Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel wished his followers on X a happy Diwali. It did not go over well.
Far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded his post with bigoted memes and rhetoric. “Go back home and worship your sand demons,” a far-right pastor wrote. “Get the f**k out of my country,” read another reply. Said another, “This is America. We don’t do this.” These responses, some of which were seen millions of times, were on the tamer end of the spectrum.
Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them.
But but but, we are different brown people,we are not those dirty Latinos,we are clean Indians!
No no no, not THOSE indians, those aren’t even calle… Ok, never mind, we are the GOOD brown people, you have to like us!
Am I close? Fucking leopards again!
Indian Americans spent a weirdly long time with so many of them actually believing the model minority shit. There is no model minority. The people who hate Mexicans and Venezuelans hate you too if you’re darker than a german or you speak a non English language.
The MAGAt Indian Americans can piss in the wind . They voted for this BS and I have zero sympathy for their problem with the Christo-Fascist nutters. In Japan, Toyota’s CEO wore a fucking MAGA hat and t-shirt at a NASCAR event. SHAME!!! Fuck him and I will boycott Toyota.
It was about when Trump got back into power that me and my pals had the conversation that any colour but white will be fair game. What we got completely wrong, was just how quickly and how openly this would run.
Do brown skinned MAGA really think they are exempt? If so, see Exhibit ‘A’: JD Vances wife.
Yes. Especially upper caste Indian Americans. But your average right winger from bumfuck doesn’t know or care the difference between a Brahman or a Dalit. When it comes to east Asians it’s basically this scene. They think of all west Asian, Arabic, and north African people as basically terrorists. The only group they might actually think of as different is very light skinned Cubans who don’t speak Spanish.
Dumb cunt thought she’d get to sleep in the master’s house if she danced just right. What’s the right word for a race and class traitor?
Oh you mean his soon to be ex wife???
Its so weird to me that 80% of the undocumented immigrants being deported are christian but these people say nothing. But when Kash Patel talks about Diwali that’s the end of the world.
Its 100% about racism not christianity.
What did these people think white Christian nationalists were? What did they think a white Christian ethnostate was going to be?
They’re shocked that the leopards are eating their faces?
My only surprise is that it took this long. MAGA probably calculated that they could get the Indian vote in the election, so they kept their mouths closed.
Now they are turbocharging their cruelty, and burning the goodwill they have with multiple groups, and the only conclusion can be that they have already determined that they don’t need those votes because there won’t be any more elections.
Couldn’t happen to more deserving people.
At first I thought “people” here meant “Indians” instead of “Conservative Indian Politicians” mentioned at the end.
Reddit has truly ruined my mindset about the internet.
I mean, racism against brown people ranges pretty far and wide on the internet and I’d frankly be shocked if lemmy proved to be an exception
At this point they’re going after anyone who could so much as get a tan. If you aren’t almost translucent and an evangelical christian, you are their enemy.
Some of these people are truly despicable and deserve all the hate they get and more …. But even they don’t deserve this.
Really, you couldn’t find anything better to object to Kesh Patel than wishing people a happy Diwali?
I don’t like his speech cadence
Whaaat, MAGA being racist and hostile towards members of their own cesspool? Who woulda thought?
Patel should’ve seen this coming, or at least have the epiphany now. But he probably won’t care, given that he’s an asshole who’s in it for his own benefit…
Platform run by a nazi is full of nazis, it’s shocking.
To be honest, as a South Asian, racists have always been openly bigotted in our direction. It was never really taboo in most Western countries. We have no StopAsianHate or BLM equivalent.
That being said I appreciate the author for highlighting the issue. Despite our faults (by virtue of being human) we value family and education as ideals and that has helped us create prosperity, especially in the US where Indians are the highest earning demographic. This rubs some the wrong way, even if it is fairly earned.
Though its not surprising, it is disappointing when it occurs in a nation that sees itself as a land of opportunity.
a nation that sees itself as a land of opportunity.
A nation whose propaganda claims it is a land of opportunity for all.
The reality is (and has always been) very different.
a nation that sees itself as a land of opportunity.
This nation has always been divided, even before it was a nation. My ancestor was a pastor in present day new england in ~1630 and was arrested for baptizing too late on the lord’s day by the strict puritans on massachussets. Then there was the civil war (which never really ended).
China<>Taiwan is a civil war… I bet if I looked into it, Pakistan and India’s beef is considered a civil war in terms of why it started.
People think racism is a white export (import? heh). Try telling a person from Thailand they look Vietnamese or vice versa. Clan-based war is the human way. I spent the first 40 years of my life thinking we conquered human nature (despite my family members’ behaviors - I thought they were just stupid).
Nope - water is wet, and people kill people from other clans. Xenophobia is a hell of a drug.
Sectarianism will always exist. One can argue that the resurgence in white supremacy here is a manifestation of that (a group of Europeans and their descendants thinking their sect is superior / innately worthy of more resources).
I think one would be hard pressed to defend the argument that racism is a “white export” but what is undeniably true is that colonial Europeans were obsessed with race and saw the world through the lens of a race based caste system.
They assumed that all human progress could be distilled to lighter skin people being more advanced and darker skin people being more primitive.
They created entire scientific fields around this and interpreted their religion in a way to support this.
In India, they interpreted indigineous systems of social hierarchy such as caste and took them a step further, defining those that were darker skinned and lower caste as inherently criminal, keeping them under the watchful eye of their surveillance state.
They perceived lighter skin Muslims and upper caste Hindus as more “civilized” than darker skin low caste Hindus and gave the former administrative opportunities because of this perceived superiority.
They had an explicit policy of divide and conquer, promoting hateful and divisive rhetoric that resulted in communal violence so that people would be distracted from fighting against them.
Then when Nazi Germany destroyed their infrastructure in WW2 such that they could no longer financially maintain their institutions of colonialism, they drew an arbitrary border which cut through incredibly culturally and linguistically diverse communities and left.
In summary: Would there be animosity between Pakistan and India without the mismanagement of partition and the empire going out of its way to promote hate? Probably.
Would racism and sectarian violence not exist in the absence of the European world view being spread globally through colonialism? No we would still have that.
Were these made substantially worse by colonial powers promoting those divisions around the world over centuries? I think absolutely yes.
So while I take your point that such divisions didn’t originate in the West, it very much was a core component of their worldview and they stoked and exacerbated those divisions everywhere they went. I find it difficult to let colonists off the hook for that.
But to your general point on human nature, I agree. The reason why I hold America toa different standard is it calls itself the land of oppurunity and takes pride in that.
Yup, that’s why it’s such a whistle when phrases like “enemy within” and “bad hombres” are uttered.
They are just divide and conquer in a new wrapper to distract poor people to hate other poor people, while the increasingly stratified ruling class consolidates the country’s wealth.
People still fall for this shit, hell I still do from time to time. The only way you counter it is with education and being worldly, which is intentionally becoming harder to do nowadays
The only way you counter it is with education and being worldly
Well said. It really shouldn’t be harder with the technological advantages we have today but clearly the powers that be go out of their way to make sure it’s not used for that purpose.
This rubs some the wrong way, even if it is fairly earned.
Sadly, it’s less to do with your prosperity and a lot more to do with the fact that you’re not white.
From the regressive perspective, if you’re nonwhite and poor you’re a leech on society and if you are well off you must have took it from them by gaming the system. The core is not seeing others as equally human.
Being financially secure is a multiplier to their bigotry as they feel it challenges 1) their collective power and 2) their worldview that anyone that shares their melanin level is innately superior in every way.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them.
“Are we not the right shade of brown?”
They didn’t think the leopards would eat their faces.
There is no right shade of brown to them.
