Thinking Through Roots by Sachini Perera

In May 2023, Nathasha Edirisooriya, a young activist and stand up comedian from Sri Lanka, was arrested and detained by police. A snippet of a stand up set by Nathasha had been edited out of context and widely circulated on social media, followed by massive backlash from various quarters. She was alleged to have violated the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act and the Penal Code, for hate speech and what can be paraphrased as wounding and outraging Buddhist religious feelings. Initially denied bail, she was released on bail in June 2023 and it was exactly one year later that all charges against her were dropped. Two years before that, Disha Ravi, a young climate activist from India, was arrested and detained by police along with two other activists. She was charged with sedition under the Penal Code, for allegedly being involved with an online toolkit that provided guidance for those who wanted to support farmers’ protests in India at the time. It was said that the toolkit — a spreadsheet that is a common practice in social justice organizing — was intended to defame India and incite violence. 

I remember at the time being struck by the similarities around these two incidents. Not because they were both young people taking up space in the public sphere, challenging dominant narratives and doing activism in their own ways, that is maybe too obvious a similarity. What struck me more were the similarities in tactics used against Nathasha and Disha: coordinated misinformation and disinformation campaigns to discredit them and decontextualize their work; leaking of private information; the speed at which state apparatus got involved; attempts at othering them by speculating that they must be Christian minorities (presumably under the assumption that those belonging to minority communities are more likely to challenge the majority status quo); accusations of violating values (mostly unnamed and abstract) and bringing shame upon the Establishment; and online mobbing that mobilized and escalated rapidly, drowning out counter-narratives in their wake. 

There was clearly a playbook at work. Even as those implementing the tactics weren’t necessarily connected to each other or working together (as far I know). Even as there were as many differences in the two contexts as there were similarities in the tactics. While unlawful arrests and detainments of activists is nothing new in our countries, it felt important to notice, study and understand how the tactics and tools used by fascist and fundamentalist actors are evolving and how these actors work together as an ever expanding ecosystem. At a time when there’s a tendency and push to study and frame fascisms and fundamentalisms as global phenomena and the United States’ exceptionalism over-influencing such framing, the two region-focused mappings from Noor, authored by Subha Wijesiriwardena and Nada Wahaba, are most welcome and essential additions. My brief reflections on the reports are informed by working closely with feminist and civil society groups in Asia and SWANA at various points in time and being part of discussions and strategizing around countering anti-rights forces globally — not always with full political alignment on such framing. 

Both reports — using secondary sources — provide useful and chilling overviews of how fascist and fundamentalist movements are mobilizing in the respective regions, countries and occupied territories. The caveats and contextualization made in the SSEA report about the distinctions between South Asia and South East Asia are important, given how the two sub-regions tend to get subsumed — often unthinkingly — in feminist and international development spaces. A similar contextualization would have been helpful in the SWANA report so that unfamiliar readers understand the political significance of Nada and Noor choosing the decolonial framing of SWANA instead of MENA and the more nuanced and complex reading of the region as a result. The SSEA report is framed primarily around thematic trends and the SWANA report around tactics and while this is a pie that can be sliced either or both ways, my own curiosity around connecting dots between tactics made the latter framing more appealing and insightful. Even as tactics feature in both reports, pulling them out gives a sense of empowerment to readers to think about possible counter-tactics because the inevitable question once you read each report is “now what?”.   

In RESURJ, the transnational South feminist collective I’m part of, one of our simmering conversations and points of frustration has been that most analyses of anti-rights and anti-gender movements tend to ignore or omit neoliberal economic ideologies and policies (Perera, 2023) as well as international financial institutions as anti-rights anti-gender actors. So it was most refreshing to see both reports pick up on these as roots and instigators deeply intertwined in the ecosystems of fascist and fundamentalist actors. Both reports also show clearly how corporate capture and economic injustice are intertwined with environmental and climate justice — not just in terms of how activists are attacked and killed but the more insidious ways such as greenwashing and the co-option of human rights and development processes. The SWANA report briefly touches on the nexus between increasing populism and related distractions and the rapid increase of the “new poor”, particularly following Covid-19. Given that South Asia is estimated (Mehta and Kedia, 2021) to hold the largest share of “new poor” in the world, this is a little explored nexus when it comes to populism as well as criminalization of poverty. Making a strong case for us to work more intentionally, consistently and compassionately across countries, regions and movements. 

For example, “informant culture” that is explored in the SWANA report (Noor, 2024) is a tried and tested tactic in all our countries and regions that has gained new life through social media and algorithmic capitalism. Countering this tactic requires multifaceted and often delicate strategies. Multifaceted because informant culture is not simply an impulse to play police and feel a sense of power. During a workshop RESURJ and Delete Nothing ran during the Asia Pacific Feminist Forum last year on the faultlines of criminalizing hate speech, an activist from the Philippines talked about how the criminalization of troll farm workers misses the mark because people are forced to work in troll farms out of poverty and with shrinking agricultural labor making people pivot to platform labor. Countering informant culture, particularly on the internet, is a delicate dance between holding platforms and other perpetrators accountable while ensuring that doesn’t lead to absolute clampdowns on freedom of expression. Thus requiring deep organizing, listening, learning, trust building and mobilizing across movements. 

The two reports are overviews and don’t claim to be exhaustive even as they manage to present an impressive breadth of trends and tactics in the two regions. A few others come to mind that could be included in future mappings. Migrant work in South Asia and South East Asia such as how in Sri Lanka “family values” translated into restrictive policies against women migrant workers (Economynext, 2022) but were reversed overnight during the foreign exchange shortage. The role of diaspora in fanning and financing the flames of fascisms and fundamentalisms in SSEA and SWANA. Internet shutdowns as a frequent tactic in SSEA. Racism and xenophobia in South East Asia, casteism in South Asia. Both reports make it clear that the state vs non-state binary no longer has any standing. In the same vein, it would be interesting to explore the rapidly shifting (Mada Masr, 2024) and often contradictory (Girish Modi, 2025)  foreign policy of countries SSEA and SWANA, and how these reinforce fascist and fundamentalist ecosystems within and between regions. And finally, it is high time for feminist movements and civil society to introspect on our/their role in these ecosystems. It is a tricky one to navigate without providing fodder to damaging rhetoric about “foreign funding”. However, we must find ways to understand how (at least some) external funding has dictated priorities in our regions, fractured and depoliticized movements, and flattened complex contexts in order to check boxes. We must also question our cherrypicking of which fascisms we rise against, which we ignore, and who we are ultimately accountable to. If these reports are telling us anything, it is that these actors, narratives and tactics are interconnected and therefore how we grapple with them must be as interconnected, if not more. 

Nathasha and Disha’s stories are two drops in an ocean of stories all around us. I remember at the time observing that not enough feminists were rallying around them in their time of need. Maybe not necessarily out of a lack of care but also because many were unequipped against tactics that were unstoppable, inventive and coming not just for the two of them and others arrested and detained with them but for anyone who stood in solidarity with them. More exercises such as these mappings, anchored to our contexts, may strengthen not just how we counter fascisms and fundamentalisms but also how we proactively build communities and worlds in which those cannot thrive. 

List of resources

EconomyNext. (2022). Sri Lanka allows women with young children to go abroad for work after money printing. 28 June. Available at: https://economynext.com/sri-lanka-allows-women-with-young-children-to-go-abroad-for-work-after-money-printing-96598/ (Accessed: 29 April 2025).

Mada Masr. (2024). The billions of euros deal reshaping Egypt-EU relations. 26 June. Available at: https://www.madamasr.com/en/2024/06/26/feature/economy/the-billions-of-euros-deal-reshaping-egypt-eu-relations/ (Accessed: 29 April 2025).

Modi, C.G. (2024). Can India ever return to a principled Palestine policy? Himal Southasian, 3 June. Available at: https://www.himalmag.com/politics/india-israel-palestine-modi-bjp-congress (Accessed: 29 April 2025).

Perera, S. (2023). Editorial: Reflections on Our Countries | 1st Edition, 2023. RESURJ, 26 April. Available at: https://resurj.org/reflection/editorial-reflections-on-our-countries-1st-edition-2023/ (Accessed: 29 April 2025).

Wahba, N. (2024). Roots of Hate: Fascist and Fundamentalist Narratives & Actors in South-West Asia and North Africa Regions. Noor. Available at: https://wearenoor.org/roots-of-hate-swana/ (Accessed: 29 April 2025).