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.)