Two Mauritian Conspiracy Theories that Pre-Date Same U.S. Right-wing Ones
05.02.2022
Sometimes “the combined and unequal development” of capitalist phenomena, even ideological phenomena, is quite astounding. That there should be the same two kinds of propaganda around conspiracy theories over the past two elections, both in the USA and in Mauritius, is mind-boggling. We do not know what it means, but it reflects something about the irrational ideas that are fighting for the upper hand in two capitalist societies as different as the USA and Mauritius. In the case of USA, both conspiracy theories are spread against the Democrats, while in Mauritius they have been used both against the Labour and the MSM governments by the MSM and Labour, respectively. And the Mauritian ones pre-date the US’s, so it is unlikely that there is any copy-cat effect. Both are, it seems, embodiments of the same phenomena.
In the USA, it is well known that two specific conspiracy theories, one after the other, have dogged politics over the course of the past two Presidential elections. Firstly, and it is on-going until the present, there is the “big lie” that Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 U.S. elections, while secondly, there was the absurd invention of a supposed “pedophile ring” around the previous 2016 elections when Hilary Clinton was defeated, a conspiracy-theory-rumour, also still circulating in the USA until today. Both were spread by the extreme right-wing – one supposedly protecting democracy from attack, the other supposedly protecting children against a woman.
In Mauritius, we have the same pattern of allegations against the Pravind Jugnauth MSM Government a year earlier than in the U.S., for having “stolen” the 2019 elections by a supposed series of conspiracies, and the propaganda continues until now. Even as legal cases put in against supposed electoral fraud have been withdrawn, others thrown out in part or in toto by the judiciary, and some exposed as, themselves, being fraudulent allegations apparently unverified even by the plaintiff’s own party lawyers, the conspiracy theorists persist. They, like the Trump supporters, heap blame on foreigners for interference in elections – and the most powerless foreigners in both cases. Here they blame migrant workers from Bangladesh, in the USA they blame migrant workers from Mexico. The recount in Rose-Hill on 1 February has shown an isolated cases of criminal tampering with ballots, no conspiracy to steal the elections. This case of the mysterious ballot from another constituency has been referred to the Police for investigation. The previous cases of the odd ballot clearly intentionally stolen on polling day and presumably replaced with a similar prepared false ballot – either as a prank or to pave the way for the later accusations – popped up one-by-one in the weeks after the election, to much media hype, until the CID announced that it seemed the ballots had, indeed, been intentionally stolen by a handful of people for the very purpose of later finding them. At that point, the supply of ballots popping up out of nowhere just “dried up”.
And before that, at the previous Mauritian elections of 2014, we saw the same kind of allegation that Hilary Clinton would suffer in 2016: supposed “pedophilia”. It was so far-fetched, just like the Clinton one, that it is hard to take it seriously. But, amongst so many people it was treated as such, although it was also clearly some kind of macabre game-playing. The MSM supporters, and indeed much of the Press, accused Navin Ramgoolam’s Labour Party government of being a “gouvernement pèdophile”. Curiously, this rubbishy allegation was used against a woman, the Labour Minister Sheila Bappoo – just as a similar, but more putrified version would be used against a woman in the USA the next year. The “gouvernement pedophile” claims followed an isolated incident concerning a Labour Party agent’s alleged sexual abuse of a girl student, and accusations that he was being “protected” by Labour Ministers from suspension or arrest. This was then embroidered into this generalized accusation of the whole government being “pedophile”. One rumour like the one spread on social media in the USA, could have set alight a whole conspiracy theory. It takes so little, once irrationality takes hold.
So the rumours or conspiracy theories – in two places as distant as Mauritius and the USA, and with Mauritius being first then the USA – were on the exact same themes: stealing democratic elections and pedophilia.
The Big Steal
In the U.S.A. the big conspiracy theory that is keeping Donald Trump’s near-fascist politics afloat right now is still “the big lie” that the 2020 Presidential elections were “stolen” by Joe Biden and the Democrats. The Trump supporters, led by people like Steve Bannon, General Mike Flint, Roger Stone and a whole team of lawyers including Rudi Guiliani and John Eastman, all dragging the entire Republican Party behind them, invented any number of allegations of massive fraud that constituted, supposedly, the method of “stealing the elections”. All proved non-existent. They called for recount after recount. Numbers changed only marginally. They put in any number of court cases. They lost them. The only things that were found to be massively fraudulent were the crass allegations of these extreme-right-wing conspiracy theorists, themselves.
In order to steal an election, there needs to be massive intervention – not an allegation that Ms. X voted in the name of Ms. Y. Even if the differential is in single digits, there is not any proof of “stealing” the election, but rather, if proven, and not an invention or a mistake, to be of one person getting away with a criminal offense. And for a whole election to be “stolen”, there has to be a conspiracy of some sort, and not just either human error, childish pranksters at work, or people trying to set up errors that can later be “discovered” to the drumbeat of part of the Press, like Breitbart or Fox. The accusations also have to be true. And they have to be on a scale that would affect the outcome. The generalized ignorance of how elections actually work creates the base-line for the conspiracy theories to flourish, and in Mauritius any number of influential members of the petty bourgeois class are totally ignorant as to how elections work while simultaneously having loud media voices.
And, when political leaders believe and spread the idea that elections are “stolen”, the next step is obviously to prevent the handing over of power. Which the Trump leading team (John Eastman, Rudi Guiliani, Roger Stone) organized on 6 January 2021 – by a series of alternative slates of “electors” from six different States being cooked up, by pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to refuse the ceremonial accepting of the votes from the different States, and by a strategically-timed riotous break-in to the Capitol building, which houses the Senate and House of Representatives, with participants screaming “Hang Mike Pence” and out to kill Nancy Pelosi, who is Democratic House Leader. In between the top Trump leadership and the “rabble” summoned to break into the Capitol and used as cannon-fodder, were leaders of the various extreme right groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys who brought in the rioters, made up mainly of people duped by the conspiracy theorists and firmly believing the elections were rigged and stolen.
Navin Ramgoolam has shown how to shake the credibility of the electoral system – if he does not win. He, like Trump after him, believes that when he loses, the elections are “stolen” or “marday”. He does not mind attacking the little democracy we have fought for, for a hundred years, and won, so far. Instead of fighting for more democracy, he trashes what exists. Both in 1991, and again in 2019, he was the one to lead the troops in charge of discrediting the elections.
He does not seem at all concerned that his own colleagues in the Labour Party ranks who were in fact elected and thus became illegitimate MPs. He puts himself in an untenable position. But, why would he care? He is so self-centred that he thinks only of himself, and of the fact that he, himself, was not elected. Trump has a similar attitude. All his Republican allies who were elected on the same ballot are put in the truly awful position of taking up seats gaily, when they are at the very same time, following their leader into parroting that the election in which they were elected was “stolen”.
Once we get into cuckoo-land like this, people will start believing any old thing.
Pedophile Government
The Labour Party was in Government in 2013, and at the time, Ms. Sheila Bappoo was Minister of Social Security and a strong woman leader. The MSM was then in opposition. The MSM ran a campaign calling the Labour Government a “gouvernement pedophile”. Making out that a whole government is in a pedophile racket has been the currency of the extreme right in the USA as well, but only went viral in 2016 – three years after it was used as mobilizing technique in Mauritius. It is indeed curious that in both instances, the fantasy is constructed in order to attack women politicians. It is as though the patriarchy that constructs these myths is pretending that it is protecting innocent children from an evil woman, or witch.
Concluding
It is rare that LALIT agrees with Jean-Claude de l’Estrac. But his sober evaluation of the kinds of short-comings that there actually were in the running of the last elections, and also the limitations of all elections run by humans, are quite salutary. He just makes mincemeat of all the propaganda that the elections were stolen. We feel like Bernie Sanders when he has to find Congresswoman Liz Cheyney salutary, because she is just about the only Republican in Congress not to follow Trump down the garden path of “stolen election” conspiracy theories in the USA.
But meanwhile the serious issue of the urgent need for electoral reform gets completely side-lined. The allegations of “fraud” just imply that the system is fine, but there is some trickery going on. In particular, the ability of big money to control elections remains.
LALIT makes proposals
LALIT is not just opposing those who make a noise about fraudulent elections, but we have a program which is clear on the need for electoral reform. Here are one or two points LALIT suggests should be subject to a proper nation-wide debate:
1. We need proper limits on SPENDING by parties and by candidates in the run-up to elections, and proper limits on any spending by “supporters of candidates”. Any expenditure in a candidate’s favour should be totaled in with all the candidate’s spending and his or her agent’s expenditure, and taken together, respect the legal limit. The loophole that allows excess expenditure is to be found in Section 55(2) of the Representation of People’s Act. This means amending this Section so that any expenditure in a candidate’s favour effected by individuals, especially under Section 52, is assumed to have been effected with the consent of the candidate. This is not a problem, because consent has to be given in writing for expenditure like this, in any case. Once the total expenditure including this amount goes over the legal amount, candidates should in future have the onus of proof to show they did not give consent. It is simply a matter of changing the onus of proof. The Electoral Commission’s powers need to be increased so that he can, during the course of the campaign, take complaints on over-expenditure, and issue formal warnings that further expenditure will risk a case to strike their election down.
Note that changing the subject from “electoral expenditure” to “party funding” is a fatal error. Once the state is in charge of “funding” or even of naming a bureaucracy to check on funding (like the Registrar of Associations but for political parties) this will, in turn, only make the problem worse. The regime will then control other political parties not in power. So, making a demand for the state to “control” political parties, to register them, control their finances, and so on, is just the very worst demand that can be made.
2.The MBC and all other audio-visual media should be encouraged to use their grey matter and recognize genuine parties that operate on the political terrain, or alliances of such parties, and allocate fair amounts of time on air, relative to the number of candidates they field. The media can continue to treat however they choose other entities that are figments made up before elections, like the POP-FMI of Gaetan Duval or Parti Malin, and who clearly do not have any sign of existing as a party. It is not difficult to determine if parties “exist”: they need, in order to be considered a party, to have positions on economic, social and political issues, and to have a program for specific changes, they need to have a party publication that has existed over time and that contains these positions and/or a well-kept web-site with political analyses, a well-supplied Facebook page with political news and views; do they have branches and members who meet, and do they organize actions: leaflets, posters, public forums, open letters, and other actions like petitions, marches, public meetings, and all these signs of political existence over time. If so, they all need to be recognized for the purposes of fairly equal amounts of time on the air. We are not talking only about political broadcasts themselves, but about all programs, taken as a whole. Parties that represent working class interests like us in LALIT and like an adversary of our, the Les Verts/Fraternel Party do not get fair treatment, simply because we proudly represent poor people. In LALIT, we do not represent bourgeois, or even petty-bourgeois, interests.
We have, in the past, put this case to writing to the MBC Board – that the MBC uses logic to distinguish bona fide parties. We sent a dossier with over 100 pages of proof-of-existence as a major political current. The MBC Act states that “political standpoints” be represented fairly. Section 4 reads that the MBC must
“(f) strike a fair balance in the allocation of broadcasting hours among various ... political standpoints;“(g) ... observe neutrality and impartiality on – ... (i) current affairs; (ii) matters of public policy; or (iii) matters of controversy relating to ... politics ...”
We did not even get a reply.
We also presented a case before the Independent Broadcasting Authority in 2005 complaining of unfair treatment by all radios, i.e. MBC, Radio Plus, Top FM and Radio One and what amounted to an almost total blackout. Then after bi-lateral negotiations, the embargo was lifted. It was too little, too late. Again in 2019, LALIT wrote to the IBA suggesting guidelines. (Go to our website and just google the words “LALIT called on IBA for guidelines”).
3. Political parties will need to tighten up the training they give their agents so that they know what they are doing, i.e. not just ticking off names, nor just putting down little counting indicators.
4. Electronic counting, if it is introduced, should ONLY be of the kind that keeps the original paper ballots in boxes sealed under the eyes of the parties’ agents, then stored, in case of a recount or scrutiny.
Then there are a whole set of other proposals for more democracy – more power to the electorate relative to the National Assembly and more power to the National Assembly relative to the executive Branch (See our program on this.)
Tightening up USA’s federal elections to make them more democratic will be a much harder job, unless the Federal government sets standards. And American democracy is much more embryonic than here. Their ministers are not even elected. The President just nominates anyone he pleases. The Senate does not respect majority decisions, but needs 60% -- so Bills have difficulty passing. The Senate drastically under-represents states with large populations, skewing the value of different electors’ votes more than in Mauritius by a long shot. The House of Representatives, too, has skewed the value of each elector’s vote by gerrymandering of the worst order. In The Presidential elections, Trump was elected with 3,000,000 less votes than Clinton (the so-called popular vote), while Trump could have conceivably been elected with double that immense number when Biden, in fact, won – which is what Trump plays on in his “eleksyon kokin” campaign.
Addressing these fundamental issues are examples of ways to make elections more democratic.
As for how to prevent conspiracy theories and far-fetched rumours world-wide being used as weapons against women in politics on such serious matters as pedophilia, that is up to all of us to promote rationalism, logical thinking, and to prevent episodes of mass hysteria, and of anti-women sentiment. It is a tall order because during much of recent history, political parties, in the mainstream, have based their propaganda on forms of mass paranoia. Take the two decades of McCarthyism (“there are Reds under the bed”) that still scars all Western thinking, and stops people even considering socialism and communism as democratic ways of replacing capitalism. And women are, in Mauritius, still “to blame” for everything, as the Muvman Liberasyon Famrecently pointed out in its open letter criticizing Roshi Bhadain for, in his vendetta against his ex-feudal lord who merited a kiss-on-the-hand, blaming women for seeking divorce, blaming women for seeking redress for sexual harassment, and blaming women for male minister’s nepotism! It is even fair game to blame the Prime Minister’s wife and the women’s domain, the “lakwizinn”, for Pravind Jugnauth’s worst politics.
LALIT
5 February 2022.
