Anti-South Asian ‘hate speech’ has exploded online in US, report finds

Hate speech against Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in the United States has risen sharply online, according to a report that traces the surge to US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and rhetoric, economic anxiety, and the South Asian community's growing visibility in US life.

Key points

• Posts depicting South Asians as dirty or unhygienic grew by 171 percent on X, "the fastest of all narratives".
• "Such actions serve a powerful symbolic function, in the bargain reinforcing the hostility of Trump's base toward South Asians, " remarked the report.
• Economic resentment is another factor, researchers wrote, with the success of some South Asians increasingly being weaponised against them.
• The report documents racist attacks against figures throughout party lines and highlights how, for example, Mamdani's primary and mayoral victories triggered spikes in anti-South Asian and Islamophobic abuse.
• The report argues that such rhetoric reinforces the idea of South Asians as outsiders who "can never truly belong in the country".

For context, the report, titled "The Rising Tide of Anti-South Asian Hate in the United States", by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), published on Sunday, discovered that the monthly volume of hate towards South Asians in the US on the social media platform X rose 240 percent between January 2024 and June 2026, from 12, 904 posts to 43, 843.

Researchers identified more than 542, 000 hateful posts on the platform between January 2025 and June 2026 alone towards individuals from South Asia living in the US, with five of the six highest-volume months falling at the end of that period.

In practice, the researchers applied the United Nations definition of hate speech. They tracked recurring anti-South Asian slurs and narratives online, reviewing posts to exclude criticism that did not meet the UN threshold.

While the derogatory slur "pajeet" and its variants indicated up in 30 percent of hateful posts on X and 45 percent on fringe platforms, they discovered that almost half of the hate posts on X accused South Asians of invading the US, stealing jobs or threatening the country demographically.

Meanwhile, the hate frequently collapsed South Asian ethnic and religious groups into one, with Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis conflated with one another, and Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians additionally treated as a monolith.

Racism against Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis has a long history in the US, but researchers argue the current surge reflects a confluence of longstanding prejudices and new political and economic pressures.

Notably, the report points to the H-1B visa programme. It allows US employers to hire skilled foreign workers, as a major flashpoint. Indians account for more than 70 percent of H-1B visa holders, and researchers linked a number of spikes in anti-South Asian hate to political fights over the programme, such as when Trump imposed a $100, 000 payment requirement on certain new H-1B petitions in September 2025.

After which researchers saw a sharp spike in anti-South Asian rhetoric online, the report makes the same argument regarding the administration's rhetoric, highlighting Trump's speech at an AI summit in July 2025, in which he criticised US technology businesses for outsourcing jobs to India.

As more recent examples, the report points to a since-deleted September 2026 Department of Homeland Security post titled "Transformers: Age of Deportations", featuring a Sikh man identified as "Mr Singh" and telling him to "get off our roads".

After Texas Republican Bo French had complained concerning the presence of South Asians at a University of Texas football game, days afterwards, the Department of Education posted "Make College Football Great Again".

In practice, the report argues that such rhetoric reinforces the idea of South Asians as outsiders who "can never truly belong in the country". From 'model minority' to job thieves.

Indian Americans once stereotyped as a "model minority" are now portrayed as "opportunists and cheats", and South Asians are applied more broadly as a scapegoat for anger over jobs and the economy.

This comes as South Asians have become increasingly visible in US politics, from former Vice President Kamala Harris and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to Vice President JD Vance's wife, Usha Vance, and politician Vivek Ramaswamy. The report documents racist attacks against figures throughout party lines and highlights how, for example, Mamdani's primary and mayoral victories triggered spikes in anti-South Asian and Islamophobic abuse.

Researchers say both trends are now additionally tied up with "anxieties on the part of the majority about loss of status", and feed the "Great Replacement Theory", a conspiracy concerning the white population in Western countries being replaced by an orchestrated takeover. The role of social media and AI. Social media has additionally turned those narratives into targeted harassment.

While influencers have confronted residents at their homes and workplaces and posted the encounters online, researchers discovered X accounts doxxing South Asians accused of taking jobs or committing visa fraud. Doxxing refers to exposing a person's private details, such as their home address, online.

In one example, right-wing influencer Sara Gonzalez posted a video to more than half a million followers in which the report notes she harassed a South Asian person she accused of exploiting the H-1B programme.

Meanwhile, generative AI has created that content even easier to produce, researchers say, depicting South Asians as "filthy and unclean, sexually predatory, culturally backward, or a demographic threat".

While the report tracks hate largely through what is happening online, researchers write that online hate "does not exist in isolation from offline forms of hostility". It cites a July incident in which an Indian Muslim mall employee in Utah was repeatedly stabbed in an attack that federal prosecutors charged as a hate crime. In September, a Sikh truck driver was stabbed 17 times at a Wyoming truck stop.

"Online and offline hate can reinforce one another", the researchers wrote, "as narratives, stereotypes, and forms of demonization move between digital platforms, political discourse, media, and everyday life".

Taken together, the developments around anti-South Asian 'hate speech' has exploded online in US, report finds point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.