New Delhi: David Josef Volodzko has travelled the world, and has been a journalist for over two decades. But it is by incessantly posting about India’s rape culture that he has found online fame and political attention.
And he is building on this new-found influence one controversial post after another.
It has made him an overnight sensation for women’s causes in India—he helped expose Sharma’s alleged incompetence on a global stage.
He’s now suggesting that the National Commission for Women change its name to National Commission for Rape, calling Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal ‘the most beautiful prison he has ever seen’, talking nonstop about the lecherous male gaze he witnessed in India, and sharing news articles of horrific sexual violence. He is the leading voice asking for accountability from India’s NCW chief.
Did you ever report the incident to Police? If not than you are totally an irresponsible person. Writing only on social media and defaming whole country is not good choice. https://t.co/PiDyspKsiU
— Rekha Sharma (@sharmarekha) March 3, 2024
But it hasn’t stopped there. His old posts are now being exhumed. He has been called a Holocaust-denier and criticised for not standing with Gaza by Indians across the political and ideological spectrum.
Volodzko has been labelled a racist for calling Lenin worse than Hitler and an imperialist for his posts on the Israel-Gaza conflict. In a post on his substack blog The Radicalist, he had argued that colonising Gaza was indeed a good thing.
It is his 15 minutes of Indian fame and he is learning a thing or two about the argumentative Indian.
Hi David, I am deeply empathetic about what you have reported as your experience in India w.r.t. sexual harassment and sexual assault. Yes you’re quite right in your assessment, it’s what many, many of us have been saying and reporting for many decades.
However, https://t.co/jz1jkMOLwA
— Vasundhara Sirnate (@vsirnate) March 6, 2024
Also read: Locker room boys to IT cell men: India’s rape culture grows without shame or consequences
Jesuit monk looking for spirituality
Volodzko’s intimate knowledge of India is drawn from his experience of travelling widely through the country in the years after the fatal 2012 Delhi gang rape. That was when rape became part of public conversations and India passed a stricter anti-rape law. He says he has enough room in him to love India and also call out its misogyny.
The 44-year-old was born in the southern state of Texas in the United States. He grew up in The Bahamas and Virginia and claims to have travelled to over 40 countries. “The Bahamas, by the way, has one of the highest rape rates in the world, which is a tragic fact that is also true of many Caribbean nations. Yet it is my beloved homeland and I must carry both these truths in my heart,” he says, highlighting that he doesn’t have an ulterior motive in writing posts about India.
Volodzko’s opinion on the street culture of India comes from experience. He lived in the country from 2012-2015, although a part of that time was spent in Nepal. Volodzko, who once wanted to be a Jesuit Monk, was looking for spiritual experiences in India, like many foreign tourists who visit the country. He spent time learning yoga in an ashram in Rishikesh and lived a “simple” life in a small cabin in a remote Himalayan village. He travelled extensively, covering places such as Mumbai, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Himachal Pradesh.
While he insists that India is one of the best places on Earth, the objective truth, he maintains, is that there is a rampant problem of harassment on the streets. “I saw a lot of men staring at women, groping women, and heard many stories from women about their experiences with sexual assault. I also had conversations with young men and quite often, their attitudes about women and sex shocked and disgusted me,” he told ThePrint in an email interview.
On his X account, he notes how a British woman sought refuge by sleeping on the same train berth as him because someone had “licked her foot”. He also got an intimate peek into the patriarchal minds of India’s youth in the hinterland. Volodzko recounts how a group of men he met were ‘surprised’ that he hoped to find love and get married one day since extramarital sex is so normalised in American culture. “They seemed to think that the only reason to get married was for sex. One of them even asked, ‘Why marry when you can just take what you want?’” he says.
His advocacy to draw attention to rape culture in India has earned him many ‘haters’, who have urged him to focus on his house first and then point fingers at India.
“You are a vile liar & a malignant piece of toxic sludge,” an X user said in response to his post of a newspaper clipping of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath saying that “women aren’t capable of being left free or independent”.
You are a vile liar & a malignant piece of toxic sludge. You think you can manipulate your way through life with distortions & word salads to propagate hatred against India & Hindus but there are higher powers watching – your Karma itself will ensure your self-destruction.
— Savitri Mumukshu – सावित्री मुमुक्षु (@MumukshuSavitri) March 6, 2024
But Volodzko doesn’t believe nationalistic sentiment is polluting debate and discourse in the country. “I think the ultra-nationalistic sentiment has repulsed many good-hearted Indian folk and helped raise awareness over this issue. They see that their own leadership is failing them and they grow ever more impatient and restless. The true power of India is people power,” he says.
Also read: ‘If a girl is alone, she’s not so believable’: Bihar’s mahila thanas are no place for women
Not new to controversy
Volodzko was fired from the editorial board of The Seattle Times in July last year for a controversial tweet where he deemed Hitler less evil than Lenin. “Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were truly harmful in any way,” he wrote in a now-deleted post.
His ‘defence’ of Hitler is a skeleton that was promptly brought out of the closet by internet warriors looking to discredit his voice. Volodzko continues to argue that he never ‘defended’ Hitler but only compared him with “psychopath” Lenin. “I did say that in psychological terms, Lenin was a type I psychopath and that is worse than being a delusional sociopath like Hitler,” he explained in a post on X, highlighting that his grandfather was in a Nazi concentration camp.
While Volodzko has earned the ire of self-appointed protectors of India’s reputation, he does not feature on Indian liberals’ darling list either. This has to do with his support of Israel. In his article titled The Case for Colonizing Gaza, he writes that Palestine has a “hate-soaked culture” which has “to be forced into the light”.
This article has sparked a seed of doubt among people who don’t want to believe a story told by someone they perceive as ‘racist’. “There’s no way of knowing the veracity of the story, I’m just saying we might not want to take someone, who wrote this garbage [the article on Palestine] last week, at his word,” an X user wrote.
But Volodzko doesn’t want people to agree with him on everything, “not even his closest friends”. He doesn’t want his other political views to stop people from acknowledging that sexual abuse in India needs more attention. “But I think that these days, online discourse operates in the opposite manner. If people see that they disagree with you about one issue, they are likely to reject you entirely.”
As time passes, engagement on Volodzko’s posts about India is coming down, but his direct messages are full, ranging from bigoted hatred to warm support, he says.
When it comes to the online discourse of rape in India, for many, Volodzko has become the online hero too quickly – perhaps one that India didn’t deserve.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)