CHENNAI: It’s said that in war, truth is the first casualty. And it was a war indeed, that was fought on social media over the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh. By Thursday morning, her death was reduced to nothing but political fodder. #MediaSavingSiddaramaiah, and #BlockNarendraModi started trending on Twitter, while details of the actual attack and larger safety concerns it exposed took a backseat.
The manufacturing of opinions started almost immediately after her murder, with social media being filled with spiteful comments by several Twitteratis.
For instance, one such user Nikhil Dadhich, who calls himself a “Hindu Nationalist”, abused the slain journalist and said she “deserved to die”. Another user Ashish Singh, whose Twitter profile picture is a selfie with Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, said: “After Burhan Wani, Gauri Lankesh also killed... How sad.”
Later, fact-checking website AltNews found that some of the abusive users, including Nikhil, were being followed on Twitter by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This prompted a section of users to launch the #BlockNarendraModi campaign.
“The PM following someone is not the character certificate of that person,” BJP’s tech head Amit Malviya responded. He also pointed out that N Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi and Lankesh were killed in Congress-ruled States.
Meanwhile, even before Lankesh’s post-mortem report was made public, armchair experts pronounced the verdict on Twitter. While some claimed she was “silenced” by right-wing forces for criticising Hindutva politics, others hinted she was killed for working on a story on corruption in Siddaramaiah government.
Ironically, one of Lankesh’s last tweets was: “Some of us commit mistakes like sharing fake posts. Let us warn each other and not try to expose each other.”