Bharatiya Janata Party leader and all-around loose cannon Subramanian Swamy should be familiar with Poe's Law by this point. That's the internet axiom which suggests that unless you add a smiley face to an attempt at satirising his brand of extremism, people will take it as the real thing. Indeed, that's what actually happened with a joke Swamy posted on his Facebook account last year, with hordes of his Patriotic Tweeple seriously following that handle.
Now there's an even better demonstration of the difficult task of genuinely being a Subramanian Swamy fan. On Wednesday, the BJP leader decided to speak up about events at Hyderabad University, which has been in turmoil this week after the suicide of a Dalit scholar who had been expelled from his hostel after allegedly clashing with the BJP's youth wing.
Because the incident was political from the get-go – scholar Rohith Vemula was expelled from his hostel because of an altercation with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a case later pursued by a BJP union minister – the BJP has decided to reply to it politically as well. Even though its own Dalit leaders have been unhappy with the response, the BJP has decided to allege that the entire issue is a conspiracy against it.
The conspiracy angle has much to it: Murmurs that Vemula was not actually a Dalit, insistence that he was being anti-national, whataboutery over why the Congress is only now speaking up about a Dalit suicide and much more.
Naturally, Swamy would be happy to pick up this conspiratorial thread.
That wonderfully candid tweet is a lovely distillation of the way Swamy, who always claims to have inside knowledge about practically everything, works. The BJP leader has made it clear that he hasn't made his mind up about the Hyderabad University agitation, though he's happy to call it a "fraud." He also welcomes any inputs from his Patriotic Tweeples on the issue.
And, of course, there's a reference to a shadowy organisation connected to Christianity, Opus Dei. Except there's just one problem: People aren't quite sure what that means.
If you weren't entirely familiar with the broader universe of Swamy fandom online, you should know that it comes with its own insider-club language. This glossary of Swamy abbreviations, from TDK to Porki, might help you catch up. (Not to be confused with our own glossary of Right-wing trollspeak).
At the same time, it wouldn't be unusual for Swamy to actually be blaming something in India on the Opus Dei, a shadowy institution of the Roman Catholic Church that became famous because of a Dan Brown novel.
Hence the question from a Swamy fan: Is Swamy using Opus Dei as a codeword for someone in India or the actual Opus Dei?
Just like Swamy himself, Twitter hasn't made up its mind.
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