Surprised by PM's Post on X? ‘Don’t Be’, Says BJP, Bats on Front Foot With ‘Moye Moye’ & ‘Spotify Wrapped’

On Tuesday morning, something unusual happened. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from his personal X handle, posted something that can at best be described as ultra-combative.

With multiple emoticons, the PM took on his detractors, who had a “meltdown” after Sunday’s results were out. He was responding to a journalist, where Modi called it their “arrogance” and “pessimism”, while cautioning about their “divisive agenda”, which he called an “old habit” of 70 years — a clear reference to the Congress. Then came the unusual bit, PM Modi asked them to be prepared for many more “meltdowns” in the coming days — a super combative Narendra Modi, even in contrast with his usual aggressive avatar.

But the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership insists this is not out of character. It has been overall tone and tenor of the BJP’s social media posts in the past few months and the Prime Minister’s super-aggressive post on X was only complimenting the BJP’s overall social media strategy, which they claim is to take on the “opposition ecosystem” head-on.

The BJP leadership quoted here isn’t wrong. The party has been largely pushing its content on Instagram in the form of reels off late with much regularity to cater to Gen Z and Millenials who have an attention span of 30 seconds and want things provocative. No wonder, the BJP’s social media content, particularly Instagram reels, has seen an aggressive tone where the party is running campaigns catering to the Insta crowd, which is getting them huge traction in return. Some reels have got the saffron party as high as 1.5 million views, helping cement the BJP’s social media tone to be generally aggressive.

Take the BJP’s ‘Spotify Wrapped’ reel of Rahul Gandhi, which was posted recently and has a whopping 5.3 million views. It was shared 566,000 times. But what was it about that caught so much attention?

An imaginary ‘Spotify Wrapped’ of Gandhi. Once you log in to the music streaming app, your personalized look back at 2023 appears — that’s Spotify Wrapped. The singers who have most listened to or the songs you have most streamed. This imaginary one of Rahul Gandhi’s addresses him as ‘Pappu’ and shows he has the ‘Chinese national anthem’ as his most favourite song. It also had ‘Moye Moye’ among the top 5. The reel claims he has listened to songs from Bangkok, Italy, and George Soros Headquarters.

Gandhi holidayed in Thailand, he has maternal links to Italy and the BJP accuses him of being influenced by the multi-billionaire Soros for his alleged anti-India activities.

Another post has Modi’s aggressive speech in Parliament where he is seen saying, “Desh dekh raha hai ek akela kitno ko bhari pad raha hai (The nation is watching how one man is proving to be too much to handle for so many of you).” It has 1.6 million views and liked 157,000 times. Modi kept talking amid opposition sloganeering inside the house.

On the 26/11 anniversary, the BJP sent out a very impactful reel where it used powerful music with images from the mayhem of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people and nine terrorists. The three-day log siege later, post-mortems were conducted on 114 predominately male victims with an age bracket ranging from 5 to 70. Of these, 108 were dead on arrival. The brave National Security Guard (NSG) and police personnel, who were martyred, were flashed across the screens, with only newspaper reports coming at the end of the reel that stated Gandhi was partying soon after the nation was attacked. This reel was liked by 45,000 individuals and watched 1.1 million times already, with barely two weeks having passed since.

A senior leader of the BJP, who has been closely associated with the party’s social media push, told News18, “Of late, the party has shifted gear as far as the tone and tenor of its social media posts are concerned. Its viral posts are not only in sync with current social media trends, but have become more aggressive. Prime Minister’s tweet reflects that assertiveness.”