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

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7. Discurso de ódio anti-sul-asiático explodiu online nos EUA, aponta relatório | Notícias de Racismo | Al Jazeera Pular linksPular para o conteúdoassistir ao vivoInscreva-seMostrar menu de navegaçãoMenu de navegação.

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, found 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 people from South Asia living in the US, with five of the six highest-volume months falling at the end of that period.

Os pesquisadores usaram a definição da ONU de discurso de ódio. Eles rastrearam insultos e narrativas anti-sul-asiáticas recorrentes online, revisando postagens para excluir críticas que não atendiam ao limite da ONU.

They found that nearly half of the hate posts on X accused South Asians of invading the US, stealing jobs or threatening the country demographically, while the derogatory slur “pajeet” and its variants showed up in 30 percent of hateful posts on X and 45 percent on fringe platforms.

Posts depicting South Asians as dirty or unhygienic grew by 171 percent on X, “the fastest of all narratives”.

O ódio frequentemente reduzia os grupos étnicos e religiosos do sul da Ásia a um único, com indianos, paquistaneses e bangladeses sendo confundidos entre si, e hindus, muçulmanos, sikhs e cristãos também tratados como um monólito.

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.

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

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”.

Dias depois, o Departamento de Educação publicou “Make College Football Great Again”, depois que o republicano do Texas Bo French se queixou da presença de sul-asiáticos em um jogo de futebol da Universidade do Texas.

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.

Economic resentment is another factor, researchers wrote, with the success of some South Asians increasingly being weaponised against them.

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

Isso ocorre enquanto os sul-asiáticos têm se tornado cada vez mais visíveis na política dos EUA, desde a ex-vice‑presidente Kamala Harris e a prefeita de Nova York Zohran Mamdani até a esposa do vice‑presidente JD Vance, Usha Vance, e o político Vivek Ramaswamy.

O relatório documenta ataques racistas contra figuras de diferentes partidos e destaca, por exemplo, como as vitórias nas primárias e na eleição de prefeito de Mamdani provocaram picos de abusos anti-asiáticos do sul e islamofóbicos.

Researchers say both trends are now also tied up with “anxieties on the part of the majority about loss of status”, and feed the “Great Replacement Theory”, a conspiracy about the white population in Western countries being replaced by an orchestrated takeover.

Social media has also turned those narratives into targeted harassment.

Researchers found X accounts doxxing South Asians accused of taking jobs or committing visa fraud, while influencers have confronted people at their homes and workplaces and posted the encounters online.

Doxxing refers to exposing a person’s private details, such as their home address, online.

Em um exemplo, a influenciadora de direita Sara Gonzalez postou um vídeo para mais de meio milhão de seguidores, no qual o relatório afirma que ela assediou uma pessoa de origem sul-asiática a quem acusou de explorar o programa H‑1B.

Meanwhile, generative AI has made 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”.

Ele cita um incidente ocorrido em julho, em que um empregado de shopping, muçulmano indiano, em Utah, foi repetidamente espadado em um ataque que os promotores federais acusaram de crime de ódio.

Em setembro, um motorista de caminhão sikh foi espadado 17 vezes em um posto de caminhão em Wyoming.