The Center for the Study of Organized Hate has produced what may be the most granular quantitative mapping of anti-South Asian hostility in US digital spaces to date. Between January 2024 and June 2026, monthly hateful posts targeting South Asians on X rose from 12,904 to 43,843 — a 240 percent increase. Researchers identified more than 542,000 hateful posts on X between January 2025 and June 2026 alone, with five of the six highest-volume months clustering at the end of that window, indicating acceleration rather than plateau. The content taxonomy is instructive. Nearly half of all hateful posts accused South Asians of invasion, job theft, or demographic threat — the core grammar of Great Replacement Theory applied to a specific community. The slur "pajeet" appeared in 30 percent of hateful X posts and 45 percent of posts on fringe platforms. Posts depicting South Asians as dirty or unhygienic grew 171 percent, the fastest-growing narrative category. Researchers used the United Nations definition of hate speech and manually reviewed posts to exclude legitimate criticism. The report traces clear causal spikes to specific policy and rhetorical events. Trump's September 2025 imposition of a $100,000 payment requirement on certain H-1B petitions produced a measurable surge. His July 2025 AI summit speech criticizing US tech companies for outsourcing jobs to India triggered another. A since-deleted DHS post titled "Transformers: Age of Deportations" featured a Sikh man identified as "Mr Singh" and told him to "get off our roads." Days later, the Department of Education posted "Make College Football Great Again" after a Texas Republican complained about South Asians at a University of Texas game. Each event functioned as a permission signal. The mechanism is a familiar one in the political economy of scapegoating: a community that had been stereotyped as a "model minority" is recast as economic predators precisely as it gains visibility and political power. Indian Americans hold over 70 percent of H-1B visas. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, VP JD Vance's wife Usha Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy all occupy high-profile positions. The report documents racist attacks crossing party lines — Mamdani's primary and mayoral victories triggered spikes in both anti-South Asian and Islamophobic abuse. The hate collapses ethnic and religious distinctions, treating Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians as a monolith. The infrastructure of harassment has professionalized. Researchers found X accounts doxxing South Asians accused of visa fraud or job theft. Influencers like Sara Gonzalez — with more than half a million followers — filmed confrontations at people's homes and workplaces. Generative AI has lowered the cost of producing dehumanizing content depicting South Asians as "filthy and unclean, sexually predatory, culturally backward, or a demographic threat." The report explicitly connects online and offline violence. In July, an Indian Muslim mall employee in Utah was repeatedly stabbed in what federal prosecutors charged as a hate crime. In September, a Sikh truck driver was stabbed 17 times at a Wyoming truck stop. The researchers write that "online and offline hate can reinforce one another, as narratives, stereotypes, and forms of demonization move between digital platforms, political discourse, media, and everyday life." What is being built here is a feedback loop: policy rhetoric generates online hostility, online hostility normalizes dehumanization, normalized dehumanization lowers the threshold for physical violence, and physical violence validates the rhetoric of communities under siege. The 240 percent growth curve is the leading indicator. The stabbings are the lagging one.
