Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #850.  

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. 

Intro­duc­tion: Rein­forc­ing and clar­i­fy­ing a top­ic ana­lyzed in recent broad­casts, we rumi­nate about the sub­ject of what Mr. Emory calls “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism.”

The under­ly­ing ethos of “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism” might be called “Cyber-Crowleyism”–“Do as thou wilt.”

Once again, the world of tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism should be viewed against the back­ground of a vital­ly impor­tant arti­cle by David Golum­bia. ” . . . . Such tech­no­cratic beliefs are wide­spread in our world today, espe­cially in the enclaves of dig­i­tal enthu­si­asts, whether or not they are part of the giant cor­po­rate-dig­i­tal leviathan. Hack­ers (“civic,” “eth­i­cal,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous “mem­bers,” even Edward Snow­den him­self walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . . First, [Tor co-cre­ator] Din­gle­dine claimed that Tor must be sup­ported because it fol­lows direct­ly from a fun­da­men­tal “right to pri­vacy.” Yet when pressed—and not that hard—he admits that what he means by “right to pri­vacy” is not what any human rights body or “par­tic­u­lar legal regime” has meant by it. Instead of talk­ing about how human rights are pro­tected, he asserts that human rights are nat­ural rights and that these nat­ural rights cre­ate nat­ural law that is prop­erly enforced by enti­ties above and out­side of demo­c­ra­tic poli­ties. Where the UN’s Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion on Human Rights of 1948 is very clear that states and bod­ies like the UN to which states belong are the exclu­sive guar­an­tors of human rights, what­ever the ori­gin of those rights, Din­gle­dine asserts that a small group of soft­ware devel­op­ers can assign to them­selves that role, and that mem­bers of demo­c­ra­tic poli­ties have no choice but to accept them hav­ing that role. . . Fur­ther, it is hard not to notice that the appeal to nat­ural rights is today most often asso­ci­ated with the polit­i­cal right, for a vari­ety of rea­sons (ur-neo­con Leo Strauss was one of the most promi­nent 20th cen­tury pro­po­nents of these views). We aren’t sup­posed to endorse Tor because we endorse the right: it’s sup­posed to be above the left/right dis­tinc­tion. But it isn’t. . . .”

Draw­ing togeth­er a num­ber of seem­ing­ly dis­parate ana­lyt­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal trends, we note the sim­i­lar­i­ty in the cor­po­ratist, free-mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy of Edward Snow­den with the Repub­li­can Par­ty and its Tea Par­ty fac­tion, the advo­cates of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy and the finan­cial insti­tu­tions that helped engi­neer the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse.

Advo­cat­ing their right to pri­va­cy in the wake of the Snow­den “op,” the major play­ers in the 2008 col­lapse are col­lab­o­rat­ing in a new, end-to-end encryp­tion mes­sag­ing ser­vice.

” . . . . The company’s back­ers include a who’s who of Wall Street finan­cial com­pa­nies: Bank of Amer­ica Mer­rill Lynch, BNY Mel­lon, Black­Rock, Citadel, Citi, Cred­it Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Gold­man Sachs, HSBC, Jef­feries, JPMor­gan, Mav­er­ick, Mor­gan Stan­ley, Nomu­ra and Wells Far­go. . . . .”

The Sym­pho­ny ser­vice may well per­mit them to cir­cum­vent reg­u­la­tion.

“. . . . The New York Post has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Sym­pho­ny delet­ed a video from its web­site that bragged its soft­ware could help banks avoid bil­lions in fines by mak­ing data dele­tion eas­i­er. . . . Our gov­ern­ment offi­cials are con­cerned that their inabil­i­ty to mon­i­tor end-to-end encrypt­ed devices inhibits their role in keep­ing Amer­i­ca safe. Con­verse­ly, Amer­i­cans are con­cerned about pre­serv­ing their right to Pri­va­cy, and encryp­tion helps indi­vid­u­als enforce that right,” read that post. . . .”

Much of the pro­gram details the polit­i­cal real­i­ty of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s gov­ern­ment.

In addi­tion, we have seen that Mod­i’s elec­tion was heav­i­ly but­tressed by Ebay’s Pierre Omid­yar, who has under­writ­ten Glenn Green­wald’s recent jour­nal­is­tic ven­tures and par­tial­ly bankrolled the 2014 Ukraine coup that brought the heirs of the OUN/B to pow­er.

Modi is imple­ment­ing the lais­sez-faire agen­da favored by Omid­yar, a cyn­i­cal “cor­po­ratist” agen­da that is poised to restore child labor in India.

The lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist agen­da cham­pi­oned by Omid­yar and Mor­si is at one with the “aus­ter­i­ty” doc­trine pro­mul­gat­ed by the GOP, Ger­many, Edward Snow­den, Julian Assange, the IMF and the Under­ground Reich.

“Get to work, kids! And be sure to bring your wages home to your [unem­ployed] mom and dad.”

In FTR #866, we exam­ined Sil­i­con Val­ley’s extrav­a­gant, almost erot­ic cel­e­bra­tion of Modi, whose polit­i­cal career and BJP Par­ty are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the RSS, a Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty.

Under­scor­ing the hypocrisy of the “lib­er­tar­i­ans” who fawned over Modi and the moral, philo­soph­i­cal bank­rupt­cy of their ori­en­ta­tion, we note what Modi is actu­al­ly dong in India.

In Mod­i’s India, any­one tak­ing issue with the Hin­du nationalist/fascist dog­ma of the RSS, BJP and Modi him­self faces poten­tial­ly lethal cen­sor­ship.

We note that, just as polit­i­cal dis­si­dents and civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans are being mur­dered in India by the polit­i­cal forces empow­ered in part by EBay’s Pierre Omid­yar, Ukraine is being beset by polit­i­cal mur­der as well. (Omid­yar helped finance the Maid­an coup in Ukraine, as well as the polit­i­cal ascent of Modi and his BJP.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

• The mur­der and per­se­cu­tion of Indi­an Mus­lims over alleged slaugh­ter­ing of cows (which are sacred to Hin­dus.)
• Dis­cus­sion of Snow­den’s espousal of, in effect, get­ting rid of what the Nazis called “use­ful bread gob­blers” and Assange’s espousal of the impor­tance of his pass­ing on his supe­ri­or genes as embody­ing two facets of the Nazi eugen­ics policy–the T‑4 euthana­sia pro­gram (Snow­den) and the Lebens­born breed­ing pro­gram (Assange.)
• Review of the remark­able capa­bil­i­ties of the “smart con­tracts” being devel­oped by Ethereum.
• Dis­cus­sion of the poten­tial appli­ca­tion of the Sym­pho­ny ser­vice’s soft­ware to oth­er indus­tries, poten­tial­ly shield­ing them from reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny.

For open­ers, these peo­ple are not “whis­tle blow­ers” by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. If some­one, in or out of the mil­i­tary, sees some­thing ille­gal being done and alerts the press and/or the “prop­er author­i­ties,” THAT is whis­tle blow­ing.

Bradley Man­ning was no “whis­tle blow­er.” He arro­gat­ed to him­self the right to pur­loin 700,000 secret intel­li­gence files, which he could not pos­si­bly have had the time to read. That is, in and of itself, reck­less. He gave those to Wik­iLeaks and Julian Assange (more about him lat­er.) THAT is not whis­tle blow­ing.

Assange and his close asso­ciate Holo­caust-denier Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”) arranged for Wik­iLeaks to be host­ed on the Pirate Bay site, financed by promi­nent Swedish fas­cist Carl Lund­strom, part of David Duke’s milieu. Does THAT seem respon­si­ble?

Edward Snow­den pur­loined 2.7 mil­lion secret files about the NSA, which he could not POSSIBLY have had the time to read. THAT is not whis­tle blow­ing. He then gave them to Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald, as well as Wik­iLeaks. That is extreme­ly reck­less.

What is fun­da­men­tal­ly miss­ing here is responsibility–Assange, Snow­den et al embody what might be termed “cyber-Crow­ley­ism.” “Do As Thou Wilt”–that was Crow­ley’s eth­ic and it seems to have been adopt­ed by the coders, from Assange et al to Big Tech.

Who vet­ted Snow­den, Assange and Green­wald et al? What over­sight do they have?

2. Worth not­ing for our pur­pos­es is The Fam­i­ly’s empha­sis on a qua­si-Nazi, eugen­ics-like empha­sis on “breed­ing.” (As dis­cussed in FTR #724, Assange appears to have been a mem­ber of this cult.)

Unseen, Unheard,Unknown by Sarah Moore.

. . . . I sus­pect per­haps that there were more sin­is­ter motives than these alone. Some of us had mul­ti­ple birth cer­tifi­cates and pass­ports, and cit­i­zen­ship of more than one coun­try. Only she knows why this was and why we were also all dressed alike, why most of us even had our hair dyed iden­ti­cal­ly blond.

I can only con­jec­ture because I will nev­er know for sure. How­ev­er I sus­pect that she went to such great lengths in order to enable her to move chil­dren around, in and out of the coun­try. Per­haps even to be sold over­seas. I’m sure there is a mar­ket some­where in the world for small blond chil­dren with no trace­able iden­ti­ties. If she did it, it was a per­fect scam. Many ex-sect mem­bers have said that they were aware that Anne was cre­at­ing chil­dren by a “breed­ing pro­gram” in the late 1960s. These were ‘invis­i­ble’ kids, because they had no papers and there is no proof that they ever exist­ed. Yet we Hamil­ton-Byrne chil­dren had mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties. These iden­ti­ties could per­haps have been loaned to oth­er chil­dren and the sim­i­lar­i­ty of our appear­ance used to cov­er up their absence. One lit­tle blond kid looks very like anoth­er in a pass­port pho­to. . .

. . . We were to be the ones who would car­ry on the work of the sect – we were a direct reflec­tion on her – so she was inti­mate­ly con­cerned about our appear­ances. She used to talk a lot about “breed­ing” and talk about us being from the “right stock”. . . .

3. Assange, him­self, seems to pos­sess a Dar­win­ian world-view  (and per­haps a repro­duc­tive instinct) that is con­sis­tent with what is taught to The Fam­i­ly. (This was dis­cussed in FTR #745.)

Inside Wik­iLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dan­ger­ous Web­site by Daniel Dom­scheit-Berg; Eng­lish trans­la­tion copy­right 2011 by Crown Pub­lish­ers [Ran­dom House imprint]; ISBN 978–0‑307–95191‑5; p. 211.

. . . We often dis­cussed the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. If he did have faith in any­thing, it was the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. Julian thought that the stronger mem­bers of the species not only pre­vailed, but pro­duced heirs who were bet­ter able to sur­vive. Nat­u­ral­ly, in his view, his genes par­tic­u­lar­ly deserved to be repro­duced.

Often, I sat in larg­er groups and lis­tened to Julian boast about how many chil­dren he had fathered in var­i­ous parts of the world. He seemed to enjoy the idea of lots and lots of lit­tle Julians, one on every con­ti­nent. Whether he took care of any of these alleged chil­dren, or whether they exist­ed at all, was anoth­er ques­tion. . . .

4. Excerpt­ing some of Snowden’s 2009 online musings–crafted dur­ing the same time peri­od in which he decid­ed to leak NSA documents–gives us insight into his true nature. We’ve men­tioned Snowden’s embrace of the gold stan­dard, belief that we should elim­i­nate Social Secu­rity and deep affin­ity for Ron Paul. Per­haps exam­in­ing his actu­al pro­nounce­ments will prove edu­ca­tion­al.

“Would You Feel Dif­fer­ently About Snow­den, Green­wald, and Assange If You Knew What They Real­ly Thought?” by Sean Wilentz; The New Repub­lic; 1/19/2014.

[Snow­den is post­ing under the moniker “The True­HOOHA”] At the time the stim­u­lus bill was being debat­ed, Snow­den also con­demned Obama’s eco­nomic poli­cies as part of a delib­er­ate scheme “to deval­ue the cur­rency absolute­ly as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble.” (He favored Ron Paul’s call for the Unit­ed States to return to the gold stan­dard.) The social dis­lo­ca­tions of the finan­cial col­lapse both­ered him not at all. “Almost every­one was self-employed pri­or to 1900,” he assert­ed. “Why is 12% employ­ment [sic] so ter­ri­fy­ing?” In anoth­er chat-room exchange, Snow­den debat­ed the mer­its of Social Secu­ri­ty:

<TheTrue­HOOHA> save mon­ey? cut this social secu­rity bull­shit

<User 11> haha­hayes

<User 18> Yeah! Fuck old peo­ple!

<User 11> social secu­rity is bull­shit

<User 11> let’s just toss old peo­ple out in the street

<User 18> Old peo­ple could move in with [User11].

<User 11> NOOO

<User 11> they smell fun­ny

<TheTrue­HOOHA> Some­how, our soci­ety man­aged to make it hun­dreds of years with­out social secu­rity just fine . . . .

<TheTrue­HOOHA> Mag­i­cally the world changed after the New Deal, and old peo­ple became made of glass.

Lat­er in the same ses­sion, Snow­den wrote that the elder­ly “wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.”

5. Symphony’s tune might res­onate with a num­ber of indus­tries besides the finan­cial indus­try that would also like a super-encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form and expand­ing into oth­er sec­tors was always part of the plan. Note that the insti­tu­tions involved with Sym­pho­ny reads like a “Who’s Who” of the finan­cial insti­tu­tions that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the crash of 2008!
“Wall Street-Backed Sym­phony Wants To Rev­o­lu­tion­ize Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mu­ni­ca­tion” by Ron Miller; Tech Crunch; Feb 21, 2015

Sym­pho­ny, a com­pany backed by some of the world’s elite finan­cial insti­tu­tions, was cre­ated last fall with a mis­sion to trans­form the way Wall Street shares and col­lab­o­rates around con­tent — and it has set its sights set on some of the world’s most estab­lished con­tent and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools.

The company’s back­ers include a who’s who of Wall Street finan­cial com­pa­nies: Bank of Amer­ica Mer­rill Lynch, BNY Mel­lon, Black­Rock, Citadel, Citi, Cred­it Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Gold­man Sachs, HSBC, Jef­feries, JPMor­gan, Mav­er­ick, Mor­gan Stan­ley, Nomu­ra and Wells Far­go.

Last fall, these com­pa­nies con­tributed $66M to finance Sym­phony, and using that mon­ey, pur­chased Per­zo, a com­pany that was build­ing a secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­form. After the pur­chase, they named Per­zo founder David Gurle as Sym­phony CEO.

Gurle, whose back­ground comes right out of busi­ness soft­ware cen­tral cast­ing with stints at Microsoft Lync, Skype and Thom­son Reuters, would seem unique­ly qual­i­fied to build such a prod­uct. Symphony’s back­ers have been using a vari­ety of secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions appli­ca­tions and con­tent tools, but that frag­men­ta­tion was becom­ing a huge prob­lem.

They were look­ing to con­sol­i­date on a sin­gle, secure plat­form, and they cre­ated Sym­phony to replace many of the estab­lished play­ers — whether that’s Microsoft Lync or AOL (TechCrunch’s par­ent com­pany) or Yahoo! instant mes­sag­ing in com­mu­ni­ca­tions or Thom­son Reuters and Bloomberg in finan­cial con­tent. The goal from the start has been to become the de fac­to tool for com­mu­ni­cat­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing and shar­ing con­tent in a finan­cial ser­vices set­ting.

“Those com­pa­nies that invest­ed in Sym­phony real­ize they can’t live in a frag­mented way for­ever. It’s not good for busi­ness,” Gurle explained. “They put their mon­ey in to make the busi­ness suc­cess­ful and to make Sym­phony suc­cess­ful. You don’t see this align very often,” he said.

...

Can They Pull It Off?

R Ray Wang, prin­ci­pal at Con­stel­la­tion Research describes Gurle as a vision­ary and believes that Sym­phony is cre­at­ing an entire­ly new cat­e­gory of soft­ware.

“By tar­get­ing the finan­cial ser­vices indus­tries first, they show to every oth­er indus­try from gov­ern­ments to retail that here’s a way to bring these sys­tems of engage­ment to cre­ate dig­i­tal dis­rup­tion in the mar­ket,” Wang told TechCrunch.

“When the orig­i­nal design point is about secu­rity and com­pli­ance to some of the strictest stan­dards set by gov­ern­ments on finan­cial ser­vices, that’s no com­par­i­son to com­pa­nies adding secu­rity on as an after fact,” Wang said.

He added that the core prod­uct Per­zo was built for mas­sive shar­ing of mas­sive amounts of infor­ma­tion at finan­cial-ser­vices secu­rity scale. He believes Sym­phony has the poten­tial to cre­ate pri­vate col­lab­o­ra­tion net­works and even­tu­ally per­haps even pub­lic ones.

As for that con­tent com­po­nent, Wang says that could be the tough­est part to pull off. “The goal is to be able to burst con­tent with heavy con­text. They have the tech­nol­ogy, but I’m not sure if they have the con­text yet. That takes time,” he said.

Look­ing Ahead

While today the prod­uct focus­es pri­mar­ily on the needs of finan­cial ser­vices, Gurle says over time, the con­tent can adapt to the many dif­fer­ent con­tent-cen­tric indus­tries such as life sci­ences, med­i­cine, ship­ping, man­u­fac­tur­ing, account­ing, legal and ener­gy.

For now, Gurle wants to get the finan­cial ser­vices piece right, then he sees going after adja­cent mar­kets like legal and account­ing. After that, per­haps they can begin to go after oth­er indus­tries, but the roadmap is in place now.

The plan is even­tu­ally to cre­ate an open source ecosys­tem around Sym­phony, but Gurle says how that will work and which com­po­nents will go into open source is still very much being debat­ed inter­nal­ly.

The prod­uct has been in Alpha since Jan­u­ary with the 15 fun­ders and a thou­sand dai­ly active users, pre­s­e­lected from pub­lic alphas appli­cants. It plans to go into a wider Beta release with 10,000 users in April and to become gen­er­ally avail­able by the end of June or ear­ly July. By that point, the com­pany will have a bet­ter sense of which pieces they will put into open source and which they will con­trol. It could poten­tially oper­ate like Piv­otal, which open sourced pieces of its Big Data Suite last week, while hold­ing oth­er parts back for the com­mer­cial ver­sion, but how it will work with Sym­phony is still being decid­ed.

...

6a. No one famil­iar with the nature and behav­ior of the insti­tu­tions involved with Sym­pho­ny would trust them NOT to use the end-to-end encryp­tion to evade reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny and engage in the type of behav­ior that pro­duced the 2008 finan­cial crash. They now may be able to do that with per­fect impuni­ty.

“Wall Street’s New Chat Ser­vice Is Delet­ing Prob­lem­at­ic Mes­sag­ing” by Francine McKen­na; Mar­ket­Watch; 8/14/2015.

For start-up that says it’s focused on secure mes­sag­ing, Sym­pho­ny has been delet­ing a lot of its own mes­sag­ing to the pub­lic about what it pro­vides for its finan­cial ser­vices clients. The firm has been edit­ing out ref­er­ences on its web­site to data dele­tion and its abil­i­ty to help banks keep their data away from the gov­ern­ment.

The New York Post has pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that Sym­pho­ny delet­ed a video from its web­site that bragged its soft­ware could help banks avoid bil­lions in fines by mak­ing data dele­tion eas­i­er. Con­tin­u­ing its efforts, Sym­pho­ny has recent­ly delet­ed a sec­tion about data secu­ri­ty from its web­site and addi­tion­al ref­er­ences that empha­size more pri­va­cy via data encryp­tion and per­ma­nent data dele­tion capa­bil­i­ties.

These were among the removed com­ments: “End-to-End Encryp­tion: Sym­pho­ny is com­plete­ly pri­vate. Your data is 100% pro­tect­ed by encryp­tion keys known only by you, nev­er by us.”

“Guar­an­teed Data Dele­tion: Sym­pho­ny has designed a spe­cif­ic set of pro­ce­dures to guar­an­tee that data dele­tion is per­ma­nent and ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed.”

A blog post from July enti­tled, “To Encrypt, or Not to Encrypt?” is also now gone. That post includ­ed a pas­sage tout­ing its encryp­tion capa­bil­i­ties as a way to pro­tect firms’ pri­va­cy. “Our gov­ern­ment offi­cials are con­cerned that their inabil­i­ty to mon­i­tor end-to-end encrypt­ed devices inhibits their role in keep­ing Amer­i­ca safe. Con­verse­ly, Amer­i­cans are con­cerned about pre­serv­ing their right to Pri­va­cy, and encryp­tion helps indi­vid­u­als enforce that right,” read that post. . . .

. . . . Sym­pho­ny is no longer pro­mot­ing mes­sag­ing secu­ri­ty fea­tures as a way to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from get­ting banks data. Instead, text describes “an ‘end-to-end’ secu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ty that pro­tects com­mu­ni­ca­tions from cyber-threats and the risk of a data breach—while safe­guard­ing our cus­tomers’ abil­i­ty to retain records of their mes­sages.” . . . .

. . . . The New York Post report raised some eye­brows. The New York Depart­ment of Finan­cial Ser­vices’ act­ing super­in­ten­dent, Antho­ny Albanese, sent a let­ter to Sym­pho­ny Chief Exec­u­tive David Gurle on July 22 ask­ing for more infor­ma­tion about the video. On Mon­day, Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren stepped up the pres­sure on the firm, as the Mass­a­chu­setts Demo­c­rat sent a let­ter to six finan­cial reg­u­la­tors rais­ing con­cerns about Symphony’s descrip­tion of its new sys­tem, “which appear(s) to put com­pa­nies on notice — with a wink and a nod — that they can use Sym­pho­ny to reduce com­pli­ance and enforce­ment con­cerns.” . . . .

6b. Poten­tial­ly real­iz­ing the eco­nom­ic wet dream of fascist/libertarian ele­ments, cryp­tocur­ren­cy may sub­vert the abil­i­ty of nation states to tax–a func­tion cen­tral to the very con­cept of civic exis­tence! (We dis­cussed Bit­coin, in FTR #‘s 760, 764, 770, 785.)

“Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tax­a­tion May Sub­vert Nation­al Col­lec­tion” by Travis Patron; Dig­i­nomics; 9/06/2015.

As the age of cryp­tocur­ren­cy comes into full force, it will facil­i­tate a sub­ver­sive­ly viable tax­a­tion avoid­ance strat­e­gy for many of the tech­ni­cal­ly savvy users of peer-to-peer cryp­to­graph­ic pay­ment sys­tems. In doing so, cryp­tocur­ren­cy use will act to erode the tax rev­enue base of nation­al juris­dic­tions, and ulti­mate­ly, repo­si­tion tax­a­tion as a vol­un­tary, pay-for-per­for­mance func­tion. In this post, I’d like to cov­er some of the ben­e­fits such a strat­e­gy will have for cryp­tocur­ren­cy investors, why our notion of tax­a­tion is ripe for dis­rup­tion, and why cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion is enabled by default.

Although investors have been lured by the siren song of tax havens for as long as gov­ern­ments have exist­ed, none have exist­ed with the legal and struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­is­tics such as those found in cryp­tocur­ren­cy. By oper­at­ing behind a veil of cyber­secre­cy, it is rea­son­able to fore­cast the imprac­ti­cal­i­ty of sys­temic tax­a­tion on these types of finan­cial assets from nation­al juris­dic­tions. Indi­vid­ual enforce­ment of tax­a­tion is like­wise imprac­ti­cal due to ide­o­log­i­cal back­lash gov­ern­ments would receive for tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als who avoid nation­al tax­a­tion via infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies. Even so, many juris­dic­tions have already declared dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions (some­thing which occurs between con­sent­ing par­ties on a net­work which no one owns) to be tax­able under cur­rent legal frame­works.

How can the state lay claim to the right to tax that which they do not issue and can­not con­trol?

Run­ning The Num­bers on Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tax­a­tion

It has been said that com­pound­ing inter­est is one of the most pow­er­ful forces in the uni­verse. When we apply the black mag­ic of com­pound­ing returns to the prof­it-max­i­miz­ing actions of con­sumers, we see quite clear­ly why every user aware of the ben­e­fits of using cryp­tocur­ren­cy, even if only for the tax-sav­ings, will opt to do so over tra­di­tion­al fiat mon­ey. The allure of avoid­ing the clutch­es of nation­al tax­a­tion is strong enough that any ratio­nal con­sumer will make cryp­tocur­ren­cy a por­tion of their finan­cial port­fo­lio giv­en they have the suf­fi­cient tech­ni­cal under­stand­ing.

James Dale David­son, co-edi­tor of Strate­gic Invest­ment

“Each $5,000 of annu­al tax pay­ments made over a 40-year peri­od reduces your net worth by $2.2 mil­lion assum­ing a 10% annu­al return on your invest­ments,” reports James Dale David­son in The Sov­er­eign Indi­vid­ual: Mas­ter­ing the Tran­si­tion to the Infor­ma­tion Age, “For high income earn­ers in preda­to­ry tax regimes (such as the Unit­ed States), you can expect to lose more of your mon­ey through cumu­la­tive tax­a­tion than you will ever earn.”

As we explained in the report Bit­coin May Become A Glob­al Reserve Instru­ment, nev­er before has there exist­ed a tool that can pre­serve eco­nom­ic and infor­ma­tion­al assets with such a high degree of secu­ri­ty com­bined with a near-zero mar­gin­al cost to the user. This rev­o­lu­tion­ary capa­bil­i­ty of the bit­coin net­work does, and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide, a sub­ver­sive­ly lucra­tive tax super haven in direct cor­re­la­tion with its accep­tance on a world­wide basis.

Gov­ern­ment Response to Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tax­a­tion

Many gov­ern­ment agen­cies have already cued in to the tax avoid­ance poten­tial of bit­coin and cryp­tocur­ren­cies. How­ev­er, it would seem that they mis­judge this emerg­ing threat loom­ing over their pre­cious tax cof­fers. The Finan­cial Crimes Enforce­ment Net­work in the Unit­ed States (FINCEN) for exam­ple, has already issued guid­ance on cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion, yet makes a false dis­tinc­tion between real cur­ren­cy and vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy. FINCEN states that “In con­trast to real cur­ren­cy, “vir­tu­al” cur­ren­cy is a medi­um of exchange that oper­ates like a cur­ren­cy in some envi­ron­ments, but does not have all the attrib­ut­es of real cur­ren­cy,” and lat­er “vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy does not have legal ten­der sta­tus in any juris­dic­tion.” What these agen­cies fail to real­ize, is that cryp­tocur­ren­cy is not vir­tu­al in any sense of the word. Indeed it is as real, and per­haps even more real, than tra­di­tion­al fleet­ing fiat cur­ren­cies.

Bit­coin and cryp­tocur­ren­cy offer a near per­fect alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al tax havens which are being tight­ly con­trolled by the new laws asso­ci­at­ed with the For­eign Account Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FATCA). In his report Are Cryp­tocur­ren­cies Super Tax Havens?, Omri Mar­i­an makes clear the pres­sure for finan­cial insti­tu­tions who inter­act with the US bank­ing sys­tem to hand over account hold­ers, and for a crack­down on off­shore tax havens with the enact­ment of FATCA in 2010.

Tax pol­i­cy­mak­ers seem to be oper­at­ing under the faulty assump­tion that cryp­tocur­ren­cy-based economies are lim­it­ed by the size of vir­tu­al economies. The only vir­tu­al aspect of cryp­tocur­ren­cies, how­ev­er, is their form. Their oper­a­tion hap­pens with­in real economies, and as such their growth poten­tial is, at least the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, infi­nite. Such poten­tial, togeth­er with recent devel­op­ments in cryp­tocur­ren­cies mar­kets, should alert pol­i­cy-mak­ers to the urgency of the emerg­ing prob­lem.

– Omri Mar­i­an, Are Cryp­tocur­ren­cies Super Tax Havens?

Cur­rent pay­ment proces­sors such as Bit­Pay have recent­ly revealed that gov­ern­ment agen­cies are watch­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions through the bot­tle­necks and exchanges where it can be tracked and traced with a high degree of trans­paren­cy. It should not come to any­ones sur­prise that gov­ern­ments are watch­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy nor that com­pa­nies are com­ply­ing with their laws, but under­stand­ing why nation­al gov­ern­ments require users of the bit­coin dig­i­tal econ­o­my to cut them a slice of the pie while they con­tribute noth­ing to the oper­a­tion, and in many cas­es, hin­der the adop­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy, remains a cal­lus mys­tery.

Gov­ern­ments ini­tial­ly attempt­ing to con­trol cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion through the busi­ness­es and bot­tle­necks which it can be mon­i­tored through will meet with as much suc­cess as they have lim­it­ing file shar­ing, ille­gal down­loads, and Tor oper­a­tions. Cryp­tocur­ren­cies have an inher­ent reg­u­la­tion, that of the law from num­ber. Tru­ly, bit­coin is code as law.

Old laws sel­dom resist the trends of tech­nol­o­gy. The attempt of gov­ern­ment agen­cies to levy tax­a­tion on cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions direct­ly is as futile as sweep­ing back waves of the ocean. No mat­ter the size of broom, state actors will be over­run by con­tin­u­ous­ly expand­ing waves of cryp­tocur­ren­cy adop­tion.

In the 1980s, it was ille­gal in the Unit­ed States to send a fax mes­sage. The US Post Office con­sid­ered fax­es to be first-class mail, over which the US Post Office claimed an ancient monop­oly … bil­lions of fax mes­sages lat­er, it is unclear whether any­one ever com­plied with that law.

– James Dale David­son, William Rees-Mogg, The Sov­er­eign Indi­vid­ual

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tax­a­tion By Default

What would you say if you were told cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion occurs on every trans­ac­tion by default? In the realm of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy, the trans­ac­tion fee which the user decides to (or decides not to) attach to each pay­ment rep­re­sents the tax­a­tion. This user can decide to attach a large fee or no fee at all. In doing so, the min­ers of the net­work will choose pref­er­ence for the trans­ac­tions with a larg­er fee attached, and will work to con­firm these pay­ments soon­er than those with small­er fees. This trans­ac­tions queue rep­re­sents a vol­un­tary, pay-for-per­for­mance tax­a­tion struc­ture where the per­for­mance derived from the sys­tem is depen­dent upon how much tax­a­tion they pay.

Algo­rith­mic Reg­u­la­tion

Cryp­tocur­ren­cies have reg­u­la­tion built into the very nature of their exis­tence, just not through our con­ven­tion­al ideas of human inter­ven­tion. Because of the tech­no­log­i­cal nature of cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion, judi­cial reg­u­la­tions bestowed upon these types of sys­tems will always be, to a large degree, futile. Cryp­tocur­ren­cies have estab­lished their own set of rules and guide­lines through the source code they are built upon, forc­ing legal frame­works on this type of 21^st cen­tu­ry inno­va­tion will only cause fric­tion dur­ing its adop­tion phase.

The only choice of reg­u­la­tion we have in terms of cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion is not to try and fit it inside some exist­ing doc­trine, but to abide by their laws of finance and infor­ma­tion free­dom. We must be the one’s to con­form to the reg­u­la­tion, not have it con­form to our con­ven­tion­al beliefs. Bit­coin is a sys­tem which will only be gov­erned effec­tive­ly through dig­i­tal law, an approach which func­tions sole­ly through a medi­um of tech­nol­o­gy itself. It will not bend to the whim of those who still hold con­ven­tion­al forms of law-mak­ing as rel­e­vant today.

For a suc­cess­ful tech­nol­o­gy, real­i­ty must take prece­dence over pub­lic rela­tions, for nature can­not be fooled.

– Richard Feyn­man

Con­clu­sion

When we come to under­stand the sys­temic resilience to judi­cial inter­ven­tion, it becomes quite clear that cryp­tocur­ren­cy tax­a­tion will remain a vol­un­tary, pay-for-per­for­mance func­tion of the net­work itself. No longer will tax­a­tion be enforced through coer­cion, but become a vol­un­tary act towards increased sys­tem per­for­mance.

Make no mis­take, in a cryp­to-anar­chist juris­dic­tion where there is no means to con­fis­cate or con­trol prop­er­ty on behalf of anoth­er indi­vid­ual, the need for the state will cease to exist. Mass tax­a­tion on dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy is not fea­si­ble through judi­cial enforce­ment while indi­vid­ual enforce­ment is bound to prove inef­fec­tive. You, or any­one moti­vat­ed to retain their net worth, will find a sub­ver­sive­ly lucra­tive tax haven in the realm of cryp­tocur­ren­cy.

In addi­tion, we have seen that Mod­i’s elec­tion was heav­i­ly but­tressed by Ebay’s Pierre Omid­yar, who has under­writ­ten Glenn Green­wald’s recent jour­nal­is­tic ven­tures and par­tial­ly bankrolled the 2014 Ukraine coup that brought the heirs of the OUN/B to pow­er.

Modi is imple­ment­ing the lais­sez-faire agen­da favored by Omid­yar, a cyn­i­cal “cor­po­ratist” agen­da that is poised to restore child labor in India.

The lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist agen­da cham­pi­oned by Omid­yar and Mor­si is at one with the “aus­ter­i­ty” doc­trine pro­mul­gat­ed by the GOP, Ger­many, the IMF and the Under­ground Reich.

“Get to work, kids! And be sure to bring your wages home to your [unem­ployed] mom and dad.”

“The Modi Gov­ern­ment Is Send­ing Mil­lions of Kids Back into Exploita­tive Labour” by Rashme Seh­gal; Quartz; 5/4/2015.

An amend­ment to the Child Labour Pro­hi­bi­tion Act pro­posed by the Naren­dra Modi-led gov­ern­ment is about to undo years of hard-won progress in the area of child labour—and con­demn mil­lions of kids to exploita­tive employ­ment.

The amend­ment will allow chil­dren below the age of 14 to work in “fam­ily enter­prises”—a euphemism for indus­tries such as car­pet-weav­ing, bee­di–rolling, gem-pol­ish­ing, lock-mak­ing and match­box-mak­ing. The new norms will also apply to the enter­tain­ment indus­try and sports.

The amend­ment flies in the face of the Right to Edu­ca­tion Act (RTE), 2009, which guar­an­tees edu­ca­tion to every child. After the RTE came in, child labour dropped from 12.6 mil­lion in 2001 to 4.3 mil­lion in 2014. The amend­ment will undo much of that progress. It will also be a seri­ous set­back to all the work done by activists, such as Swa­mi Agnivesh and Nobel lau­re­ate Kailash Sat­yarthi, to res­cue chil­dren from bond­ed labour and exploita­tion.

Mirza­pur-based Shamshad Khan, pres­i­dent of the Cen­tre for Rur­al Edu­ca­tion and Devel­op­ment Action, calls the move “ret­ro­gres­sive.”

“All our cam­paigns to end bond­ed child labour, start­ing from the eight­ies, will go up in smoke,” Khan said. “Schools will be emp­tied out, and poor chil­dren in states like Bihar, Jhark­hand and Uttar Pradesh will be back to work­ing in sheds and makeshift fac­to­ries that will all go by the nomen­cla­ture of ‘fam­ily enter­prises.’ The worst-hit will be the chil­dren of Dal­its, Mus­lims, trib­al fam­i­lies and those belong­ing to mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties.”

The amend­ment can also be used to deny edu­ca­tion to the girl child, who will be sucked into all forms of house­work. Accord­ing to gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics, male lit­er­acy lev­els in 2014 stood at about 82%, while female lit­er­acy lev­els were as low as 64%. The school drop-out rate for girls is almost dou­ble the rate for boys.

An uncon­sti­tu­tional change

Ban­daru Dat­ta­treya, India’s min­is­ter of labour and employ­ment, announced in ear­ly April that the gov­ern­ment planned to intro­duce amend­ments to the Child Labour Pro­hi­bi­tion Act in the cur­rent ses­sion of Par­lia­ment.

His min­istry, while seek­ing the amend­ments, said the Act will not apply to chil­dren help­ing fam­i­lies in home-based work, and espe­cially fam­i­lies work­ing in agri­cul­ture and ani­mal-rear­ing. The objec­tive of these amend­ments, accord­ing to min­istry offi­cials, is to help chil­dren nur­ture a spir­it of entre­pre­neur­ship. They will par­tic­u­larly help chil­dren of fam­i­lies cur­rently liv­ing at sub­sis­tence lev­els, the min­istry claims.

Child rights activists say the move will ben­e­fit fac­tory own­ers in India’s cow belt. Their prof­its will esca­late four­fold as chil­dren could be made to work longer hours and paid less than adults.

...

Enakshi Gan­guly Thukral of HAQ Cen­tre for Child Rights believes this is an attempt by the Modi gov­ern­ment to ensure a size­able chunk of the pop­u­la­tion remains in the infor­mal sec­tor, deprived of min­i­mum wages and social secu­ri­ty.

“The gov­ern­ment is not in a posi­tion to pro­vide jobs for mil­lions of young peo­ple,” said Thukral. “Such a ret­ro­grade step will help ensure mil­lions of kids remain illit­er­ate and, there­fore, unem­ploy­able.”

Bad old days again

Major cut­backs in the 2015 bud­get in the areas of health, women and chil­dren, and edu­ca­tion will fur­ther com­pound this prob­lem. Thukral said labour offi­cials are already guilty of under-report­ing child labour. “But once child labour is per­mit­ted under one guise or the oth­er, then even a min­i­mum [lev­el] of account­abil­ity will cease to exist,” she said.

Labour offi­cials at the dis­trict lev­el are empow­ered to file cas­es against employ­ers hir­ing chil­dren but few employ­ers are ever con­victed. Sta­tis­tics from the labour min­istry for 2004–2014 show that there have been 1,168 con­vic­tions for chil­dren employed in haz­ardous indus­tries with about Rs83 lakh col­lected in fines. This mon­ey has been des­ig­nated for the reha­bil­i­ta­tion and wel­fare of child labour. How­ever, in this peri­od, only Rs5 lakh was dis­bursed from this fund.

Khan recalls the peri­od before the RTE Act, when dalals (touts) open­ly knocked on the doors of rich seths (mer­chants or busi­ness­men) to sell traf­ficked chil­dren.

“In the eight­ies, kids were being paid a dai­ly wage of as lit­tle as Rs4 per day,” he said. “We kept up pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment, insist­ing that all out-of-school kids be cat­e­gorised as child labour. This open traf­fick­ing of kids declined sharply with the RTE Act. If the BJP (Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty) suc­ceeds in intro­duc­ing such a dan­ger­ous amend­ment, we will be back to those old days.” . . . .

8. In FTR #866, we exam­ined Sil­i­con Val­ley’s extrav­a­gant, almost erot­ic cel­e­bra­tion of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, whose polit­i­cal career and BJP Par­ty are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the RSS, a Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty.

Under­scor­ing the hypocrisy of the “lib­er­tar­i­ans” who fawned over Modi and the moral, philo­soph­i­cal bank­rupt­cy of their ori­en­ta­tion, we note what Modi is actu­al­ly dong in India. In Mod­i’s India, any­one tak­ing issue with the Hin­du nationalist/fascist dog­ma of the RSS, BJP and Modi him­self faces poten­tial lethal cen­sor­ship.

We note that, just as polit­i­cal dis­si­dents and civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans are being mur­dered in India by the polit­i­cal forces empow­ered in par­ty by EBay’s Pierre Omid­yar, Ukraine is being beset by polit­i­cal mur­der as well. (Omid­yar helped finance the Maid­an coup in Ukraine, as well as the polit­i­cal ascent of Modi and his BJP.)

“India’s Attack on Free Speech” by Sonia Faleiro; The New York Times; 10/02/2015.

In today’s India, sec­u­lar lib­er­als face a chal­lenge: how to stay alive.

In August, 77-year-old schol­ar M. M. Kalbur­gi, an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Hin­du idol wor­ship, was gunned down on his own doorstep. In Feb­ru­ary, the com­mu­nist leader Govind Pansare was killed near Mum­bai. And in 2013, the activist Naren­dra Dab­holkar was mur­dered for cam­paign­ing against reli­gious super­sti­tions.

These killings should be seen as the canary in the coal mine: Sec­u­lar voic­es are being cen­sored and oth­ers will fol­low.

While there have always been episod­ic attacks on free speech in India, this time feels dif­fer­ent. The harass­ment is front-page news, but the gov­ern­ment refus­es to acknowl­edge it. Indeed, Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi’s silence is being inter­pret­ed by many peo­ple as tac­it approval, giv­en that the attacks have gained momen­tum since he took office in 2014 and are linked to Hin­dut­va groups whose far-right ide­ol­o­gy he shares.

Ear­li­er this month, a leader of the Sri Ram Sene, a Hin­du extrem­ist group with a his­to­ry of vio­lence includ­ing raid­ing pubs and beat­ing women they find inside, ratch­eted up the ten­sions. He warned that writ­ers who insult­ed Hin­du gods were in dan­ger of hav­ing their tongues sliced off. For those who don’t sup­port the ulti­mate goal of these extrem­ists — a Hin­du nation — Mr. Modi’s silence is omi­nous.

This is a turn­ing point for India, a coun­try that has tak­en pride in being a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and that often adopts a high-mind­ed tone when neigh­bors fall short of the same stan­dards.

When the lib­er­al Pak­istani politi­cian Salman Taseer was assas­si­nat­ed in 2011, the Indi­an jour­nal­ist M. J. Akbar, now the nation­al spokesman for the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty, or B.J.P., chid­ed, “If Salman Taseer had been an Indi­an Mus­lim, he would still have been alive.” In the run-up to the 2014 gen­er­al elec­tions in Bangladesh, India expressed con­cern over the future of the country’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions.

We should be wor­ry­ing instead about what’s hap­pen­ing in India, and rec­og­nize that it could go the way of the very neigh­bors it crit­i­cizes. As Nikhil Wagle, a promi­nent lib­er­al jour­nal­ist based in Mum­bai, told me, “With­out sec­u­lar­ism, India is a Hin­du Pak­istan.”

The mur­ders in India share strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with the killings of four Bangladeshi blog­gers this year. But while there was a glob­al out­cry over what hap­pened in Bangladesh, India is hid­ing behind its pati­na of legit­i­ma­cy grant­ed by being the world’s largest democ­ra­cy.

Like the mur­dered blog­gers, the Indi­an vic­tims held lib­er­al views but were not famous or pow­er­ful. Mr. Kalbur­gi had pub­licly expressed skep­ti­cism toward idol wor­ship in Hin­duism, but he didn’t pose a threat to any­one.

While the author­i­ties are pur­su­ing the cul­prits on a case-by-case basis, the over­ar­ch­ing attack on free speech has not been addressed. The threats and killings have cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of self-cen­sor­ship and fear.

Some of the killers are still on the loose, and while in one hand they wield a gun, in the oth­er they wave a list. On Sept. 20, Mr. Wagle, the jour­nal­ist, learned from a source that inter­cept­ed phone calls had revealed that mem­bers of yet anoth­er right-wing Hin­du group, Sanatan Sanstha, had marked him as their next vic­tim. The extrem­ists who cel­e­brat­ed the August mur­der of Mr. Kalbur­gi were more direct: They used Twit­ter to warn K. S. Bhag­wan, a retired uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who is crit­i­cal of the Hin­du caste sys­tem, that he would be next.

The goal of trans­form­ing India from a sec­u­lar state to a Hin­du nation, which seems to be behind the mur­ders, is abet­ted not just by the silence of politi­cians, but also by the Hin­du nation­al­ist poli­cies of the rul­ing B.J.P.

Over the past few months, the gov­ern­ment has purged sec­u­lar voic­es from high-pro­file insti­tu­tions includ­ing the Nation­al Book Trust and the inde­pen­dent board of Nalan­da Uni­ver­si­ty. The gov­ern­ment is not replac­ing mediocre indi­vid­u­als: The chan­cel­lor of Nalan­da was the Nobel lau­re­ate Amartya Sen. It is replac­ing lumi­nar­ies with peo­ple whose great­est qual­i­fi­ca­tion is faith in Hin­dut­va ide­ol­o­gy. The new appointees are reject­ing sci­en­tif­ic thought in favor of reli­gious ideas that have no place in sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions.

One of the government’s chief tar­gets is the lega­cy of India’s first prime min­is­ter, Jawa­har­lal Nehru, who laid the foun­da­tion for a sec­u­lar nation. Last month, hav­ing nudged out the direc­tor of the Nehru Muse­um and Library in New Del­hi, the gov­ern­ment announced plans to rename the muse­um and change its focus to high­light the achieve­ments of Mr. Modi. This is akin to repur­pos­ing the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment as an Oba­ma muse­um.

In addi­tion to eras­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of long-dead lib­er­als, B.J.P. lead­ers are busy pro­mot­ing vio­lent Hin­du nation­al­ists. Sak­shi Maharaj, a B.J.P. mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, described Nathu­ram Godse, the man who assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi, as a “patri­ot.” Although Mr. Maharaj lat­er retract­ed his state­ment, his opin­ion is shared by many of his par­ty col­leagues. Gandhi’s assas­sin was a for­mer mem­ber of the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh, an armed Hin­du group, with which Mr. Modi has been asso­ci­at­ed since he was 8 years old.

THE B.J.P.’s efforts to reshape insti­tu­tions that embody sec­u­lar val­ues — val­ues they dis­miss as “West­ern” — was cer­tain­ly antic­i­pat­ed. It came as no sur­prise when the cul­ture and tourism min­is­ter, Mahesh Shar­ma, recent­ly promised to “cleanse every area of pub­lic dis­course that had been west­ern­ized.” Mr. Shar­ma is well aware of the con­no­ta­tions of the word he used.

It’s also not sur­pris­ing that Hin­du fun­da­men­tal­ists would feel empow­ered in the shad­ow of a Hin­du nation­al­ist gov­ern­ment. Still, few expect­ed that free­dom of speech would become a con­testable com­mod­i­ty and that some who exer­cised it would lose their lives.

The real­iza­tion has made for deci­sions that were once unthink­able.

Last Decem­ber, the acclaimed author Peru­mal Muru­gan informed the police that he’d received threats from Hin­du groups angered by a nov­el he wrote in 2010. Extrem­ists staged burn­ings of his book and demand­ed a pub­lic apol­o­gy from him. The police sug­gest­ed he go into exile. Real­iz­ing he was on his own, in Jan­u­ary Mr. Muru­gan announced the with­draw­al of his entire lit­er­ary canon. On Face­book, he swore to give up writ­ing, in essence apol­o­giz­ing for his life’s work out of fear for his family’s safe­ty.

It’s hard to accept what is hap­pen­ing in India. It is eas­i­er to ignore or dis­miss the attacks and the threats as a lib­er­al per­se­cu­tion com­plex or a phase that will last only as long as the B.J.P. is in pow­er. But the coun­try is under­go­ing a tec­ton­ic shift that will have long-term reper­cus­sions.

The attacks in India should not be seen as a prob­lem lim­it­ed to sec­u­lar writ­ers or lib­er­al thinkers. They should be rec­og­nized as an attack on the heart of what con­sti­tutes a democ­ra­cy — and that con­cerns every­one who val­ues the idea of India as it was con­ceived and as it is beloved, rather than an India imag­ined through the eyes of reli­gious zealots. Indi­ans must protest these attacks and demand account­abil­i­ty from peo­ple in pow­er. We must call for all voic­es to be pro­tect­ed, before we lose our own.

9. Fur­ther evi­dence of the nature of Mod­i’s gov­er­nance:

“India Pol­i­tics Are Back­drop In Mob Attack” by David Barstow and Suhasi­ni Raj; The New York Times; 10/05/2015; p. A4.

The vig­i­lantes from Save the Cow sprang into action the moment they heard a rumor that a cow’s slaugh­tered remains had been found near an elec­tri­cal trans­former loom­ing over the heart of this vil­lage. They quick­ly raised the alarm through text mes­sages and phone calls. A local Hin­du priest was asked to alert vil­lagers from his tem­ple loud­speak­er.

Soon, about 1,000 men had gath­ered by the trans­former. There was no sign that a cow, a holy sym­bol for Hin­dus, had been slaugh­tered. Nonethe­less, the men pro­ceed­ed through zigzag­ging alleys to the home of the sus­pect­ed cow killer, Mohammed Ikhlaq, one of the few Mus­lims liv­ing in this vil­lage about 30 miles east of New Del­hi.

Mr. Ikhlaq and his wife, Ikra­man, were on their sec­ond-floor patio, doz­ing after din­ner and prayers. Sud­den­ly their home was swarm­ing with men. Mrs. Ikhlaq heard some­one shout, “Kill them.” She, her hus­band and their son Dan­ish, 20, retreat­ed inside, behind a thick wood­en door. The mob shat­tered the door.

“What’s the mat­ter?” Mrs. Ikhlaq cried out. An incred­u­lous voice replied from the dark, “After slaugh­ter­ing a cow, you are ask­ing us what’s the mat­ter?”

Men began to paw at Mrs. Ikhlaq, so she bit hard into a sweaty hand, broke free and fled down­stairs, “too scared to even breathe,” she said in an inter­view. Upstairs, the mob blud­geoned her hus­band with her sewing machine and smashed her son’s head with a brick. Then they dragged Mr. Ikhlaq down 14 cement steps and out to the main road by the trans­former, where he was left for all to see.

Mr. Ikhlaq was declared dead ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, hours after the attack; his son remains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. But in inter­views last week, more than a half-dozen mem­bers of Save the Cow expressed lit­tle remorse for what hap­pened at the Ikhlaqs’ home. Instead, they blamed Mr. Ikhlaq for incit­ing the mob’s fury by slaugh­ter­ing and eat­ing a cow — an alle­ga­tion dis­missed by the Ikhlaq fam­i­ly and the police, who have filed mur­der charges against 10 men. . . . .

. . . . Many lead­ers of Save the Cow here are also promi­nent local orga­niz­ers in Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi’s Hin­du nation­al­ist Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty, or B.J.P., which is vying to oust the social­ist par­ty that leads Uttar Pradesh, a vast north­ern state with more than 200 mil­lion res­i­dents, includ­ing the 20,000 in this vil­lage. Mr. Tomar, 24, for exam­ple, is the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the local B.J.P. youth wing. Mr. Nagar, 33, is the state sec­re­tary of the B.J.P. youth wing.

By week’s end, they and many oth­er B.J.P. lead­ers were blam­ing the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Uttar Pradesh for the attack in Bisa­da. . . .

. . . . Save the Cow and B.J.P. lead­ers here have also round­ly con­demned the deci­sion by the police to bring mur­der charges. In their view, the death of Mr. Ikhlaq was at most the unin­tend­ed byprod­uct of a chaot­ic, high­ly charged sit­u­a­tion of his own mak­ing. “He slipped and his head hit the road and he died,” Mr. Tomar said, adding: “These things hap­pen. It’s a mob.”

Mr. Modi’s cul­ture min­is­ter, Mahesh Shar­ma, who rep­re­sents this area in the Indi­an Par­lia­ment, went so far as to tell The Indi­an Express that Mr. Ikhlaq’s death “should be con­sid­ered as an acci­dent.”