Astral Codex Ten

Modi

5 min read

Modi

Article

Modi is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 8 times across 8 issues between September 14, 2021 and April 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “one of the monks who Modi met”; “So Modi, as an official in Gujarat’s RSS, ended up right in the middle of this”; “Modi came out of the Emergency a rising star”. It most often appears alongside Trump, Erdogan, Orban.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 8
  • Issue count: 8
  • First seen: September 14, 2021
  • Last seen: April 30, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Modi - A Political Biography
September 14, 2021 · Original source
Anyway, I mention this because she says Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India, is absolutely, literally, a fascist.
Narendra Modi wants you to see him as a fantasy novel protagonist.
As a teenager, Modi spontaneously adopted ascetic habits. "First he gave up eating salt, then he gave up eating chilies, and even oil." "No matter what the temperature is, he always takes baths in cold water". He read and fell in love with the works of Swami Vivekananda, although only as "intellectual admiration of an ecumenical figure who made over Hinduism for modern purposes, revealing its kinship to other faiths through his enlightened liberalism", because Narendra Modi Is Certainly Not Some Kind Of Religious Fanatic. He joined Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the aforementioned accused-of-fascism youth organization, because of "a feeling of duty and belonging in the widest sense".
Dictator Book Club: Orban
November 04, 2021 · Original source
(previously: Erdogan, Modi)
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi
I mean, it’s Dictator Book Club, I’m not supposed to like the guys. But I had some sympathy for Erdogan and Modi. They both seemed like committed, idealistic people who fought for something they really believed in, and maybe took it a little too far. Okay, a lot too far. Still, they fought for a cause.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
As a Hungarian, I found some glaring problems in the review, almost enough that I feel myself in a Gell-Mann Amnesia situation. I don't really blame Scott though, getting informed about the politics of a foreign country is very hard. Still, I trust the Erdogan and Modi reviews significantly less now.
Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
[Previous entries: Erdogan , Modi , Orban ] The Third Revolution , by Elizabeth Economy, promises to explain “the transformative changes underway in China today”. But like her namesake, Dr. Economy doesn...
Dictator Book Club: Putin
August 03, 2023 · Original source
[previously in series: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi]
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi
Dictator Book Club: Chavez
November 02, 2023 · Original source
[previously in series: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi, Putin]
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi, Putin
This might not be the only reason or even the main reason Hugo Chavez ended up as dictator. But it’s a very representative reason. If Putin is basically a spook and Modi is basically an ascetic, Hugo Chavez was basically a showman. He could keep everyone’s attention on him all the time (the emergency broadcast system didn’t hurt). And once their attention was on him, he could delight them, enrage them, or at least keep them engaged. And he never stopped. Hugo Chavez was the marathon runner of dictators.
Links for July 2024
July 24, 2024 · Original source
21: Followup to discussion on how dictatorial Modi is vs. isn’t: famous Indian author and Modi critic Arundhati Roy is now being prosecuted under anti-terror laws for a fourteen-year-old remark that Kashmir wasn’t really part of India.
Inline links: now being prosecuted under anti-terror laws
The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs
April 30, 2025 · Original source
Such a strategy is easy to come by. Anger over DOGE and deportations has a natural floor. If Trump’s base starts abandoning him, it will be because of the tariffs. But tariffs aren’t a load-bearing part of the MAGA platform. Other right-populist leaders like Orban, Bukele, and Modi show no interest in them. They seem an idiosyncratic obsession of Trump’s, a cost that the rest of the movement pays to keep him around.