Two days before New York City Democrats went to the polls to select their mayoral nominee in June, a plane flew over the Statue of Liberty trailing a banner attacking the race’s front-runner, Zohran Mamdani.
“Save NYC from global intifada,” it read in letters five feet high. “Reject Mamdani” The banner, seemingly aimed at the city’s Jewish voters, touched on the campaign’s most charged foreign policy issue: Mr.
Mamdani’s criticism of Israel. But the group behind it wasn’t Jewish or Israeli. Its members are Indian-American Hindus, who accuse Mr. Mamdani of pushing an anti-Hindu and anti-Indian agenda.
“There were simultaneous campaigns by India-based Hindu nationalists and U.S.-based Hindu groups, pushing the idea that he would be an anti-Hindu candidate,” said Raqib Naik, the director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a watchdog group that tracks Islamophobia online.
According to data reviewed by The Times and compiled by The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, in the weeks between June 13 and June 30, more than 600 posts criticizing Mr. Mamdani were uploaded to X from known right-wing accounts in India and global profiles associated with Hindu nationalism, some with hundreds of thousands of followers.
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