How BJP’s Kapil Mishra runs an online hate factory: NL report

New Delhi, 16 Feb 2021 [Fik/News Sources]: An investigation into online groups run by BJP leader Kapil Mishra, who is considered to be the mastermind of last year’s riots in New Delhi, has found that the man is running a network of 20,000 dedicated people who are working to create and stoke communal hatred.
 
The findings were made by by independent media house Newslaundry, which essentially infiltrated Telegram groups of the Mishra’s online network to see how it operates. The news report exposes the BJP’s hate-factory which constantly churns out communal venom against minority communities.

The report traces back the entire thing to Mishra’s tweet from November 6, 2020, wherein he announces that he is starting a new team called ‘Hindu Ecosystem’, and asks the public to join via a Google Docs form. His tweet garnered about 16k likes.

The Newslaundry team followed the instructions, and its reporters were directly added into the main Telegram group, and later other associated groups.

“Thus we came to have a fly-on-the-wall view of how this ecosystem operates, how it creates propaganda material, how it comes up with toxic narratives, and how it manufactures trends across social media platforms to whip up communal hatred and bigotry, and, of course, support for Hindutva.” said the report, which was published on February 15.

Moreover, the report also clearly showed that the BJP-affiliated groups, apart from creating easy ways to tweet and create internet storms, also used toolkits to spread hate messages and what not.

This is pertinent to point given that the Delhi police arrested 21-year-old activist Disha Ravi from Bangalore for sharing a toolkit that global climate change activist Greta Thunberg had shared while showing support to the farmer protests.

Apart from also explaining how the hate-factory works, the Newslaundry report tracked and explained how the “Hindu Ecosystem is spread out”. Barrin the primary, which only allows the admins to post, the Newslaundry team was added to three groups – Prashasak Samiti, or administrative committee with over 33,000 members; Anusheelan Samiti, or review committee, with over 10,000 members; Ram Ram Ji with about 1,900 people.