahul Gandhi ‘calls for’ instead of lies. And no, NDTV India’s Ravish Kumar chose to remain silent.
Here is how News18 reported.
While News18 did mention that Rahul Gandhi promised something that already existed, it made it about BJP mocking him over his lies. Not actually calling out his lies.
Speaking of media houses and their selective ‘fact-checking’, AltNews chose not to fact-check Rahul Gandhi on his obvious lies.
“Fact-checkers” and their complicated relationship with facts. This just goes on to show how ‘speaking truth to the power’ thing is just a facade.
And while we’re on propagandists and their ‘speaking truth to the power’ joke, here are the ringleaders.
Hmm. Not a peep on Rahul Gandhi’s blunders.
If anyone wants to see what ‘Godi media’ looks like, come here. See how the glorious ‘independent media’ which is ‘not afraid of speaking truth to the power’ is nestled calmly in the lap of Yuvraj Rahul Gandhi.
But you know what this ‘Godi media’ enables? It enables powerful people like Rahul Gandhi to continue to lie to the vulnerable section of the society.
Today, while addressing a gathering in Kollam, Kerala, Rahul Gandhi repeated the exact same thing he did in Puducherry.
#WATCH | Just like farmers farm the land, you farm the sea. Farmers have a Ministry in Delhi, you don't… First thing I'd do is have a Ministry dedicated to fishermen of India so that your issues can be defended & protected: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Kerala's Kollam pic.twitter.com/RYcLCbDiQx
— ANI (@ANI) February 24, 2021
He again promised a ‘ministry of fisheries’ for ‘sea farmers’.
You see, since Rahul Gandhi knows that the media and other propagandists masquerading as ‘fact-checkers’ will not fact-check his lies, he is emboldened to continue to brazen it out.
Now, while they don’t deserve the benefit of doubt, one may argue that Rahul Gandhi meant to give a separate Ministries of Fisheries as it is currently clubbed with Animal Husbandry and Dairying. It would still be a ridiculous proposition since many other such ministries are clubbed with related subjects. Like, Rahul Gandhi promises ‘women empowerment’ but never promises ‘Ministry of Women’ because ‘Ministry of Women and Child Development’ already exists and the two are related and to some extent interdependent.
You see, not all election campaigning is done by the politicians. Some media houses and ‘fact-checkers’ continue to do them by selective reportage and ‘fact-checking’.
During the run-up to the 2019 elections, Rahul Gandhi went to town painting how the Rafale aircraft deal for Indian Air Force was a ‘scam’ to benefit the ‘Adani-Ambani’. Of course, after the ‘Rafale scam’ rhetoric did not work and Congress faced a humiliating defeat in 2019 elections, Rahul Gandhi has maintained radio silence on the alleged scam.
Remember how the mainstream media and ‘fact-checkers’ never corrected him for his mismatched figure about ‘scam’ or even the incoherent allegations which could easily be fact-checked. Remember how then Congress IT cell head Divya Spandana and other propagandists like Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan resorted to relying on a soft-porn website run by a so-called Bollywood publicist to claim Rafale was scam?
The ‘secular-liberal’ media provided Rahul Gandhi a platform to invent allegations on Rafale out of places where the Sun does not shine so he could appeal to the electorate with his lies. The media served as the propaganda wing of the Congress party and it used its massive resources to effectively campaign against the ruling government. N Ram of The Hindu, at one point, was competing with Rahul Gandhi in spreading lies about the deal. The newspaper not only cropped a ‘dissent note‘ about the deal but also digitally manipulated it. His conduct was perfectly understandable considering the fact that he and P Chidambaram go way back. Oh and don’t forget the epic meltdown of Ravish Kumar as first Rafale jet touched down in India.
Not only Rafale. Rahul Gandhi has time and again lied about ‘loan waiver’ and ‘loan write-off’. He has used the terms interchangeably to claim that the Central government has ‘waived off’ loans of ‘big corporates’ and not of ‘poor farmers’. But you know what? These NPAs are bad loans which are ‘written off’ not ‘waived’. When loans are ‘written off’, they stop appearing as an asset for the bank which had extended the loan but the banks continue to try and recover the debt, usually by initiating process of selling off collateral properties mortgaged by the corporates to take the loans.
Rahul Gandhi lies, uses the terms interchangeably to mislead the vulnerable strata of society and his friends in media happily oblige by ‘reporting’ but not fact-checking.