Original CNN Article (Archive)
Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel wished his followers on X a happy Diwali. It did not go over well.
Far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded his post with bigoted memes and rhetoric. “Go back home and worship your sand demons,” a far-right pastor wrote. “Get the f**k out of my country,” read another reply. Said another, “This is America. We don’t do this.” These responses, some of which were seen millions of times, were on the tamer end of the spectrum.
Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them. When Democrats won big on election night, Ramaswamy advised Republicans to “cut out the identity politics,” saying “we don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character.” After one X user said that the existence of Indians disgusted them, Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”
This type of degrading rhetoric is not new, but it’s increasingly prominent from the political right. With the rise of once-fringe figures, and with President Donald Trump aggressively cracking down on nearly every type of immigration, some members of the MAGA coalition are openly suggesting that only white Christians belong in America.
“The call is coming from inside the house,” said Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an editorial manager and analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has examined anti-Indian hate speech and the far right online.
Indian immigrants and Indian Americans — or anyone perceived as Indian — are the latest target of a growing anti-migrant movement in the US and around the world. Over the past year, researchers at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate have documented a surge of anti-Indian sentiment on X that is showing no signs of abating. Raqib Naik, the center’s founder and executive director, said that his team recorded nearly 2,700 posts promoting racism and xenophobia against Indians and Indian Americans in October alone. At least some of that might be explained by Elon Musk’s transformation of the platform: Since he took over, racist content that would previously have been policed by content moderators is now amplified and encouraged. (X did not respond to a request for comment.)
As with the Diwali outrage, these attitudes flare up at times when India or Indians are in the news: Trump’s appointment of Sriram Krishnan as senior adviser on artificial intelligence, Ramaswamy criticizing American culture as mediocre in a social media post, escalations in the US-India trade war and a fatal accident in Florida involving a Sikh truck driver.
But the most consistent anti-Indian bigotry online focuses on the H-1B visa program, of which Indian nationals are the biggest beneficiaries, Naik and other researchers said. The program, which admits highly skilled foreigners into the US to work in specialized fields, has sparked infighting among Trump supporters, with visa opponents such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller accusing India of “a lot of cheating on immigration policies.” While the president’s stance on the issue has fluctuated, he recently restricted access to H-1B visas by imposing a $100,000 application fee.
Far-right accounts and actors now routinely frame Indian immigrants as scammers who are depriving Americans of high-paying jobs and call to deport them. They accuse Indians of hiring only within their caste or ethnicity, invoke stereotypes about Indians being dirty or smelly, and highlight behaviors like eating with one’s hands as cultural backwardness. It isn’t just far-right trolls who invoke these tropes — during the recent New York City mayoral race, the independent campaign of former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo released (then quickly deleted) an AI-generated attack ad depicting Zohran Mamdani sloppily eating rice with his hands.
Slurs directed at South Asians, some of which originated on the largely unmoderated online forum 4chan, are surging and entering the lexicon, both online and offline. Photos and videos selectively showing Indian-origin people in public places are held up as evidence of an “invasion,” another iteration of white “replacement theory.” These attitudes didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Even before Trump was first elected, powerful figures in his movement including Steve Bannon and Miller were referencing the 1970s novel “The Camp of the Saints” as a cautionary tale — in the book, a favorite of white supremacists, a fleet of Indian migrants led by a feces-eating farmer invades France and overthrows the Western world.
Against this backdrop of racist and economic grievance, the success and prominence of Indian Americans make them an easy target, said Rohit Chopra, a professor at Santa Clara University who studies far-right online communities and who co-authored the reports for the Center for the Study of Organized Hate with Naik. Indian immigrants and Indian Americans are among the highest-earning ethnic groups in the US, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. They’ve ascended to top government posts and are CEOs of billion-dollar companies. They’re represented at the highest levels of media, entertainment, technology, business, medicine and academia.
“The public image of the Indian community has been that of these basically successful tech professionals and CEOs,” Chopra said. “And the Indian community and Indian American community significantly plays up that image too.”
This image certainly doesn’t reflect all Indian Americans, a religiously and ethnically diverse group that includes US citizens, legally authorized visa workers, international students and undocumented migrants. But as long-simmering resentment against affluent Indian Americans metastasizes into a demonization of the entire community, Chopra said there’s a danger that this could inspire real-world violence.
In recent weeks, a city councilmember in Palm Bay, Florida, repeatedly denigrated Indians and called for their mass deportation on social media, leading to censure and calls for his removal. In Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb home to thousands of Indian tech professionals, three masked men staged a roadside protest carrying signs that read “Don’t India My Texas,” “Deport H-1B Visa Scammers” and “Reject Foreign Demons.” The Palm Bay City Council in Florida voted on October 2 to request controversial Councilman Chandler Langevin’s removal from office for remarks attacking Indian Americans.
Stephanie Chan, Stop AAPI Hate’s director of data and research, recounted a recent conversation with a South Asian community leader in Texas who told her white supremacist groups were harassing people outside Hindu temples. Stop AAPI Hate co-founder Manjusha Kulkarni said she overheard people at a Diwali party talking about readying their OCI cards — which allow foreign citizens of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely — just in case.
Racist incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate this year and shared with CNN also suggest that anti-immigrant rhetoric from Trump and parts of his coalition is inspiring hostility. One woman in Georgia shared that a fellow customer at a fast food restaurant threatened to call ICE to get her deported back to India. Another woman in Texas reported that a man who came into her workplace yelled profanities at her and a coworker, saying “I am glad Trump is deporting you b*tches. I hope you have a green card.”
Salil Maniktahla, an Indian American who lives in Springfield, Virginia, said he was similarly accosted while dining at a restaurant with a friend earlier this year. A man hurled slurs at him, said Trump was president and told him to “go home” and “do Bharatanatyam,” referring to a South Indian classical dance. The man also threatened them with violence and waited for them outside, resulting in Maniktahla’s friend calling the police.
“What I see now is that a lot of people are mouthing off in ways that they felt they were prevented from doing prior to 2016,” Maniktahla said.
When asked about backlash to officials’ Diwali posts online, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “The President is a fierce defender of religious liberty and cherishes his deep and longstanding relationship with this patriotic community.” As racist, nativist and anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to proliferate on the right, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have done little to quell it.
Vance, whose wife Usha Vance is Indian American, dismissed remarks from a government staffer such as “normalize Indian hate” as youthful indiscretion.
Vance has also furthered ideas underlying such bigotry, though with more delicate language. In a speech at the Claremont Institute in July, he ruminated on what it meant to be an American. Merely embracing the nation’s foundational principles was not enough, he said, because it would potentially open the country to millions of foreigners and exclude some on the right who reject those same ideals. A better criterion might be one’s heritage, he added: “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
In the speech, Vance conceded that there was room in the US for some immigrants, so long as they demonstrated sufficient gratitude. Too many, though, would threaten the fabric of the nation, he argued. “And what we’re doing is recognizing that if you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow that social cohesion to form naturally,” he said. “It’s hard to become neighbors with your fellow citizens when your own government keeps on importing new neighbors every single year at a record number.”
At this year’s White House Diwali celebration, Kash Patel used a conspicuous turn of phrase — one seemingly meant to distinguish himself from another kind of immigrant.
“It’s an honor to be a first-generation Indian American whose parents lawfully immigrated to this country,” he said.
To some Trump supporters responding online to his remarks, it didn’t seem to matter that Patel’s parents entered the US legally or that he was a dutiful member of the Trump administration. “Go celebrate your foreign gods back home in India. America is a Christian nation,” one user wrote. Said another, “Hard to think of something less American. This is an abomination.”
“I think that sections of the Indian American community have been living in this fool’s paradise,” Chopra said.
He continued, “This should serve as a kind of wake-up call — that racism that’s directed at people of color and minority groups, you are not exempt from. And maybe that should spark some kind of reflection about questions of solidarity with other vulnerable groups.”
Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel wished his followers on X a happy Diwali. It did not go over well.
Far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded his post with bigoted memes and rhetoric. “Go back home and worship your sand demons,” a far-right pastor wrote. “Get the f**k out of my country,” read another reply. Said another, “This is America. We don’t do this.” These responses, some of which were seen millions of times, were on the tamer end of the spectrum.
Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them. When Democrats won big on election night, Ramaswamy advised Republicans to “cut out the identity politics,” saying “we don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character.” After one X user said that the existence of Indians disgusted them, Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”
This type of degrading rhetoric is not new, but it’s increasingly prominent from the political right. With the rise of once-fringe figures, and with President Donald Trump aggressively cracking down on nearly every type of immigration, some members of the MAGA coalition are openly suggesting that only white Christians belong in America.
“The call is coming from inside the house,” said Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an editorial manager and analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has examined anti-Indian hate speech and the far right online.
Indian immigrants and Indian Americans — or anyone perceived as Indian — are the latest target of a growing anti-migrant movement in the US and around the world. Over the past year, researchers at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate have documented a surge of anti-Indian sentiment on X that is showing no signs of abating. Raqib Naik, the center’s founder and executive director, said that his team recorded nearly 2,700 posts promoting racism and xenophobia against Indians and Indian Americans in October alone. At least some of that might be explained by Elon Musk’s transformation of the platform: Since he took over, racist content that would previously have been policed by content moderators is now amplified and encouraged. (X did not respond to a request for comment.)
As with the Diwali outrage, these attitudes flare up at times when India or Indians are in the news: Trump’s appointment of Sriram Krishnan as senior adviser on artificial intelligence, Ramaswamy criticizing American culture as mediocre in a social media post, escalations in the US-India trade war and a fatal accident in Florida involving a Sikh truck driver.
But the most consistent anti-Indian bigotry online focuses on the H-1B visa program, of which Indian nationals are the biggest beneficiaries, Naik and other researchers said. The program, which admits highly skilled foreigners into the US to work in specialized fields, has sparked infighting among Trump supporters, with visa opponents such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller accusing India of “a lot of cheating on immigration policies.” While the president’s stance on the issue has fluctuated, he recently restricted access to H-1B visas by imposing a $100,000 application fee.
Far-right accounts and actors now routinely frame Indian immigrants as scammers who are depriving Americans of high-paying jobs and call to deport them. They accuse Indians of hiring only within their caste or ethnicity, invoke stereotypes about Indians being dirty or smelly, and highlight behaviors like eating with one’s hands as cultural backwardness. It isn’t just far-right trolls who invoke these tropes — during the recent New York City mayoral race, the independent campaign of former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo released (then quickly deleted) an AI-generated attack ad depicting Zohran Mamdani sloppily eating rice with his hands.
Slurs directed at South Asians, some of which originated on the largely unmoderated online forum 4chan, are surging and entering the lexicon, both online and offline. Photos and videos selectively showing Indian-origin people in public places are held up as evidence of an “invasion,” another iteration of white “replacement theory.” These attitudes didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Even before Trump was first elected, powerful figures in his movement including Steve Bannon and Miller were referencing the 1970s novel “The Camp of the Saints” as a cautionary tale — in the book, a favorite of white supremacists, a fleet of Indian migrants led by a feces-eating farmer invades France and overthrows the Western world.
Against this backdrop of racist and economic grievance, the success and prominence of Indian Americans make them an easy target, said Rohit Chopra, a professor at Santa Clara University who studies far-right online communities and who co-authored the reports for the Center for the Study of Organized Hate with Naik. Indian immigrants and Indian Americans are among the highest-earning ethnic groups in the US, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. They’ve ascended to top government posts and are CEOs of billion-dollar companies. They’re represented at the highest levels of media, entertainment, technology, business, medicine and academia.
“The public image of the Indian community has been that of these basically successful tech professionals and CEOs,” Chopra said. “And the Indian community and Indian American community significantly plays up that image too.”
This image certainly doesn’t reflect all Indian Americans, a religiously and ethnically diverse group that includes US citizens, legally authorized visa workers, international students and undocumented migrants. But as long-simmering resentment against affluent Indian Americans metastasizes into a demonization of the entire community, Chopra said there’s a danger that this could inspire real-world violence.
Indian Americans are feeling the hostility offline
Already, anti-Indian attitudes online are spilling over into everyday life.In recent weeks, a city councilmember in Palm Bay, Florida, repeatedly denigrated Indians and called for their mass deportation on social media, leading to censure and calls for his removal. In Irving, Texas, a Dallas suburb home to thousands of Indian tech professionals, three masked men staged a roadside protest carrying signs that read “Don’t India My Texas,” “Deport H-1B Visa Scammers” and “Reject Foreign Demons.” The Palm Bay City Council in Florida voted on October 2 to request controversial Councilman Chandler Langevin’s removal from office for remarks attacking Indian Americans.
Stephanie Chan, Stop AAPI Hate’s director of data and research, recounted a recent conversation with a South Asian community leader in Texas who told her white supremacist groups were harassing people outside Hindu temples. Stop AAPI Hate co-founder Manjusha Kulkarni said she overheard people at a Diwali party talking about readying their OCI cards — which allow foreign citizens of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely — just in case.
Racist incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate this year and shared with CNN also suggest that anti-immigrant rhetoric from Trump and parts of his coalition is inspiring hostility. One woman in Georgia shared that a fellow customer at a fast food restaurant threatened to call ICE to get her deported back to India. Another woman in Texas reported that a man who came into her workplace yelled profanities at her and a coworker, saying “I am glad Trump is deporting you b*tches. I hope you have a green card.”
Salil Maniktahla, an Indian American who lives in Springfield, Virginia, said he was similarly accosted while dining at a restaurant with a friend earlier this year. A man hurled slurs at him, said Trump was president and told him to “go home” and “do Bharatanatyam,” referring to a South Indian classical dance. The man also threatened them with violence and waited for them outside, resulting in Maniktahla’s friend calling the police.
“What I see now is that a lot of people are mouthing off in ways that they felt they were prevented from doing prior to 2016,” Maniktahla said.
When asked about backlash to officials’ Diwali posts online, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “The President is a fierce defender of religious liberty and cherishes his deep and longstanding relationship with this patriotic community.” As racist, nativist and anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to proliferate on the right, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have done little to quell it.
Vance, whose wife Usha Vance is Indian American, dismissed remarks from a government staffer such as “normalize Indian hate” as youthful indiscretion.
Vance has also furthered ideas underlying such bigotry, though with more delicate language. In a speech at the Claremont Institute in July, he ruminated on what it meant to be an American. Merely embracing the nation’s foundational principles was not enough, he said, because it would potentially open the country to millions of foreigners and exclude some on the right who reject those same ideals. A better criterion might be one’s heritage, he added: “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
In the speech, Vance conceded that there was room in the US for some immigrants, so long as they demonstrated sufficient gratitude. Too many, though, would threaten the fabric of the nation, he argued. “And what we’re doing is recognizing that if you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow that social cohesion to form naturally,” he said. “It’s hard to become neighbors with your fellow citizens when your own government keeps on importing new neighbors every single year at a record number.”
At this year’s White House Diwali celebration, Kash Patel used a conspicuous turn of phrase — one seemingly meant to distinguish himself from another kind of immigrant.
“It’s an honor to be a first-generation Indian American whose parents lawfully immigrated to this country,” he said.
To some Trump supporters responding online to his remarks, it didn’t seem to matter that Patel’s parents entered the US legally or that he was a dutiful member of the Trump administration. “Go celebrate your foreign gods back home in India. America is a Christian nation,” one user wrote. Said another, “Hard to think of something less American. This is an abomination.”
“I think that sections of the Indian American community have been living in this fool’s paradise,” Chopra said.
He continued, “This should serve as a kind of wake-up call — that racism that’s directed at people of color and minority groups, you are not exempt from. And maybe that should spark some kind of reflection about questions of solidarity with other vulnerable groups.”
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