The Indian question

On 26 September 2026 the BlazeTV podcast Rufo & Lomez released episode 86, an hour and 13 minutes long, under the title “The Indian Question”. Its hosts are Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman, who posts as “Lomez” and founded the publisher Passage Press. The episode opens on a post by Bo French, a Texas Republican, about Indian-American students at a University of Texas football game: “I heard UT graduation this year look like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”¹

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi answered that “Indian Americans are not an ‘Indian Question’ to be solved”. Critics noted the echo of “the Jewish Question”.²

This is the last part of a three-part series, published first because its story is in the news. It covers 2010 to 2026. Part 1, out on 12 October, follows the “Hindoo invasion” of the Pacific coast from the 1900s; Part 2, out on 19 October, follows the “Dotbusters” of Jersey City and the decades after 1965.

Oak Creek and Olathe

On 5 August 2012 Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran, opened fire outside and then inside the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek. He killed Paramjit Kaur Saini, Sita Singh, Ranjit Singh, Prakash Singh, Suveg Singh Khattra and Satwant Singh Kaleka. Baba Punjab Singh, paralysed in the attack, died in 2020 and is counted as the seventh victim. Lt. Brian Murphy of the Oak Creek police was shot 12 to 15 times and survived. Page, who had played in the white-power bands Definite Hate and End Apathy, killed himself after the second officer on the scene shot him.³ He left no stated motive. The Department of Justice and the FBI treated the attack as domestic terrorism and a hate crime.⁴

The FBI did not then count anti-Sikh hate crimes as a category. After a campaign by the Sikh Coalition it added anti-Sikh and anti-Hindu categories, and 2015 is the first year with figures for either.⁵

On 22 February 2017, at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas, Adam Purinton, a 51-year-old Navy veteran, called Srinivas Kuchibhotla a slur used against people of Middle Eastern descent, poked him in the chest and demanded to know “where they were from and how they got into the country”. He yelled “Get out of my country!” He shot and killed Kuchibhotla and wounded Alok Madasani and Ian Grillot, who chased him. Weeks earlier he had asked another patron: “Did you see the terrorists on the patio?”⁶

He pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and firearms counts and on 7 August 2018 received three consecutive life sentences without parole, on top of a state life sentence in May. Jeff Sessions, then attorney general, said he had acted “simply because of their race, religion, and national origin”. Kuchibhotla’s widow, Sunayana Dumala, told him in court: “If you could have kept your anger inside and spoke to my husband softly, Srinu would have been more than happy to share his background and help you understand that not every brown-skinned person is suspicious or evil, but kind, smart and contributing to America.”⁷

Nine days later, on 3 March 2017, a masked man shot Deep Rai, a 39-year-old Sikh, in the arm in his own driveway in Kent, Washington, saying “go back to your own country”. Police and the FBI investigated it as a hate crime; no arrest appears in the reports read for this piece.⁸ The advocacy group SAALT counted 302 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric against South Asian, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Arab and Middle Eastern communities in the year after the 2016 election, up from 207; it judged 82 per cent of them motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. In one in five of the 213 violent incidents, the perpetrator invoked Donald Trump, the “Muslim Ban” or “Make America Great Again”.⁹

A vocabulary built on 4chan

Most of the decade’s slurs have no named author. Their first sightings rest on the crowd-edited Know Your Meme and Wikipedia.¹⁰

“Designated shitting streets” dates, by Know Your Meme’s account, to a 4chan /int/ thread of 13 July 2015, where an Indian poster objecting to jokes that “India smells bad and is dirty” said people only defecated in “designated shitting streets”. He was mocked, and the phrase was on /pol/ by 22 July. “Poo in the loo” came from somewhere more respectable: a February 2014 UNICEF India campaign song against open defecation, turned into mockery online from July 2015.¹¹ The paper has covered Indian sanitation and Western toilet paper.

“Pajeet” is first recorded on 4chan /int/ on 25 July 2015, adapted from an earlier meme, “Mehmet my son”. It is an invented name modelled on Punjabi names ending in “-jeet”, such as Amarjeet and Ranjeet. Until 2019 it was “mainly limited to” 4chan, Gab and Telegram; the manifesto of the man who attacked the Poway synagogue that year used “pajeets”.¹² Clipped, it became “jeet”. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), in a September 2026 report, lists the later growths: “poopjeet”, “poojeet”, “shitjeet”, “migajeet”, “pajeeta”, “poojeeta”, alongside “curry muncher”, “street shitter”, “street pooper” and “Paki”.¹³

“Saar” is a mocking spelling of “sir”. Know Your Meme traces in-community use to an r/india post of 13 April 2014; CSOH dates hostile use on 4chan to about 2015. It spread on X from October 2023.¹⁴ “Do the needful” is older than any of them. Know Your Meme traces “advise the needful” to The Tatler in 1709, a date the desk has not checked; Indian English kept it, and posts about call centres were mocking it by August 2014.¹⁵

The H-1B fight, December 2024

On 22 December 2024 Donald Trump named Sriram Krishnan his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Laura Loomer attacked the appointment and called Indian workers “third-world invaders”.¹⁶ On 26 December Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X: “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long”, and “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” Scott Jennings replied, “Somebody got stuffed in a locker.”¹⁷

Elon Musk, defending the visa, told his critics to “take a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” Steve Bannon called H-1B workers “essentially what have become indentured servants”.¹⁸ Ramaswamy left the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in January 2025. Reports linked his exit to the post; the official line was that he would run for governor of Ohio.¹⁹

CSOH counted the reach of what followed. In 128 posts on X between 22 December 2024 and 2 January 2025 it found 138.54 million views. Thirty-six posts passed a million views each, and 12 of those framed Indians as a “demographic threat to white America”. Of 85 accounts, 64 paid for X Premium and one was suspended. Nine posts used “pajeet”. Its examples include @TheRoyalSerf on Christmas Day, “Fuck indians and fuck india”, and @real_lord_miles, with 282,300 followers, who would rather have “illegal Mexicans than legal Indians” (112,000 likes, 9 million views) and reposted it with an IQ chart. Another post said Musk “wants to replace you with a cheap Pajeet”. The most viewed, at 17.4 million, was a video by @leonardaisfunE of a white man imitating Indian street vendors.²⁰ CSOH picks the most-viewed posts by hand, so its figures measure how far the worst posts travelled; they say nothing about how many people agree with them.

Named targets, 2025 to 2026

The slurs then went to people with names. From July 2024 Nick Fuentes called Usha Vance a “jeet” and called her husband “a fat, race mixer who’s married to a jeet, who named his son Vivek”; Jaden McNeil circulated photographs of the family. In December 2025 the vice president answered: “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.” Fuentes escalated.²¹

Kash Patel became FBI director in February 2025. His Diwali greeting on X that October drew replies including “Go back to India”. In December 2025 he fired an FBI agent, Stephen Friend, who had attacked him on a podcast with a reference to “Vishnu”; Friend’s exact words are not in the reports read for this piece.²² In July 2025 Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas wrote of a video of Zohran Mamdani eating rice by hand: “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.” Karthik Soora replied that Gill’s wife “is South Indian. She grew up eating rice with her hands.”²³

Myron Gaines is the pseudonym of Amrou Fudl, a Sudanese-American who co-hosts the Fresh & Fit podcast with Walter Weekes and streams on Kick.²⁴ At 8.16pm on 30 September 2026 a fan account, @WyronGaines (“Myron Gaines Updates”, whose profile says “FanPage, this is NOT Myron!”), posted a clip of his stream captioned “Myron goes NUCLEAR on Indians and explains why he doesn’t want them in America!” In its transcription Gaines says: “Everything about them is filthy and disgusting! They cannot assimilate! They believe in cows, they are pagans, they worship idols, they don’t believe in hygiene, they walk around barefoot everywhere!” A viewer’s paid message on screen reads “I Shower!! #Patel … yea we still smell”. The post had about 1.2 million views when it was captured. No press report of the stream was found, and the desk has not watched the recording.²⁵

CSOH’s later counts are larger. From 1 July to 7 September 2025 it found 680 high-engagement anti-Indian posts on X with 281.2 million views.²⁶ Its September 2026 report, on anti-South Asian hate, estimates about 542,360 hateful posts on X from January 2025 to June 2026, with monthly volume up 240 per cent between January 2024 and June 2026. “Pajeet” and its variants made up 30 per cent of the X posts. Filth and hygiene dehumanisation was 11 per cent, with monthly growth of 171 per cent. Among the named sources: Loomer (“third world invaders from India”), Sara Gonzalez’s H-1B “expose” of 21 January 2026, and Tyler Oliveira’s “I Exposed Texas’ Indian Invasion” of 5 April 2026, with 3.2 million views on YouTube.²⁷ In its January 2025 report CSOH called the attacks anti-Indian racism and disputed Rep. Shri Thanedar’s term “Hinduphobic”; the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) uses “Hinduphobia”. This paper attributes both labels and uses neither.²⁸

Offline, on 18 February 2025, a patient at HCA Florida Palms West Hospital, Stephen Scantlebury, beat Leelamma Lal, a 67-year-old Indian-origin nurse, until “essentially every bone in her face was broken”, according to the probable cause affidavit. He was charged with attempted first-degree murder, and the sheriff added a hate crime enhancement after he “made utterances” about her gender, race or religion. What he said is not in the reports read.²⁹

“Mr. Singh”

On 12 August 2025 Harjinder Singh, a truck driver, made an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike near Fort Pierce. Herby Dufresne, Faniola Joseph and Rodrigue Dor were killed. Singh was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said he had entered the country illegally. The North American Punjabi Truckers Association reported that a Sikh driver was forced out of a truck-stop shower in Oklahoma afterwards.³⁰

On 9 September 2026 DHS’s account on X posted a poster in the style of a Transformers film. Optimus Prime, wearing a DHS seal, faces a bearded South Asian man in a bandana (press reports described a turban; the screenshot shows a bandana). The text reads: “SELF-DEPORT OR FIND OUT”, “TRANSFORMERS”, “AMERICA FOR AMERICANS” and “GET OFF OUR ROADS, YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE MR. SINGH”.³¹

Hasbro said that “Optimus Prime is a beloved character who represents humility, leadership, compassion and justice”, and that the posts were made “without permission and do not represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro.” DHS defended the post (“Freedom from illegal alien crime is the right of all Americans”) and said “Mr. Singh” meant Harjinder Singh. By 11 September it was gone, after more than 4.2 million views.³² On 13 September a Sikh truck driver from California was stabbed 17 times at an I-80 rest area in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The suspect, Andrew Bzdak, was held on $1m bond. Police had not determined a motive as of 18 September.³³

“The Indian question”

Keeperman promoted the Rufo episode on 27 September 2026: “This week, @christopherrufo tackle the Indian Question. Among other things, this episode cuts to the heart of longstanding foundational political disputes that are simply unreconcilable, but which can longer be brushed aside. Namely that some people (perhaps most people) prefer to live in a homogenous society, and as America tips toward a majority-minority country, that fundamental preference is under threat.” The same post contains the phrase “subdue any explicit political effort to maintain a white majority in the country”, says Indians “are therefore the inevitable flashpoint”, and says the episode took input from “our Indian/South Asian friends @balajis, @razibkhan, @Indian_Bronson, and a secret 4th Indian.”³⁴

On air, by the episode’s automatic captions, Keeperman said of the students at the game: “This is just a bunch of Indians at the game is itself sort of definitionally the case that they’re not yet assimilated.” He offered a thesis: “being subjected to even this kind of like vulgar defamatory racism on a group level is part of the assimilation hazing process … But we’re not there yet … short of cutting off more immigration, we’re not going to get there.” People with a “preference … for homogeneity”, he said, see Indians “as this conspicuous case where they see a difference. And they go, ‘I just don’t like that.’”³⁵

Rufo read a post by Razib Khan and asked: “Is this being used as a vehicle for white nationalism?” Keeperman: “I mean, no, because white nationalism per se … is not a realistic project.” He went on, in captions that are garbled in the middle, to say it was important “even to preserve a white majority and … preserve this like white Anglo-Saxon Protestant sort of … character. That actually is essential to who we are”.³⁶

Jeremiah Johnson summarised the episode on X. His version has Rufo asking “But isn’t there actually a sophisticated justification for hating Indians” and Keeperman, whom he calls “Other freak”, answering the white nationalism question with “No, that’s unrealistic, but god I wish”. Those are Johnson’s paraphrases. “Vulgar defamatory racism” and “hazing process” are in the captions; “god I wish” and “sophisticated justification” are not.³⁷ ThePrint quoted Johnson: “It’s honestly shocking how much of the conversation is just outright admitting it’s a pure racial story”.³⁸

False gods and foreign demons

In August 2024 the Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple in Sugar Land, Texas, consecrated the Statue of Union, a 90ft Hanuman.³⁹ Alexander Duncan, a Republican candidate for the Texas Senate, posted drone footage of it on X: “Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu God to be here in Texas? We are a CHRISTIAN nation!” The Free Press Journal dates the post to 20 September 2025.⁴⁰ HAF asked the Republican Party of Texas: “will you be disciplining your senate candidate from your party who openly contravenes your own guidelines against discrimination”. Duncan later said he had meant to “speak boldly” about faith, did not “hate anyone”, and that silence would be “real hate”; that comes from one outlet, indica News.⁴¹

On 24 October 2025 masked men from a group calling itself Take Action Texas appeared in Irving with signs reading “Don’t India My Texas”, “Deport H-1B Scammers” and “Reject Foreign Demons”, the last over crossed-out images of Vishnu and Ganesh. On X they posted about “recent ‘Diwali’ garbage”. HAF and Hindus for Human Rights both condemned it. The men were not named.⁴²

Temples took graffiti. On 17 September 2024 the BAPS mandir at Melville, New York, was desecrated; on 25 September the BAPS temple in Sacramento was sprayed with “Hindus go back!” and its water lines cut. Rep. Ami Bera: “There is no place for religious bigotry and hatred in Sacramento County.” Rep. Ro Khanna: “This type of hate against Hindu Americans and vandalism is appalling and morally wrong.” The vandals were not identified.⁴³ In Canada, the BAPS mandir in Toronto was sprayed in September 2022 with “Khalistan Zindabad, Hindustan Murdabad”; India’s High Commission blamed “Canadian Khalistani extremists”.⁴⁴

Brains and Apu

On 5 March 2017, 11 days after Olathe, CNN’s Believer with Reza Aslan opened with the Aghori of Varanasi. Aslan ate a piece of what he was told was human brain, “burnt to a crisp”, tasting like “charcoal”. Shalabh Kumar of the Republican Hindu Coalition called the episode a “disgusting attack on Hindus”. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said she was “very disturbed that CNN is using its power and influence to increase people’s misunderstanding and fear of Hinduism.” Aslan said he had described the Aghori as an “extreme Hindu sect” that “are not representative of Hinduism”. CNN cancelled the show that June after Aslan insulted Trump on Twitter, and did not cite the episode.⁴⁵

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon of Fox’s The Simpsons was voiced by Hank Azaria from 1990. In The Problem with Apu (truTV, 2017) the comedian Hari Kondabolu examined the character. The Simpsons replied in April 2018 with Lisa saying: “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” In January 2020 Azaria said he would stop: “All we’ve agreed on is I won’t do the voice anymore.”⁴⁶

Caste in court

The word “caste” is Portuguese, from casta, which the Portuguese applied to Indian birth groups in the 16th century. Ancient Indian texts describe social orders (varna) and birth groups (jati); historians disagree about how rigid and ranked they were before colonial rule. The British census counted castes from 1871 to 1931 and in 1901 ranked them and tied them to race, and the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 declared whole communities criminal by birth; Part 1 has the detail.⁴⁷

On 30 June 2020 California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Cisco and two engineers, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, on behalf of an unnamed Dalit engineer, alleging lower pay and retaliation “contrary to the traditional order between the Dalit and higher castes”. In April 2023 the state dropped the two engineers; the case against Cisco went on.⁴⁸ On 21 February 2023 Seattle’s council voted six to one to add caste to its anti-discrimination law, on Kshama Sawant’s proposal. Sara Nelson, voting no, called it “a reckless, harmful solution to a problem for which we have no data or research”.⁴⁹ On 7 October 2023 Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill: “Because discrimination based on caste is already prohibited under these existing categories, this bill is unnecessary.”⁵⁰

The surveys disagree. Equality Labs’ 2018 report found 67 per cent of Dalit respondents had been treated unfairly at work. The Carnegie Endowment’s 2020 survey of 1,200 Indian Americans found 5 per cent reporting caste discrimination, and skin colour was the most commonly cited basis for discrimination of any kind (30 per cent); its authors said Equality Labs “relied on a nonrepresentative snowball sampling method”.⁵¹

The trope ledger

Slur or trope	First on record	Where it came from	Seen again
“Go back” / “Get out of my country”	Long before 2010 (Parts 1 and 2)	Plain nativist taunt	Olathe, 2017; Kent, 2017; “Hindus go back!”, Sacramento, 2024; Gill to Mamdani, 2025; replies to Patel, 2025
“Terrorist”	After 9/11, before 2010	Sikhs and Indians mistaken for Middle Easterners (reported)	“Terrorists on the patio”, Olathe, 2017; “terrorist who worships cows”, school survey, 2016
“Designated shitting streets”	13 July 2015, 4chan /int/ (Know Your Meme; thread not viewed)	Mockery of an Indian poster	Hygiene posts, 11 per cent of anti-South Asian hate on X, 2025-26 (CSOH)
“Poo in the loo”	UNICEF India song, February 2014; mocking use from July 2015	A public-health slogan turned into a slur (reported)	4chan and Reddit, 2015
“Pajeet”, “jeet” and variants	25 July 2015, 4chan /int/ (Wikipedia, Know Your Meme)	Invented Punjabi-style name; coiner anonymous	Poway manifesto, 2019; “cheap Pajeet”, 2024; Fuentes on Usha Vance; 30 per cent of hate posts on X, 2025-26
“Saar”, “gora saar”	In-group use by April 2014; hostile on 4chan from about 2015	Mock spelling of “sir” (reported; sources differ)	X from October 2023; “gora saar” by September 2024
“Do the needful”	“Advise the needful”, 1709, per Know Your Meme (unchecked)	Old British commercial English	Call-centre mockery, 2014; parody song, 2015
“Street shitter”, “curry muncher”	Not dated in sources read	Open-defecation and food tropes (“curry-muncher” in Part 2; curry)	CSOH catalogue, 2025-26
Smelly, filthy	Before 2010 (the hygiene record)	Reported	“India smells bad and is dirty”, 4chan, 2015; “filthy and disgusting”, Gaines clip, 2026
Invaders, indentured servants	“Hindoo invasion”, 1900s (Part 1)	Labour nativism	Loomer and Bannon, 2024; “Don’t India My Texas”, 2025; Oliveira, 2026
Low IQ	Not dated in sources read	Unknown	IQ chart repost, December 2024
False gods, demons, cow worship	Missionary writing, 19th century (Part 1)	Missionary polemic (reported)	Duncan, 2025; “Reject Foreign Demons”, 2025; “devil’s religion”, school survey, 2016
Brain-eating Hindu	Colonial accounts of the Aghori (reported); VICE, 2006 (Part 2)	A real minority sect shown as the whole	CNN Believer, 2017
Bindi mockery	Dotbusters, Jersey City, 1987 (Part 2)	Reported	Bindi rubbed off a sixth-grader, 2016
Bad drivers	Not dated in sources read	Generalised from one fatal crash (reported)	DHS “Mr. Singh” poster, 2026
Eating with hands	Not dated in sources read	Reported	Gill on Mamdani, 2025
The accent	Apu, 1990	Voiced by Hank Azaria	The Problem with Apu, 2017

The schoolyard and the count

In a Sikh Coalition survey of more than 700 students, published in 2014, 67 per cent of turban-wearing Sikh pupils said they had been bullied; the epithets included “terrorist” and “Bin Laden”.⁵² In HAF’s survey of 335 students, published in 2016 and self-selected, one in three said they had been bullied for their religion. A student with a tilak was called “SNIPER” and “BOMB RUN”; a sixth-grader in Monroe, New York, had a bindi rubbed off; others were called “dirty ass Hindu” and a “terrorist who worships cows”, or told Hinduism “was the devil’s religion”. Sixty-three per cent said their lessons taught that Hindus worship cows.⁵³

The FBI’s figures are floors, since police reporting is voluntary and 2021 was incomplete. In 2015, its first year counting them, it recorded six anti-Sikh and five anti-Hindu incidents. For 2025 it recorded 177 anti-Sikh incidents and 32 anti-Hindu offences.⁵⁴

Sources and notes54

Footnotes

1. Rufo & Lomez (BlazeTV), “The Indian Question | Ep 86”, 26 September 2026, 1:12:56. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzt_rwvGasg. French’s post as read in the episode’s opening. ThePrint (Manisha Mondal), 29 September 2026, https://theprint.in/feature/the-indian-question-us-podcasters-draw-flak-for-discussing-indian-immigration-to-us/3057118/; Talking Points Memo (Christopher Mathias), 2 October 2026. Keeperman and Passage Press: The Guardian, 14 May 2024. Confidence: verified (episode and captions); reported (Keeperman identity). ↩

2. ThePrint, 29 September 2026; Talking Points Memo, 2 October 2026; Wonkette, 3 October 2026. Confidence: reported. ↩

3. Center for Homeland Defense and Security, “Sikh Temple Shooting” timeline, https://www.chds.us/c/timeline/sikh-temple-shooting/; CBS News, August 2012; Sikh Coalition, “Remembering Oak Creek, 13 Years Later”, August 2025. Sources give Lt. Murphy’s wounds as 12 to 15 shots. Six were killed on the day; Baba Punjab Singh died in 2020. Confidence: reported. ↩

4. Sikh Coalition, August 2025; NPR, 5 August 2022. Page left no manifesto; the widely repeated idea that he mistook the gurdwara for a mosque is an inference, not a finding. Confidence: reported. ↩

5. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, Hate Crime Statistics 2015, Table 1. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/tables-and-data-declarations/1tabledatadecpdf. Confidence: verified (table summary); reported (the campaign). ↩

6. NBC News, “Kansas man sentenced to life in prison for hate crime shooting”, 7 August 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/kansas-man-sentenced-life-prison-hate-crime-shooting-n898361, following the Justice Department’s plea record (the DOJ release did not render for the desk). Confidence: reported. ↩

7. NBC News, 7 August 2018; US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 7 August 2018. State sentence: KCUR, May 2018. Confidence: reported. ↩

8. Slate, March 2017; Al Jazeera, 5 March 2017. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2017/3/5/sikh-man-shot-in-us-told-to-go-back-to-your-country. The killing of Harnish Patel in Lancaster, South Carolina, the day before is often grouped with these; police said it was not racially motivated. Confidence: reported. ↩

9. SAALT (Radha Modi), Communities on Fire, January 2018, 9 November 2016 to 7 November 2017. https://saalt.org/report-communities-on-fire-confronting-hate-violence-and-xenophobic-political-rhetoric/. Read from the report page; the full PDF was not read. The 82 per cent anti-Muslim share is SAALT’s. SAALT is an advocacy group. Confidence: reported. ↩

10. The earliest 4chan threads (13, 22 and 25 July 2015) were not viewed in archives. Confidence: reported. ↩

11. Know Your Meme, “Designated Shitting Streets / Poo in the Loo”. https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/designated-shitting-streets-poo-in-the-loo. A crowd-edited wiki. Confidence: reported. ↩

12. Wikipedia, “Pajeet”, read 4 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajeet; Know Your Meme, as above. The manifesto was not read by the desk. The coiner is anonymous. Confidence: reported. ↩

13. Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), The Rising Tide of Anti-South Asian Hate in the United States, 28 September 2026. https://csohate.org/2026/09/28/anti-south-asian-hate-united-states-2026. Confidence: verified. ↩

14. Know Your Meme, “Saar”, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/saar; CSOH, 28 September 2026. The two date the hostile use differently; the text gives both. Confidence: reported. ↩

15. Know Your Meme, “Do the Needful”. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-the-needful. The 1709 date has not been checked against The Tatler. Confidence: reported. ↩

16. CSOH (Udupa, Chopra, Naik, Saha), Anti-Indian Hate on X, January 2025, for the timeline; Newsweek, December 2024, for Loomer’s phrase. Confidence: verified (timeline); reported (quotation). ↩

17. Salon, 27 December 2024. https://www.salon.com/2024/12/27/somebody-got-stuffed-in-a-locker-maga-fumes-at-vivek-ramaswamys-rant-about-american-mediocrity/. The X posts were not opened. Confidence: reported. ↩

18. ABC News (Australia), 29 December 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024/12/29/elon-musk-h-1b-visa-row-with-maga-supporters/104768898. Musk’s post was 27 or 28 December depending on time zone. Confidence: reported. ↩

19. NBC News, December 2024, and later reports. The link to the post is disputed. Confidence: reported. ↩

20. CSOH, Anti-Indian Hate on X: How the Platform Amplifies Racism and Xenophobia, January 2025. https://www.csohate.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Jan-9_Report_Anti-Indian-Hate-on-X-How-the-Platform-Amplifies-Racism-and-Xenophobia_2-compressed.pdf. Views counted to 3 January 2025. Method: manual snowball sampling of high-view posts. Confidence: verified. ↩

21. Jerusalem Post, December 2025, https://www.jpost.com/omg/article-880995; American Kahani, December 2025. Fuentes’s words rest on press accounts, not his streams. Confidence: reported. ↩

22. MS NOW (opinion), December 2025; American Kahani, 2026. Confidence: reported; Friend’s wording unknown. ↩

23. Newsweek, July 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/brandon-gill-tells-zohran-mamdani-go-back-third-world-2092311. Confidence: reported. ↩

24. Wikipedia, “Fresh and Fit Podcast”, accessed 4 October 2026; American Bazaar (Shubhangi Chowdhury), 25 November 2025. The podcast launched on 26 October 2020. Confidence: reported. ↩

25. Screenshot of the @WyronGaines post supplied by the editor; the time is as displayed, time zone not stated. Account profile via search, read 4 October 2026. The quotation is the fan account’s transcription of the stream (https://kick.com/myrongainesx), so it is reported as Gaines’s words until the recording is checked. Confidence: verified (the post); reported (Gaines’s words). ↩

26. CSOH, “Anti-Indian Racism on X (July to September 2025)”, 16 September 2025, https://www.csohate.org/2025/09/16/anti-indian-racism-on-x-july-september-2025/, and press release of 17 September 2025. Confidence: verified. ↩

27. CSOH, The Rising Tide of Anti-South Asian Hate in the United States, 28 September 2026. The report covers anti-South Asian hate, not Indians alone. The counts cover X keyword hits and fringe-platform mentions; they measure volume, not the share of Americans who hold these views. Oliveira’s video also had 4.2 million views on X by September 2026. Confidence: verified. ↩

28. CSOH, January 2025. Confidence: verified. ↩

29. WPTV, 2026. https://www.wptv.com/wptv-investigates/nurse-sues-hca-florida-palms-west-hospital-security-company-1-year-after-brutal-patient-attack. Scantlebury was on a mental-health hold. Confidence: reported. ↩

30. Tampa Bay Times, 26 August 2025, https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2025/08/26/truck-crash-turnpike-immigrant-sikh-charges/; CBS Miami, August 2025. Confidence: reported. ↩

31. Screenshot of the @DHSgov post supplied by the editor. Date: Stocktonia News, 11 September 2026, https://stocktonia.org/news/immigration/2026/09/11/deleted-dhs-post-draws-backlash-over-anti-sikh-image-of-stockton-truck-driver/. Press called the image AI-made. Confidence: verified (wording and image); reported (date). ↩

32. Newsweek (Marni Rose McFall), 11 September 2026, https://www.newsweek.com/dhs-deletes-post-amid-hasbro-anger-racism-accusation-12430279; Stocktonia News; American Kahani; Northwest Asian Weekly, September 2026. Confidence: reported. ↩

33. CTV News (CNN wire), 18 September 2026. CSOH’s report says a federal investigation was opened; CTV said it was unclear whether the attack was being treated as a hate crime. The text follows CTV. Confidence: reported. ↩

34. Screenshot of the @L0m3z post supplied by the editor, https://x.com/L0m3z/status/2104256830453223637, 27 September 2026, 17.08 UTC (decoded from the post ID). “Tackle” and “can longer” are as posted. The later phrases are quoted as separate fragments; the full post was read only in the editor’s transcription. Opening sentences also quoted by Wonkette, 3 October 2026. Confidence: verified (screenshot). ↩

35. Rufo & Lomez, ep. 86, YouTube automatic captions, about 22:40 to 24:20 and 33:50 to 35:00. Stutters removed. There is no official transcript, and the audio has not been checked against the captions. Keeperman is the speaker; he addresses “Chris”. Confidence: verified (captions). ↩

36. Rufo & Lomez, ep. 86, automatic captions, about 45:50 to 48:10. The middle of the answer is garbled in the captions and is cut with ellipses here. Confidence: verified (captions). ↩

37. Screenshot of the @JeremiahDJohns post supplied by the editor; date and post address not found. Compared by the desk with the episode’s captions. Confidence: verified (as Johnson’s characterisation only). ↩

38. ThePrint, 29 September 2026; Chris Hayes on X, 28 September 2026, https://x.com/chrislhayes/status/2104646352248381679 (not opened). Commentary also from John Ganz (Unpopular Front) and Alex Nowrasteh. Confidence: reported. ↩

39. The Tribune (India), 23 September 2025. Confidence: reported. ↩

40. Screenshot of the @AlexDuncanTX post supplied by the editor. Date: Free Press Journal, September 2025; The Tribune and Business Today reported the post on 23 September. Some outlets say only “Senate candidate”. Exodus follow-up: The Tribune; Business Today. Confidence: verified (wording); reported (date, follow-up). ↩

41. HAF, as quoted in The Tribune, 23 September 2025. Duncan’s later statement: indica News, September 2025, the only source found. Confidence: reported; Duncan’s statement single source. ↩

42. American Kahani, October 2025; Hindus for Human Rights, statement, October 2025. Confidence: reported. ↩

43. Business Today, 26 September 2024. https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/baps-hindu-temple-in-sacramento-vandalised-hindus-go-back-graffiti-sprayed-447574-2024-09-26. Gulf News described a 2025 attack on a BAPS temple in Indiana as the fourth in the US since 2023. Confidence: reported. ↩

44. The Tribune (India), September 2022. The perpetrators of the Toronto graffiti were not named by police. Confidence: reported. ↩

45. SFGate, March 2017; Washington Post, 6 March 2017 (via search summary; the page returned HTTP 403); Rolling Stone, 2017. Confidence: reported. ↩

46. Variety, January 2020, https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hank-azaria-apu-the-simpsons-1203471153; Hollywood Reporter, 2023. The 2018 episode is “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”. Confidence: reported. ↩

47. Online Etymology Dictionary, “caste”, https://www.etymonline.com/word/caste; Wikipedia, “Census in British India”, accessed 4 October 2026 (confidence: reported). Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 3-4; Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind (Princeton University Press, 2001); H. H. Risley, The People of India (1908), pp. 29 and 109-110; the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 (Act XXVII of 1871), s. 2, https://indiankanoon.org/doc/17412906/ (confidence: verified). From the research for Part 1 of this series. ↩

48. CNN, 1 July 2020 (the suit is dated 30 June), https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/tech/cisco-lawsuit-caste-discrimination; NBC News, April 2023. The department is now the Civil Rights Department. HAF’s federal suit against it was dismissed in July 2025 (AsAmNews, 30 July 2025). The current status of the Cisco case is unknown. Confidence: reported. ↩

49. NPR, 22 February 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158687243/seattle-becomes-the-first-u-s-city-to-ban-caste-discrimination; KNKX, 21 February 2023. Confidence: reported. ↩

50. Office of the Governor of California, SB 403 veto message, 7 October 2023, https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SB-403-Veto-1.pdf, as quoted in press. The bill was Sen. Aisha Wahab’s. Confidence: reported. ↩

51. Equality Labs, Caste in the United States (2018; about 1,500 respondents), via search summaries; Carnegie Endowment (Badrinathan, Kapur, Kay, Vaishnav), Social Realities of Indian Americans, June 2021, survey 1 to 20 September 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2021/06/social-realities-of-indian-americans-results-from-the-2020-indian-american-attitudes-survey. Confidence: reported (Equality Labs); verified (Carnegie). ↩

52. Sikh Coalition, “Go Home Terrorist”, March 2014; students surveyed 2012 to 2013 in Seattle, Indianapolis, Boston and Fresno. An advocacy survey. Confidence: reported. ↩

53. Hindu American Foundation, Classroom Subjected, May 2016, students in grades 6 to 12, late 2015. https://www.hinduamerican.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HAFN_16_008-BullyingReport_final_RGB_r2.pdf. A self-selected advocacy survey; no nationally representative study after 2015 was found. Confidence: verified. ↩

54. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2015, Table 1; Sikh Coalition, 14 August 2026, https://www.sikhcoalition.org/blog/2026/fbi-releases-2025-hate-crime-data-including-25-increase-in-anti-sikh-incidents/; India West, 19 August 2026. The 2025 anti-Sikh figure is 177 incidents (189 offences, 193 victims); the anti-Hindu figure is 32 offences (34 victims). Confidence: verified (2015); reported (2025). ↩