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.
They act surprised.
Now that are about to FAFO.
They like many black folks are finding out that MAGA doesn't want them.
Nick Fuentes already told you fools that.
