Even as Congress leaders and supporters have the habit of getting on the moral high horse and pontificating to others on the virtues of ‘tolerance’ and ‘dissent’, they do not necessarily subscribe to practising what they preach, as evidenced recently when a raft of Congress supporters took to social media to bully YouTuber Shubham Gaur and India Today staffer Saurabh Dwivedi for their critical remarks on Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party.
Congress supporters and sympathisers recently took to social media to attack YouTuber Shubham Gaur and Lallantop journalist Saurabh Dwivedi after their past remarks mocking the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi went viral on the internet. Consequently, both Gaur and Dwivedi were forced to issue an apology for speaking their minds out, after which Congress leaders gloated on Twitter at apologies they had managed to secure, apparently with the help of online bullying and targeted harassment.
Congress leaders and supporters bully Shubham Gaur and Saurabh Dwivedi into apologising for their past remarks, gloat over their apologies
Congress workers and leaders have made YouTuber Shubham Gaur apologize for his jokes about Rahul Gandhi. A video of his apology went viral on social media on 15th October 2022.
The apology from @Shubhamgaur09 is here. I support your art and I hope it reaches new heights but let this be a message to all those artists – Things like this against my leader won’t be tolerated.Don’t cross a line with us or face consequences.
— Suraj Thakur (@SurajThakurINC) October 15, 2022
शादी मुबारक in Advance Shubham. pic.twitter.com/H4daFRGvVO
In this video, Shubham Gaur said, “Hello friends! I recently had a casual chat with the host of a podcast show. A clip from that chat was edited and circulated on social media. As it was a casual chat, I did not follow any barriers while using my words. So, I crossed the barriers. I do not favour any political party nor am I against any political party. So I realize that the words I used for Mr Rahul Gandhi in that discussion were not appropriate and I regret that. I assure his supporters who are pained by this, that I will not use such language for him again in the future. Thank you.”
Shubham Gaur shared a reel from his Instagram account on 14th October 2022. The reel contained the edited video clip of his podcast show in which he was making some jokes about Rahul Gandhi during a casual conversation with the host of the show. Congress leaders and workers reported the post and commented in large numbers asking the YouTuber to apologize.
As Shubham Gaur expressed his regrets, the Congress workers flagged his video to assert their ‘moral victory’. Congress worker Surj Thakur tweeted, “The apology from Shubham Gaur is here. I support your art and I hope it reaches new heights but let this be a message to all those artists – Things like this against my leader won’t be tolerated. Don’t cross a line with us or face consequences. Many congratulations in advance for your marriage.”
Similarly, Lallantop journalist Saurabh Dwivedi also had to proffer an apology after he was incessantly attacked on Twitter by Congress supporters and Rahul Gandhi admirers over his past tweets mocking the grand old party and the Gandhi scion.
After Dwivedi offered an apology for his past tweets and remarks, Nitin Agarwal, the national coordinator of the social media cell of Congress, tweeted the apology videos of Dwivedi and Gaur.
अगर हमारे नेता के खिलाफ झूठा Propaganda चलाओगे तो इसी तरह ‘सावरकर’ बनने पर मजबूर किया जाएगा । pic.twitter.com/2U8ldTGziL
— Nitin Agarwal (@nitinagarwalINC) October 15, 2022
In this video, Saurabh Dwivedi says, “How should one articulate an apology or a regret? In the last 72 hours the screenshots of my old tweets from 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017 are going viral on social media, especially Twitter. I have used the same language as those trolls. So what if I used that language for Rahul Gandhi at a time when The Lallantop was not even started? I used to think like that in those days. Should I say it was wrong? In some places, it was just for fun but in some places, it crossed the limits of parliamentary language.”
Not only did the Congress online trolls harass Shubham Gaur and Lallantop ‘journalist’ Saurabh Dwivedi for their views on Rahul Gandhi and Congress, but they also took great pleasure in their apologies, reflecting a smug pride in attacking the dissenters and forcing them to apologise for their remarks.
This comes even as Rahul Gandhi continues to wax eloquent on how his party has ‘tolerance’ for dissent and contrarian viewpoints, even as party trolls and leaders make a beeline to attack those who dare to oppose their views and refuse to align with the Congress ideology.
Congress threatens to initiate action against Scoopwhoop over old memes on Rahul Gandhi
The Congress party has frequently argued that the BJP is hell-bent on undermining democracy’s fourth pillar. Party officials, particularly Rahul Gandhi, have regularly decried the lack of press freedom in Modi’s era. Last year, the dynasty-run party practically cried hoarse about India’s decline in the press freedom rankings.
However, it’s no secret that from the times of Jawaharlal Nehru to the present Sonia Gandhi era, the Congress party has been highly intolerant when it comes to accepting criticism from the press. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has left no room for dissent and has acted strictly against the press whenever they have raised fingers against their misdeeds. One of the recent examples was how the entire Congress ecosystem went after Arnab Goswami with hundreds of FIRs and a concocted TRP scam just because he called Sonia Gandhi by her maiden name.
Just another example of this hypocrisy was on display recently when some Congress leaders took to the microblogging site Twitter to threaten the Delhi-based digital media company ScoopWhoop with legal action over some old memes of Rahul Gandhi.
In April 2015, ScoopWhoop published an article titled: “These Rahul Gandhi Memes Will Tell You Why He Needs Special Treatment”, wherein it shared some hilarious memes about the Congress leader. It’s surprising, however, that it took the Congress leaders and their supporters a little over seven years to react to the memes shared by the digital platform. Several Congress leaders and their online supporters fell over themselves to bully Scoopwhoop and threaten them to remove the article.
