After a series of racist revelations and embarrassing encounters, Republicans are being confronted with the very undercurrent of extremism they have cultivated for years. Far from being confined to the fringes, the venom of hate and edgelord internet trolling that propelled President Donald Trump’s return to the White House cannot be contained online — and now it’s coming back to bite some of MAGA’s top foot soldiers.
On Monday, FBI director Kash Patel posted a simple message on X to mark Diwali. The first Indian-American to lead the FBI, Patel is a practicing Hindu who took his oath of office earlier this year with his hand resting on the Bhagavad Gita. After sharing the holiday’s message of hope, light and goodness, the New York-born Patel faced a wave of online hate, including calls for him to “Go back to India.” Conservative podcaster Steven Crowder shared Patel’s message with “Could we not?” Right-wing pastor and podcaster Joel Webbon’s reply was more blunt: “Go back home and worship your sand demons. Get out of my country.” Another MAGA supporter asked why Patel was “betraying Charlie Kirk.”
The White House, which is set to host a Diwali event next month, was also swarmed by anti-Indian prejudice when press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared Trump’s wish that “this observance brings abiding serenity, prosperity, hope, and peace.”
MAGA-aligned Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, faced similar attacks from the right. On Monday, disparaging comments targeting Ramawamy resurfaced from Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s controversial nominee to lead the White House Office of the Special Counsel, who said in January 2024, “Never trust a chinaman or Indian. NEVER.” After Ingrassia’s comments were revealed, at least four Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, yanked their support for the nominee, whose confirmation hearing was scheduled for Thursday. Ingrassia withdrew his nomination late Tuesday.
Ingrassia’s messages were part of thousands of leaked texts from over 350 Young Republican operatives in a Telegram group chat that was exposed by POLITICO, revealing a culture steeped in racist, antisemitic and misogynistic language. The exchanges among several state-level leaders frequently invoked Nazi references, racial slurs and threats to political rivals. At least 251 documented instances of slurs were recorded in a span of eight months.
These weren’t anonymous trolls. The members represented the future infrastructure of the Republican Party, having held official roles in campaigns, government offices and influential conservative organizations.
These weren’t anonymous trolls. The members represented the future infrastructure of the Republican Party, having held official roles in campaigns, government offices and influential conservative organizations. The next generation of operatives, campaign managers and elected officials is being incubated in a digital ecosystem that rewards cruelty, embraces fascist imagery and treats bigotry as a badge of ideological authenticity. The collection of texts shows an atmosphere of open contempt and violent fantasy that was met with encouragement or silence from peers. That kind of nakedly hateful language — while not yet mainstream — is being both tolerated and defended by Republicans currently in office.
Vice President JD Vance dismissed the GOP text scandal as “stupid jokes” and “kids saying edgy things.” The vice president, who appears more comfortable with relativistic defenses than with accountability, called the outrage “pearl-clutching,” before attempting to draw a moral equivalence rather than take responsibility. Earlier this year, when it was revealed that a staff member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) once called to “Normalize Indian hate,” Vance — whose wife Usha is Indian-American — argued that “stupid social media activity should [not] ruin a kid’s life” and that he should be rehired.
But this is not a problem simply relegated to online trolling or private chats by “kids.”
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is currently facing pressure to forcibly remove an elected official from office for online content denigrating Indian immigrants. “Deport every Indian immediately,” Palm Bay city council member Chandler Langevin demanded in September.
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And Ramaswamy, who recently headlined a Turning Point USA event at Montana State University, was forced to confront anti-Indian sentiment — cultivated by the online right — face-to-face.
“Jesus Christ is God, and there is no other God,” one student told Ramaswamy. “How can you represent the constituents of Ohio who are 64% Christian if you are not a part of that faith?”
“If you are an Indian, a Hindu, coming from a different culture, different religion than those who founded this country, those who grew this country, built this country, made this country the beautiful thing that it is today,” he continued. “What are you conserving? You are bringing change. I’ll be 100% honest with you — Christianity is the one truth.”
After being asked by another student why he “masquerade[s] as a Christian,” Ramaswamy, whose social media posts featuring his family are routinely flooded with racist comments, was forced to defend his faith. “I’m an ethical monotheist, that’s the way I would describe my faith,” he said. “Do you think it’s inappropriate for someone who’s a Hindu to be a U.S. president?”
Another student essentially told Ramaswamy there is no room for him in Kirk’s movement: “But isn’t Charlie Kirk’s organization founded on Christian values as well? And isn’t America based on what Protestantism is and based on how those values are? Wouldn’t that contradict what your beliefs are?”
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Right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza — an Indian-American who was raised Catholic but later became a born-again Christian — has also faced racist attacks. In response to one such comment on X, he said that “in a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation? It’s a question worth thinking about.”
Republicans like to pretend that so-called woke liberals are the real racists, but this rhetoric and behavior undermines that notion. But they don’t care about being hypocritical. In fact, they revel in the anger their hypocrisy causes in their detractors. After all, hypocrisy only matters when shame works. By cultivating a pervasive culture of deflection, the GOP has trained their supporters that shame doesn’t have to be real.
But MAGA’s ethnonationalist purists are clearly not content with the rampant rise of online hate. Theirs is a real world project. For Indian-Americans in the MAGA movement, even their conservative identity will not shield them.
