New Delhi: Racism, xenophobia and dehumanising rhetoric targeting South Asians has seen a steady rise in the United States over the past years, with the country’s right-wing Donald Trump-led government pushing for stricter anti-immigration stances under the guise of foreigners taking over ‘American jobs and institutions.’ This advent in racism has witnessed a corresponding influx of online hate, demeaning content, racial slurs and ridicule of migrant identities, languages, customs, appearances and accents.
The Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH), in its recently released report titled “The Rising Tide of Anti-South Asian Hate in the United States,” examines how the proliferation of a fabricated threat against the ‘victimised’, ‘true’ American, i.e. white males, has led to calls for deportation of South Asians from the US and a rise in hate speech on social media.
The report analyses anti-South Asian rhetoric across four platforms – X (formerly Twitter), 4chan, 8chan and Gab. It studied almost 5.4 lakh hateful posts on X between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 and over 3,97,522 “hostile mentions” across the three fringe platforms, dominated by right-wing online communities, during 2025.