HINDUTVA

World’s Largest Far Right Paramilitary Rallied in NYC. It Should Alarm Everyone.

Five thousand people attended a rally in New York City led by the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

By Samantha Agarwal ,

Truthout

September 1, 2026

New Yorkers rally outside of Madison Square Garden to condemn Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS on August 29, 2026.Samantha Agarwal

On February 20, 1939, the Madison Square Garden arena in New York City hosted a chilling spectacle. A portrait of George Washington hung at the center of the arena, flanked by U.S. flags and swastikas. Over 20,000 people packed the stands to hear Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German American Bund — one of the most prominent U.S.-based organizations aligned with the Third Reich — project his vision of a “white, Gentile-ruled United States.” Outside, 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters clashed with police on Eighth Avenue, determined to stop the legitimization of European fascism on U.S. soil.

Eighty-seven years later, global leaders in ethno-fascism and their sympathizers returned to Madison Square Garden.

On August 29, 2026, 5,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden to hear Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS is the world’s largest far right paramilitary organization, with an estimated 4 million members spread over 73,117 branches across India. Just as the Bund attempted to leverage the image of George Washington to legitimize Nazism in their rally of 1939, the RSS used this invite-only event — apparently attended by 180 religious leaders from 30 countries — to sanitize a century-old project of Hindu fascism. Obscuring its extremist agenda, the RSS cloaked the gathering in the rhetoric of liberal multiculturalism, branding it with the theme “Universal Oneness.”

In his 42-minute keynote, the septuagenarian Bhagwat played the part of a playful but discerning uncle, dispensing meandering aphorisms about an “innate, eternal oneness” that connects humanity and nature. Rooting these concepts in the Atman (soul) and India’s civilizational values, Bhagwat painted a picture of a nation that champions “unity in diversity.” In a jarring contrast to his movement’s actual record, he claimed that India chooses to tolerate its enemies rather than subjugate them — elevating the country as a global exemplar of enlightened governance.

While Bhagwat spoke inside, an interfaith and anti-caste coalition protested outside. It consisted of groups like SALAM (South Asian Left), Hindus for Human Rights, and the Indian American Muslim Council, along with members of some of the 66 organizations that signed on to a statement earlier this week condemning Bhagwat’s visit. Their speeches exposed the hypocrisy of Bhagwat’s claim to “unity in diversity,” demonstrating how the RSS and its massive network of Hindu supremacist partners — including nearly a thousand nonprofit organizations, cultural organizations, paramilitary groups, unions, and political parties, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (or the Family of the Sangh) — routinely practice the exact opposite of what Bhagwat preaches.

Here’s How the Hindu Supremacist Movement Is Infiltrating US Politics
As the 100-year-old movement in India celebrates a key victory, a new report reveals its ties with the US far right. By Samantha Agarwal , Truthout February 2, 2024

Speakers pointed out how the RSS’s notion of unity is, in fact, exclusively reserved for Hindus — and only for those who are wealthy and upper-caste. Shree Baphna from SALAM talked about how Hindutva (or the Hindu supremacist movement) attempts to divert mass anger “away from those in power and towards those communities who are exploited and oppressed.”

Baphna added:


When a Dalit [lower caste person] demands land, dignity and the annihilation of caste, Hindutva says, ‘forget caste – you are Hindu. When an Adivasi [Indigenous person] defends jal, jungle, zameen [water, forests and land] against mines, dams and corporations – Hindutva says, ‘forget your history – you are a vanvasi – a child of the Hindu nation.’ Shame!

Ritu Gupta from the nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights, noted that Mohan Bhagwat is here “pretending to spread the message of oneness.” But this is not the message Bhagwat’s supporters spread in India, Gupta retorted. “In India they say, ‘Hindus only – everybody else, get out!’ These Hindus who support the message of purging India of its minorities do not represent all Hindus. There could be no bigger hypocrisy than this!”

Demonstrators display signs reading, “RSS Out of NYC.”

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Others, including a spokesperson for the Palestinian organization Pal Awda, extended the critique of Bhagwat’s rhetorical “oneness” to India’s role as a regional colonizer in Kashmir and partner to genocidal Israel. “We have a responsibility to stand against genocide whenever, and wherever,” the Pal Awda representative, who requested anonymity, said. “The RSS has deep ties to Zionism and has worked to create an Israel-like vision for India based on [an] ethnonationalist state and subjugation of minorities.” Moreover, the “Hindutva-Zionism relationship is not merely ideological,” the spokesperson added, explaining that the relationship is constructed through diplomatic links, military cooperation, and corporate capital flows.

As one striking example of this strategic alliance, in 2022 the Adani Group owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, a personal friend to Modi, purchased 70 percent of the Haifa port. Today, the Indian flag flies next to the Israeli flag in Israel’s second largest port. The Indian and Israeli governments also cooperate heavily on military equipment, counterterrorism, and surveillance technology, including software partnerships. Another speaker on August 29 added, “The Hindutva politics that normalizes repression in Kashmir is a mirror image of the Zionist state — carrying out the same occupation and dispossession in Palestine.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a number of New York City council members have also publicly opposed the RSS rally. Additionally, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the U.S. government to sanction the RSS due to its violent attacks on religious minorities.
Hindu Supremacy’s Enduring Ties to European Fascism

To fully understand the significance of Bhagwat holding court at Madison Square Garden — and the intensity of the counter-protests — one must grasp the bloodline that binds his organization to the very regime the German American Bund was celebrating in 1939. The founders of the RSS, which was created in 1925, met with and drew direct lessons from the European fascists.

In 1931 BS Moonje, a Hindu nationalist and mentor to the first Supreme Leader of the RSS, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, traveled to Italy to meet with Benito Mussolini and tour various military academies and militant youth organizations such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla and the Avanguardisti. Moonje wrote in his diary that he was inspired by these fascist organizations and intended to reshape the RSS along these organizational lines. It is said that under Hedgewar the RSS adopted many of their core features — such as their targeted recruitment of young boys (beginning at age 5), use of paramilitary training, and the total subordination of the organization to a supreme, lifetime leader — from Moonje’s accounts of the Italian Balilla.

Further, in 1939 M.S. Golwalkar — the RSS’s second Supreme Leader, whose portrait Bhagwat still routinely garlands — wrote in his manifesto, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, that Germany’s ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people was a model for India “to learn and profit by.” In that same text, he characterizes Muslims as historical “despoilers” and “murdering hordes” who destroyed Hindu kingdoms, arguing that they should either be forced to assimilate to Hinduism. If they refuse, he argues, they should be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges.”

Today, under Bhagwat’s leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12-year reign, Golwarkar’s 1939 blueprint has become de facto state policy. In 2019, the RSS-backed Modi regime passed a slate of controversial laws effectively dismantling what was left of India’s secularism, tying citizenship to religion, explicitly excluding Muslims. This legal subordination works in tandem with extralegal vigilante violence committed by partners of the RSS like the Bajrang Dal.

Lynchings and mob attacks on individuals or small groups of people constitute a kind of slow-burning structural violence that has led Brown University political scientists Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs to compare Hindu nationalism to America’s Jim Crow South. There has been a steady rise in such incidents since 2014, disproportionately in BJP-ruled states. In just the first year of Modi’s third term (2024-2025), the Association for Protection of Civil Rights recorded 602 such hate crimes. Of these, 173 involved physical violence against minorities, resulting in 25 deaths — every one of them Muslim.

Punitive home demolitions and evictions are also surging. According to the Housing and Land Rights Network, evictions across India climbed from 107,625 in 2019 to 222,686 in 2022, before reaching 515,752 in 2023 — a 379 percent increase over five years. The network’s data also reveals that Muslims are vastly overrepresented among those whose homes are destroyed.

Waging sustained opposition to the regime on any of these counts has become nearly impossible. Critics — including peaceful activists, academics, media, and dissident politicians — are routinely persecuted under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which eliminate standard burdens of proof to permit the indefinite pretrial detention of political opponents. This systematic criminalization of dissent has led the prestigious V-Dem Institute to classify India as an electoral autocracy, dropping the country’s democratic freedom ranking from 65th in 2016 to 106th in 2026 — the bottom 20 percent globally. Even more alarming, Genocide Watch has repeatedly warned of an impending genocide against India’s 250 million Muslims, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ranks India at the “second-highest risk of a new mass killing.”

Yet, despite this grim record, the highest leader of this fascistic movement was handed one of the world’s most coveted stages — welcomed to preach and court donors in the heart of the U.S.’s financial capital.
Bhagwat’s Event Was the Culmination of a Decades-Long Strategy to Influence U.S. Politics

Just as the German American Bund sought to build a fifth column in the U.S., the RSS has for five decades worked to build material power in the diaspora. To organize its Madison Square Garden rally, the RSS drew on sophisticated, multi-layered clandestine networks, the mechanics of which were exposed in a new, multi-part investigative series on the RSS’s “Vishwa Vibhag” or “Overseas Department” by Savera, a U.S.-based coalition against supremacy.

In this series Savera tracked the shell organizations facilitating the RSS’s U.S. activities. Bhagwat’s event was formally hosted by the innocuous-sounding American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (also known as “AHEAD Forum”), which poses as an independent diaspora group.

The Savera series shows that this is a bald-faced lie. AHEAD Forum was, in fact, incorporated in California in May 2025 by Khanderao Kand, a long-time RSS operative and founder-president of the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies. Kand’s deep ties to the RSS and the BJP were exposed when the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies was implicated in a potentially illegal lobbying effort to influence the U.S. Congress. When Kand became a public relations liability, his name was quietly scrubbed from AHEAD Forum’s paperwork and replaced by a colleague. AHEAD Forum’s other directors are similarly embedded in the “American Sangh,” the network of U.S.-based RSS affiliates.

At the top of this hierarchy sits Saumitra Gokhale. Gokhale is listed on tax forms for the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh — the U.S. wing of the RSS — as a yoga instructor earning $36,000 a year, according to Savera. But researchers found no record of Gokhale teaching yoga. In reality he is a senior RSS pracharak (full-time missionary) and the global coordinator of the Vishwa Vibhag.

The Savera series reveal how the Vishwa Vibhag — or the “largest far right network in the world”— operates across 1,600 branches in 55 countries, utilizing organizations like the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America to weave a dense web of “transnational entanglements.” Contrary to claims that they operate independently of the RSS, the series shows how they in fact are so closely intertwined that Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh leaders are made to attend regular RSS training camps in India. They employ the same terminology (“shakhas”) to refer to branches, borrow from RSS’s prayers and paraphernalia, and pay obeisance to portraits of RSS leaders, including none other than Golwalkar himself. Sewa International is the main fundraising arm of the Vishwa Vibhag — and rakes in millions of dollars of revenue each year.

Ideologically, the American Sangh appropriates the language of Western multiculturalism, global peace, and even decolonizationto shield its majoritarian, proto-fascist project. This was on full display at the Madison Square Garden event. At the same time, it openly allies itself with white nationalists and Zionists — as seen in Trump’s 2019 “Howdy Modi” mega rally in Houston or in the Republican Hindu Coalition formerly chaired by Steve Bannon.

These two faces of the Sangh are not solely fixated on India; they actively intervene in U.S. politics. For example, they have waged aggressive, well-funded campaigns to rewrite California school textbooks to reflect right-wing nationalist histories. They recently spearheaded a successful push to kill a civil rights bills aimed at banning caste-based discrimination — culminating in an infamous veto by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom). Taking a page from the Zionist Anti-Defamation League’s playbook, they weaponize U.S. civil rights rhetoric framing any criticism of the RSS or the BJP’s human rights record as “Hinduphobia” to intimidate lawmakers and silence academics.

The Hindu right wields this outsized political and lobbying muscle despite the fact that only a minority of Indian Americans actually support the BJP. Affiliates like the Hindu American Political Action Committee and Hindu American Foundation have spent years embedding themselves within Washington and local municipalities. Federal Election Commission reports show them donating handsomely across the aisle to Democrats such as Raja Krishnamoorthi and Shri Thanedar alongside Republicans such as Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, and many more.

Typically, the use of front organizations has worked to hedge against accusations of operating on behalf of a foreign agent. However, recently, for reasons that are still unclear, the RSS has also sought to deepen its directinfluence over U.S. politicians. In late 2025, an investigation by the U.S.-based news outlet Prism revealed that the RSS had hired Squire Patton Boggs — one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying firms — to influence U.S. lawmakers. The firm was paid $330,000 during the first three quarters of 2025.

Bringing RSS on as a domestic client rather than registering it under FARA was likely in violation of federal transparency norms. After the Prism report was published, thus, Squire Patton Boggs hastily amended its congressional disclosures, scrubbing the RSS from the paperwork and claiming that its “ultimate client” was actually Vivek Sharma, a Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical executive.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the RSS’s shadowy lobbying initiative and Bhagwat’s visit come at a moment when the Modi regime is facing an unprecedented crisis. Economic stagnation, recurring labor unrest, Hindu temple scandals, and mass student protests have mired Modi’s third term and substantially weakened his domestic standing. Bhagwat’s liberal-sounding message thus appears aimed at restoring a more palatable “brand” for the Sangh Parivar, laying the groundwork for global cooperation under a future leader. This is also a stark reminder of who, in fact, controls the levers of power — the parent RSS — no matter the ultimate fate of Modi or even the BJP.

But if the RSS believes it can quietly secure its legacy, the communities resisting it tell a very different story. Outside the venue, Safa Ahmed of the Indian American Muslim Council spoke directly to Bhagwat’s underlying anxiety, saying:


Islam and Muslims have been in India for 1,400 years, and they will [remain] here after another 1,400 years and even beyond that. So long as we exist, we will never be erased from India. But you — Mohan Bhagwat, and your fascist … fan pals — the masks are off for you. You are being mocked by the youth of India. You are being mocked by New York City. You are afraid of losing it all … And it’s you who will be remembered as a sad, insecure group of people who could only take pride in your identity via the erasure of another — that is, if you are remembered at all

!

Protesters hang garlands of shoes around effigies of Narendra Modi (left) and
Mohan Bhagwat (right)Samantha Agarwal

Ahmed’s prophecy will ultimately bear out, but we cannot afford to passively wait for it. We cannot leave our Muslim, Adivasi, Dalit, and left comrades on the front lines in India to fight this battle alone. Rallies, social media mockery, and the construction of broad, intersectional coalitions like we saw on Saturday are a strong start. But sooner than later we need to go beyond symbolic protest to challenge the Sangh at its root.

This will require disrupting Hindutva diasporic organizations wherever they operate, ruthlessly exposing these “cultural organizations” as fronts for the spread of fascism. It means cautioning the public about the bad-faith weaponization of “Hinduphobia” — which the Hindu right uses to shield itself from criticism — and impeding the Sangh’s ties to global right-wing players like MAGA and Israel. It means educating the nascent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) movement on the violent reality of the Sangh, so it compels DSA-elected officials to act. Finally, just as global movements boycotted the Nazis, the apartheid-era Afrikaners, and now Israel — the left needs to develop creative strategies to choke off the Sangh from its financial lifelines in the U.S. A first step would be to scrutinize its various alliances with big capital, including in the tech and defense sectors, and examine how these partnerships enable funds to flow into India via charitable fronts like Sewa International, IDRF, and Ekal Vidyalaya.

The 1939 Bund rally is remembered today as a sinister moment in U.S. history — a time when New York allowed the most violent political current in the globe to claim a major stage in our financial capital. Mohan Bhagwat’s 2026 visit must be recognized as its modern equivalent. To avoid repeating the horrors of interwar fascism, we must urgently build a transnational, intersectional bloc capable of defeating the American Sangh.

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Samantha Agarwal
Samantha Agarwal is an Assistant Professor at School of Labor and Urban Studies at City University of New York. Her writing and research focus on neoliberalism, social movements in India, and the rise of authoritarian ethnonationalism globally.

Rural Residents Can Learn From the Factor-Farm Rollout to Resist Data Centers

Unlike the CAFO era, rural communities are asking questions before the statutes are locked in. The ultimate question will be: Do rural residents have the power to say no?



A sign on a rural Michigan road opposes a planned $7 billion data center on southeast Michigan farm land.
(Photo by Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Raj Patel

Jim Goodman
Sep 03, 2026

Barn Raiser

Today’s data center proponents argue such projects bring needed jobs and a boost to local economies. Rural America has heard confident pitches like these before. Nearly 40 years ago, concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, arrived one barn at a time with bold promises of jobs and a county tax base.

By the time neighbors organized, right-to-farm laws and state preemption had severed the ground from under them. All the while, manure lagoons leached into the groundwater and fouled the air, shortening the life expectancy of the farmworkers and downwind neighbors.

Organizing still won real things, to be sure, from North Carolina’s CAFO moratorium in 1997 to Chris Jones’s clean-water campaign for agriculture secretary in Iowa today. When it comes to CAFOs, the lessons came late, but in the age of artificial intelligence, those same lessons can give rural communities a leg up.

While CAFOs crept into rural America, data centers are arriving as a land rush. This speed is both terrifying and an advantage. Texas alone has some 248 proposed data center projects, even though 56% of Texans tell pollsters they do not want one nearby, which means that, unlike the CAFO era, rural communities are asking questions before the statutes are locked in. And rural people need their voices to be heard. According to Pew Research Center, of the more than 1,500 data centers proposed or under development, 67% are in rural communities.

Everything CAFO country learned, it learned too late, after the wells were ruined, after the smell lowered adjacent property values and health outcomes, after the statutes were written.

The ultimate question will be: Do rural residents have the power to say no?

The answer is playing out across the country. In November 2025, 800 people filled a board meeting to oppose a billion-dollar Meta-linked project in Howell Township, Michigan, and the developer withdrew. In February, the city council of San Marcos, Texas, rejected a $1.5 billion campus after nearly nine hours of public comment, then became the first Texas city to ban data centers through its zoning code. Fort Worth, Texas, is drafting data center zoning rules of its own.

Nationally, the poorest census tracts resist data center projects at five times the rate of the richest. Projects that meet resistance are cancelled at several times the rate of those that do not. One tracker counts tens of billions of dollars in blocked or delayed projects.

Opposition to data center projects is one of the few issues that many Americans agree on. A June Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 14% of respondents would support a data center being built in their community. On July 18, organizers held 142 protests across 42 states in the first nationwide protest against data centers and artificial intelligence.

Data center hyperscalers are copying the CAFO playbook as best they can. West Virginia has stripped its counties and towns of the power to regulate data centers; similarly, the state’s right-to-farm law prohibits local governments from bringing civil or criminal action against an agricultural operation as long as it meets state and federal laws, permits, and regulations. When Hill County, Texas, passed the state’s first county moratorium in May, a developer sued for $100 million and the county rescinded within a week, because Texas counties can zone against neither a data center nor a feedlot. Hood County pulled its own moratorium after state Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-7) asked whether counties even hold that power; the same senator calls the San Marcos ban illegal.

Right-wing organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), behind the pro-CAFO model legislation of right-to-farm laws since the 1990s, likewise appear intent on denying local control in the data center buildout. At its annual meeting in July, ALEC considered a model legislative framework that would undercut local bans and moratoriums and give data centers the “clear authority to secure power… subject only to objective safety and interconnection standards,” as the Center for Media and Democracy reported. The meeting featured speakers from Google and Nvidia, along with a Meta sponsorship.

The outburst of anti-data center sentiment ahead of the midterms has forced political leaders to reckon with the issue of local control. This is where data centers and CAFOs diverge. In June, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who once hailed Texas as “the epicenter of AI development,” called for a ban on AI data centers in rural neighborhoods and a cut to their billion-dollar-a-year tax exemption after facing rare bipartisan pressure. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law to preserve local control over data centers. Michigan’s candidates for governor are split over the server halls sprouting between Lansing and Detroit. Illinois recently reversed course on its data center policy, reeling in the subsidies it had rolled out in 2019. And in July, New York became the first state in the nation to enact a one-year moratorium.

So, who hasn’t been able to say no? We pulled the locations of CAFOs and data centers in North Carolina and Texas, where the data is easily available, and—yes—got Claude to plot it for us against demographic and county boundaries.






In North Carolina the answer is pretty clear. The state’s 2,482 permitted animal operations cluster in the Black Belt coastal plain where the epidemiologist Steve Wing found hog lagoons a generation ago. Weighted by the number of permits each county holds, those counties are 46% people of color, against 34% across North Carolina’s hundred counties as a whole. Duplin County alone holds over 500 permits and 2.2 million allowable hogs in a county where almost half the population of 49,000 are people of color.

Data centers are the inverse of CAFOs. The state’s data centers sit in counties whiter than the state average, in the Piedmont towns that lost their historic furniture and textile businesses as well as in wealthy Wake and Mecklenburg counties (respectively home to large cities Raleigh and Charlotte). Two of the state’s suspended projects are in adjacent Edgecombe County and Pitt County, where residents informed their resistance based on their history fighting CAFOs.

In 1995, residents of predominantly Black Kingsboro, in Edgecombe County, successfully blocked a major meatpacker from building a 300-acre slaughterhouse in their backyard through efforts to rezone land. When a $19 billion, 400-acre data center came knocking three decades later, residents opposed it en masse. The developer Energy Storage Solutions withdrew its proposal in July and by August, Edgecombe County enacted a two-year moratorium.






In Texas the pattern is a little more complex. Rural Texas tends to be whiter than a state average balanced by majority-Hispanic cities. Yet the feedlot Panhandle is majority-Hispanic meatpacking country, with counties like Deaf Smith and Castro where the workforce lives beside the feedyards it staffs. The rural counties now hosting data centers likewise run less white than rural Texas as a whole.

Other outlier cases in the US: The world’s densest data center cluster is outside Washington, DC, in Loudoun County, Virginia, among the wealthiest counties in America, while xAI’s Colossus runs beside Boxtown, a majority-Black neighborhood in Memphis.

The patterning and the possibilities for asking questions about data centers are very different. CAFOs were put next to the disempowered by history. In most of the counties with proposed data centers, there’s no local billionaire hyperscaler whose family has been on the land for generations to champion the project, with the historical ability to make people of color, in particular, suffer the consequences in the ways that CAFOs had.

In contrast, data centers are being aimed by site selectors in a hurry, looking for cheap land and water, cheap power and thin resistance. But they don’t have their local defenders and hands on the levers of power in the ways that CAFOs do.

At this intersection of race and class is the oldest American proxy for who can, and who can’t, say no.

Here are the questions that constituents should ask their local governments about new data center projects:
1. About Water

Does the permit say the cooling loop is closed, with maximum gallons per day, public metering, and penalties? We have yet to find a binding closed-loop commitment in any permit. Who owns the aquifer data, and who pays for the test wells?
2. About Power

Electric cooperatives, unique to rural America, have long been a way for farmers and rural people to claw back some power over their destiny. These cooperatives were established with a “duty to serve” the areas that investor-owned utilities refused to serve because the load factors were low. By pooling their demand, cooperatives could connect their members to a grid and lower their prices.

In the age of artificial intelligence, public utilities—rural electric cooperatives included—face a dilemma. The more a cooperative buys from its wholesale supplier, the greater its load factor and therefore the lower the cooperative’s average cost of power. When a data center project fields new requests for power, it can be life changing. Having a client with a reliable 24-7 demand for electricity means a predictable increase in the co-op’s load factor. All that new volume could, in principle, make every member’s bill cheaper and bring new system upgrades. It’s tempting to shut up and take the deal.

But as with any gift horse, every farmer knows to check the teeth. Data centers often have greater access to capital than their would-be electric cooperative providers, and their rise as buyers means a shift in the balance of bargaining power in the marketplace. Will attitudes toward universal service obligations remain in place? Will consumer protection policies evolve? And which regulator should be responsible for developing and overseeing new industry guardrails?

Who pays for the substation and the lines? Port Washington, Wisconsin found itself on the hook for a $90 million substation it did not need. Is there a curtailment agreement cutting the data center first in a grid emergency, as Texas now requires of loads over 75 megawatts? Are residential rates fenced off in a separate rate class? And for rural electric cooperative members: Does the all-requirements wholesale contract cap the solar and wind members may build, and would a giant new load deepen that dependence? Why do big loads get lower per kilowatt prices as they increase their usage while conservation earns nothing? Will data centers inherit the same pricing structure?
3. About Money

What does each abatement cost per permanent job, when a hyperscale facility employs a few dozen people? Will advance payments be required to pay for infrastructure upgrades? Will they accept provisions for interruptible power during times of peak demand to prevent rolling blackouts? Are there clawbacks? Is there a decommissioning bond for the day the hardware is scrap, as we now demand of wind farms?
4. About Democracy

Did any utility or government official sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)? Can our county or township legally say no, and if not, which law took the power and who voted for it?

Everything CAFO country learned, it learned too late, after the wells were ruined, after the smell lowered adjacent property values and health outcomes, after the statutes were written. Data centers are arriving early enough that the questions can still be asked in time, even as the hyperscalers find friends in Washington DC, and in statehouses around the country, who’ll say yes to them so that local communities won’t be able to say no.

If we want to stop Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI riding roughshod over our communities and land, it will be because average people, urban and rural alike, will have joined forces to stop the trillionaire class from building their wealth off our backs.


Copyright 2024 by Barn Raising Media


Raj Patel
Raj Patel is a research professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, and co-author of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, and co-director of the documentary The Ants and The Grasshopper. He writes at newsletter.rajpatel.org

Full Bio >
Jim Goodman
Jim Goodman is a retired third-generation dairy farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin and a member of Family Farm Defenders.
Full Bio >

Trump enrages MAGA voters after 'backwards and poor' threat backfires

A supporter of Donald Trump rallies outside an early polling precinct as voters cast their ballots in local, state, and national elections, in Clearwater, Florida, U.S., November 3, 2024. REUTERS/Octavio Jones

Matthew Rozsa

August 31, 2026 

ALTERNET

While President Donald Trump's second term has for the most part been marked by unprecedented partisan polarization, conservatives and liberals tend to unite around one issue — opposition to data centers.

A series of posts on X, highlighted by HQ News Now, shares Trump supporters' reactions to the president's recent statement about data centers. In that Truth Social post, Trump declared that "the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”

In the HQ News Now post, the account highlighted one three-time Trump voter who wrote they "absolutely disagree" with the president. "I don't know who is telling you this garbage but please visit some communities that have been ravaged by data centers," the poster wrote. "There have no water pressure their electric bills are out of control, the incessant humming is intolerable and the ground water is poisoned. No on data centers!"


Similarly an account dubbed "Lefty Lies" write, "the only thing these data centers are gonna do is drive up our energy rates just like they have done throughout the country. We don't need this bulls——." In a similar vein, on user who wrote they "love" Trump noted, "if you are concerned about the windmills destroying birds [and] the constant humming, then you need to go visit a neighborhood with a data center right beside it. In Florida, especially, where our aquifer is so fragile [and] water is so expensive, data centers are a real threat. And, I'm MAGA!"

The MAGA account "VaccinesCauseSIDS" wrote "[I]'d rather have clean water and less surveillance," while another user declared, "I regret ever supporting you." An account from "Misty Collier" offered a lengthier reply, writing that "no one agrees with this sir. Data centers are a gateway for the market of the beast and total control. We love you. I am a MAGA Republican that has always supported you and hates communism. I understand they have convinced you this is right. That is a lie. We the people want to be free and have freedom and trust God and the constitution. We do not want control and surveillance. Those things promote communism. The people are to awake to be convinced otherwise."

Far right influencer Alex Jones wrote that Trump's vice president, JD Vance, went into "damage control" for Trump over data canters after Vance told reporters, "I don't think data centers are that controversial."

The Quartering ("@TheQuartering"), who is also conservative, wrote that "data centers are a reality, they are not going away. But ... they are as unpopular as illegal immigration in small towns like here in my state in Port Washington, we fought tooth and nail against it, and I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who 'wants to be poor.'"

By contrast, former CNBC financial commentator Jim Cramer was sympathetic to Trump's position, writing on his account, "While the president seems to be inclined to slow things down, the border states would welcome them ... It will happen. They get the win. They have the cards." Newsman's Nick Sorter argued that "X just revealed they discovered a network of 200,000 Chinese influence bot accounts. Many of them posing as Americans to shape AI, energy and data center policies. President Trump warned about this just last month: 'Other nations are trying to get us to slow down and they are spending a lot of money on propaganda, on press PR, trying to convince everybody that this isn't a positive thing[.]' Looks like he was right."

 

South Korea's Unification Church leader Hak Ja Han sentenced to 2 years for corruption

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Seoul Central District Court convicted Han, widow of church founder Sun Myung Moon, of violating the political funds act, bribery and embezzling church funds, the court said in a statement.

Hyung-jin Kim

September 1, 2026 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court sentenced Hak Ja Han, the 83-year-old leader of the Unification Church, to two years in prison on Monday for bribing the wife of ousted conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol and other corruption charges.

The Seoul Central District Court convicted Han, widow of church founder Sun Myung Moon, of violating the political funds act, bribery and embezzling church funds, the court said in a statement.

Han was arrested in September 2025 and later charged with colluding with church officials to give then-first lady Kim Keon Hee luxury goods when Yoon was in office, in pursuit of political favors. Han was also charged with giving lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong, a Yoon loyalist, 100 million won ($73,000) months before Yoon’s inauguration in May 2022.

Earlier this year, Kim received a four-year prison term at an appeals court for receiving a Graff diamond necklace and two Chanel bags from the Unification Church, and stock price manipulation, a charge that is unrelated to the church. On Monday, the Seoul court sentenced a church official to six months in prison and gave two other church officials suspended terms over their involvement in Han’s case. Kwon received a two-year sentence at the Supreme Court, the top court in South Korea, in July.

Han is revered by followers as ‘True Mother’

Despite Monday’s verdict, Han was out of prison because the Seoul court earlier accepted her request to suspend her arrest due to health issues until Sept. 2. A team of investigators led by special prosecutor Min Joong-ki earlier requested a 13-year prison term for Han.

Revered as “True Mother” by followers, Han is the top leader of the Unification Church, which is officially called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The organization said in a statement Monday that it deeply apologizes for causing “big concerns and disappointment to the people.” But it said it cannot accept the ruling against Han and will appeal it.

The Unification Church, widely known for mass weddings, was founded in 1954 by Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and conservative family values. He built the church into an international movement with extensive business interests worldwide. Moon died in 2012 at age 92.

In a blow to the church’s branch in Japan, a Tokyo court last year ordered a revocation of its legal status after the government accused it of manipulative fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fear among followers and harmed their families. The order came after a man, who admitted to killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, had said he was motivated by a desire to expose Japanese politicians’ ties to the Unification Church.

Probe of church ties began after Yoon’s martial law debacle

South Korean investigations of the church-involved scandal started after Yoon was removed from office following a Constitutional Court ruling in April 2025 over his imposition of martial law that threw the nation into turmoil. His successor Lee Jae Myung, a liberal, appointed three special prosecutors to investigate Yoon’s martial law and other allegations during his presidency.

In February, Yoon was sentenced to life in prison for rebellion in connection with his martial law enforcement.

On Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly imposed martial law and sent troops and police officers to the National Assembly, saying he aimed to eliminate “anti-state forces” and “shameless North Korea sympathizers.” The martial law lasted six hours as he was forced to lift it after the assembly unanimously voted it down.

Yoon has defended his action, calling it a desperate attempt to draw public support for his fight against the liberal opposition Democratic Party that obstructed his agenda.

High Noise Levels Worse Than Air Pollution, Poorly Erected DGs An Irritating ‘Noise Generator’ – OpEd

September 1, 2026

By Dr. K S Parthasarathy

Key Takeaways:

A hospital diesel generator in Nerul East, Navi Mumbai, ran for nearly two days in a Silent Zone (50 dB day / 40 dB night); the author measured home levels with a NIOSH SLM app often above commercial-zone limits and argues for acoustic treatment of the DG, not relocation.

He treats noise as a health equal of air pollution: WHO Europe 2011 (heart disease, hypertension, children’s cognition), CSIR-NEERI 2020 (MMR sites over WHO limits), hospital-front readings >100 dB from honking, Eid/DJ spikes to 116 dB, plus 2025 BMJ work on noise as a chronic cardiovascular and mental-health stressor.

Enforcement is called weak; CPWD Building Code 2016 already specifies insulation—roughly ₹4–8 lakh for a 1,200 sq ft flat versus ~₹1.5 crore property cost—so homeowners should treat residences as noise-compliant rather than wait for civic action.

Recently, a continuous, intrusive hum from a hospital’s diesel generator (DG) disrupted the peace of mind of the residents in two neighbouring buildings in Nerul East, Navi Mumbai. For nearly two days, the civic-minded residents endured this irritating noise, leading them to raise measured objections and formal queries regarding the disturbance in their otherwise quiet neighbourhood

Generally, DGs are well designed and erected. Their manufacturing and deployment are mature industrial activities. DGs have built-in sound barriers and other noise-suppressing features to bring their noise levels within permissible limits.

Since hospitals are designated as Silent Zones, their boundaries must respect stricter limits of 50 dB(A) in the day and 40 dB(A) at night, requiring specialized acoustic setups. Noise level is measured indecibels (dB), a unit used to describe how loud a sound is. The higher the decibel number, the louder the sound. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic rather than linear, an increase of 10 dB represents roughly a tenfold increase in sound intensity. (30 dB A quiet library;60 dB A normal conversation; 80 dB Heavy city traffic.)


The noisy generator needs a relook and probably not relocation, as some angry residents unrealistically demanded.

By downloading an App-NIOSH SLM into my i-phone, I could measure noise levels in my residence. Though our plot is “residential” the noise levels were often more than those of “commercial” zone. The “Noise nuisance” episode was an additional unwanted “Bonus”!

Air pollution

When my family shifted from the well-landscaped and well-designed Anushaktinagar in 2005, we had concerns about air pollution in Navi Mumbai. There was some reason for that. I had access to the report of an interagency project in which scientists from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board led by Dr R K Garg an eminent scientist found that vehicular pollution is the major source of pollution contrary to the popular perception by people and media that industrial sources are the major suspects! The “noise” pollution from vehicles is very difficult to regulate and control primarily because of our drivers’ honking habit!

Noise is as harmful as air pollution

In 2011, the WHO European Region published a book titled “Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise (2011). It recognised that environmental noise is as harmful as air pollution. That fact came to notice many decades after the damage was done making it no longer an issue to be thrown under the carpet!

“While there is evidence that road traffic noise increases the risk of ischaemic heart disease, including myocardial infarction, there is less evidence for such an association with aircraft noise because of a lack of studies. However, there is increasing evidence that both road traffic noise and aircraft noise increase the risk of hypertension”, the book concluded

One of the chapters in the book contains a summary of evidence linking noise and cognitive impairment in children

Other studies

In 2020, the scientists of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIRNEERI) found that noise levels in153 locations across nine municipal corporations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR)-including Navi Mumbai exceeded WHO guideline values. Although Navi Mumbai was least noisy, the levels still surpassed both national and international norms. Rising noise levels is due to traffic congestion, honking, construction and demolition, commercial expansion, and increasing builtup density.

The Times of India (TOI, 25 April 2017) reported that the noise levels recorded between noon and 3 PM outside six hospitals in Mumbai exceeded 100 dBs. This was due to vehicular traffic and primarily by habitual honking by drivers. (Permissible limits 50 dB(A) in the day and 40 dB(A) at night!)

In 2022, the NGO Awaaz Foundation found that the noise levels during the Eid celebrations at Mohammed Ali Road near JJ Hospital shot up to 116.3 decibels owing to DJ’s blasting music. (The Hindustan Times, HT 11 Oct 2022)

Last year, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directed Pune police and MPCB to strictly enforce noise regulations during Ganapathy Festival.


Despite such actions, violations remain common. Noise often exceeds permissible levels.
Health impact of Noise: Robust scientific evidence

According to a 2025 British Medical Journal (The BMJ) paper by Razai et al, environmental noise is a major public health crisis, acting as a chronic stressor that triggers cardiovascular, metabolic, and mental health issues. Long-term noise exposure from traffic directly alters human biology and demands a multi-tiered response involving policy, clinical practice, and personal protection.

Homeowners must make their residences noise standard compliant. Sensitive groups such as children and the elderly spend most of the time at home. Loud noise can damage the delicate structures of the inner ear of infants potentially leading to permanent hearing loss.

Expecting strict enforcement of noise control measures by authorities is unrealistic. It will be foolhardy for any homeowner to ignore the robust scientific evidence linking noise to cardiovascular disease, sleep disruption, stress, and cognitive impairment.
Seminal contributions of CPWD

In its Building Code 2016, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) addresses noise control measures by acoustic design, sound insulation, and noise level limits. The technology is readily available. It is not cheap but essential when you consider the health benefits.

Remedial measures affordable

For a 1200 square ft flat, one may have to spend about Rs 4 lakhs to 8 lakhs, not too high as the cost of the flat in an affordable suburb may be as high as Rs 1.5 crores or more. Costs of remedial measures are ballpark numbers. You can pick and choose; there are many companies in this business. The actual estimate depends on many factors. If you choose basic compliance, it may be cheaper. Information on the adverse impact of environmental noise is yet to reach the public

This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr. R K Garg. A few days ago, I had the privilege of briefly discussing with him the findings of the interagency study he led. His admirable insight, scholarship, and dedication to science left a lasting impression on everyone who met him.


About Dr. K S Parthasarathy

Dr. K S Parthasarathy is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and a former Raja Ramanna Fellow in the Strategic Planning Group, Department of Atomic Energy, Mumbai. Dr. K S Parthasarathy may be contacted at ksparth@yahoo.co.uk
View all posts by Dr. K S Parthasarathy →

Can a Progressive be a Patriot?

Richard Rubenstein

 August 28, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Can a progressive be a patriot?  Well, you say, yes, of course!  More than two centuries ago, Sir Walter Scott defined patriotism as love of country – a special feeling for one’s birthplace and its people.

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!

To Scott, this sort of affection for one’s homeland separates people who care for others from those who care only for themselves.  The villain of his poem (“The Lay of the Last Minstrel”) is a wealthy aristocrat “concentrated all in self” who, having isolated himself from his less privileged neighbors, is doomed to die “unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.”

Updating Scott somewhat, here’s what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, America’s most articulate and eloquent progressive, has to say on the same topic: “We don’t leave the things that we love, and when we love this country, what that means is that we propose the solutions to fix it.”

AOC defines the nation in terms of class, not just ethnicity, concluding that “you cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business. To love this country is to fight for its people — all people, working people, everyday Americans like bartenders and factory workers.”  She identifies U.S. history with the history of popular movements such as abolitionism, the labor movement, and the women’s movement.  And she defines the key American value as “true freedom — not just freedom of speech… but also the economic freedoms to live in dignity.”

This is the clearest left-leaning answer to the challenge posed by centrists like the New York Times’s Frank Bruni, who laments that progressive Democrats have “readily and foolishly ceded many tradition-tinged, conservative-coded concepts — freedom, patriotism, family values, law and order — to their opponents” (NYT, 8/17/26).  The answer, says Bruni, is to redefine and reaffirm such values as freedom and patriotism.  But the main problem with this redefining and reaffirming is not what it does but what it avoids.  It avoids recognizing and dealing with patriotism as it is actually defined and practiced by most Americans, and for that matter, by a great many people living in other nations.

“Actually existing” patriotism is not just a Sir Walter Scott-ish natural affection for one’s national neighborhood – it enshrines a commitment, come what may, to secure preferential treatment for fellow nationals (particularly those recognized as legitimate or “true” members of the community) over the residents of any other nation.

Dig it: We (Americans) have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and happiness.  They (non-Americans) can assert the same rights, but if we have to choose between their rights and ours, patriotism means choosing ours.  Ditto where economic interests and prosperity are at stake.  And double-ditto where the relevant need is for national security or military supremacy.  Unfortunately, the world is often a zero-sum place where great powers compete, and where when what helps the residents of one nation harms or jeopardizes those of another.  Under such circumstances the rule of patriotism (which some conservative theorists believe rises to the level of “natural law”) is to favor your own people over all others.

Thinking about this, I can’t help recalling the frequent noisy discussions that my father and I used to engage in concerning the rights of Jews and of non-Jews in places like the State of Israel.  “Of course, your first obligation is to take care of your own,” he would insist.  “But that’s tribalism,” I would reply.  “Oh? Do you think it’s tribalism if I take care of my own family before worrying about the family down the block?”  That used to stump me, since I didn’t know enough in those days to criticize a scarcity-based capitalist system that sets family against family, or to point out that a nation is not a family, and that the ideology that proclaims it a family is fascism.

Disputes over patriotism also remind me of demonstrations against the Vietnam War that I used to march in (and sometimes organize), in which a frequent issue was the appropriateness and effectiveness of antiwar slogans displayed and chanted by competing groups.  A rough line separated those focusing on the war’s immorality and young people’s refusal to fight in it (“Hell no, we won’t go!” “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war!“ “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”)  from those expressing critical or total support for the Vietnamese rebels (“U.S. out of Indochina!” “Support the Vietnamese Revolution!” “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win!”).  While recognizing that many people would consider their refusal to fight in the war “objectively” pro-communist, some demonstrators did not wish to root openly for an enemy victory over U.S. forces, since that would be unpatriotic.  Others wanted to make clear that if patriotism meant supporting American forces in an unjust war, they were anti-patriots.

Similar issues have reappeared in less dramatic form in connection with the current U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.  Listening to Democrats criticize this vastly unpopular war, it often seems that their main objection is that it was not fought more efficiently and did not fulfill Trump’s promises to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability, destroy its military forces, prevent it from supporting regional allies, and enforce regime change.  Rather than resting on principle, most objections have been largely technical and tactical: Trump should have gotten Congressional authorization for the attack; Trump and Hegseth should have realized that Iran would interfere with oil traffic in the Straits of Hormuz, etc.  Some progressive Democrats such as AOC and Zohran Mamdani have gone considerably farther than this, branding the attacks against Iran “an illegal war of aggression” and calling for reduction of U.S. forces in the region. But even these critiques stop well short of stating as a general principle that patriotism must not be defined as American supremacism.

Our ultimate loyalty as human beings is not to the nation but to the human family.  Since this is the case, the needs and interests of Americans should never be treated as superior to those of any other nation or people.  This principle is all the more important to assert and defend when one recognizes that the U.S.A. is not just one nation among others but a global empire whose imperial interests masquerade as national interests.  Recently, left-leaning elements of the Democratic Party have begun to question the dogma that arming the State of Israel to the teeth and supporting whatever military actions its government decides to take is in the U.S. “national interest.”  But they are just beginning to understand that this sort of patron-client relationship and a regional policy of divide-and-conquer are classical empire-building strategies designed to benefit U.S. oligarchs and militarists, not the American people.

Even if one could prove that these strategies benefitted working-class and middle-class Americans (which they clearly do not), the question demanding an answer would still be whether patriotism demands that one serve and protect “our” nationals by sanctioning and killing “theirs.”  Of course, it is always possible to imagine a scenario in which a person bound by ties of affection to her neighbors responds to some direct physical threat to them by picking up a weapon and joining in their defense.  But this sort of communal self-defense has nothing to do with the patriotism that defines one people’s socioeconomic system, politics, culture, and religion as superior to all others and as worth killing and dying for to ensure its supremacy.

Can one be a progressive and a patriot?  Yes and no.  Yes, if this means appreciating the historical and local conditions that, in part, fashion one’s cultural identity.  Being an American sometimes makes me happy and sometimes ashamed, but I have no doubt that it defines part of who I am.  But only a part.  America is an oligarchy and I’m a skilled worker.  America is an empire and I’m an anti-imperialist.  America is a nation, and I’m a human being: an earthling.  Being American is no better, in the last analysis, than being Iranian, Chinese, or Montenegrin.  And patriotism can never mean killing Iranians, Chinese, or Montenegrins to secure American supremacy.

How about it, AOC and Zohran?  Can you campaign on a platform that both Karl Marx and Pope Leo would approve of?  Or is questioning supremacist patriotism a bridge too far?  The answer will tell us how progressive your progressivism really is.