Indian-Americans under siege
Indian-Americans, long framed as a “model minority,” are now increasingly swept into the MAGA coalition’s exclusionary politics. Even loyal conservative allies have faced hostility. In October, Dinesh D’Souza was attacked on X by right-wing accounts calling Indians a “disgusting race of slaves.” D’Souza said he had “never encountered such hateful language” in forty years of public life.
Similarly, Kash Patel, the Hindu-American FBI Director, posted a Diwali greeting and was inundated with racist replies denouncing Hinduism as “pagan,” urging him “to choose Jesus Christ,” and calling for his deportation. These incidents underscore how white Christian nationalist movements extend only conditional acceptance to non-white allies.
Meanwhile, intensified ICE crackdowns and rising deportations—including more than three thousand Indians in 2025—signal a broader shift treating entire communities as suspect. As some MAGA voices openly argue that only white Christians belong in America, Indian-Americans face a rapidly worsening climate of safety and belonging.
Why This Matters
The mainstreaming of white supremacy threatens liberal democracy. It undermines equal citizenship by narrowing who counts as a “real American.” It distorts policymaking, turning isolated incidents into sweeping crackdowns and framing complex issues as simple morality tales with fixed in-groups and out-groups. And it heightens the risk of political violence, as dehumanizing language lowers inhibitions and conspiratorial thinking primes followers for “defensive” action.
For Indian-Americans who once believed education or income could insulate them, recent years have shown that proximity to power offers no protection from nativist hostility.
Roots of the MAGA movement
White supremacy has long shaped the United States, rooted in the nation’s founding, slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation. Though strongest in the South, its impact extended nationwide. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s weakened, and progress continued into the early 21st century. Yet in the past decade, white supremacist ideas and groups have resurged, growing both in number and influence. They now play a larger role in elections, policy debates, and cultural narratives.
What explains this reversal? Social scientists who study hate groups and white nationalism point to several drivers: economic anxiety, cultural displacement, and the growing normalization of extremist ideologies. A major catalyst has been the rise of online platforms, which offer powerful tools for spreading propaganda and recruiting new followers.
In a briefing titled “The Mainstreaming of White Supremacy: From the Fringes of Everyday Life to the Halls of American Power,” hosted by American Community Media (ACoM) on November 11, experts described how white supremacist and far-right beliefs—once confined to the margins—now permeate mainstream political, cultural, and even religious spheres. Where extremists once operated in the shadows, they now influence elections and shape pivotal policy debates.
The mainstreaming of racism
Political scientist Sanford Schram, Adjunct Lecturer at Stony Brook University (SUNY) and co-author of Hard White: The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics, links part of the current trajectory to late–twentieth-century conservative politics. At the ACoM briefing, he explained that during the Reagan years, figures like Pat Buchanan helped repackage the rhetoric of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke into language more acceptable within the Republican Party. Later developments—from the Tea Party’s backlash to Barack Obama to the grievance-driven appeals that fueled Donald Trump’s rise—further normalized exclusionary narratives, especially around immigration.
As Schram notes, “the next generation of young people, most recently on the internet, X (formerly known as Twitter), Discord, and elsewhere, are trolling neo-Nazi memes as if that’s the cool thing these days. White nationalism has a long lineage, but it has certainly become more prevalent in mainstream politics in the Trump era.” The cumulative effect is that ideas once considered untouchable have entered everyday conversation.
Spread of extremist ideology
Journalist Heath Druzin, host of the Extremely American podcast, confirms this trend through his reporting on the internet’s darkest spaces. He observed “an alarming number of people who are pretty fond of Hitler at the moment and pretty okay saying it out loud.” Druzin argues that two forces have accelerated the spread of extremist rhetoric: political elites using language about minorities that once would have been disqualifying, and online echo chambers that offer anonymity and validation for views people previously hesitated to express in person. The first grants top-down permission; the second provides bottom-up amplification.
He pointed to Donald Trump’s 2015 campaign launch, when Trump said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.” What once delivered shock value has, over the last decade, become normalized. As Druzin notes, “this kind of talk in politics has become a lot more acceptable.” Social media has played a central role: “a lot of people are on different online platforms, where they get into echo chambers,” and anonymity shields them from “face-to-face backlash,” emboldening speech they would not risk publicly. This combination—“the political leaders saying things they otherwise… wouldn’t say” and online anonymity—has sharply accelerated the spread of extremist ideology.
Targeting communities of color
Over the past decade, U.S. political rhetoric has increasingly targeted immigrants and communities of color. During the 2024 presidential debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump repeated unfounded rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets—claims he echoed throughout the campaign. He also insisted, “Illegal Haitian migrants have descended upon a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life.”
In early December, at a cabinet meeting, President Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage,” adding, “We don’t want them in our country.” When two members of the National Guard were shot in Washington, DC—allegedly by an Afghan refugee—he used the incident to justify sweeping anti-immigrant measures, directing a federal investigation and urging new restrictions. This pattern, where isolated crimes are used to justify collective punishment, translates inflammatory words into policy: intensifying enforcement, reshaping immigration regimes, and heightening pressure on Black and brown communities nationwide.
Digital Echo Chambers
The design of online platforms accelerates these dynamics. Algorithmic feeds reward outrage; repetition makes extreme content appear normal; and pseudonymity removes social restraint. As Heath Druzin explains, the absence of social cost means people speak with impunity. Online communities also foster belonging, often radicalizing users at scale. For white supremacist networks, the internet serves not only as a megaphone but also as a recruitment pipeline, training ground, and staging area for offline action.
The “Quasi-Messiah”
Religious narratives give this political moment a powerful spiritual frame. Matthew Taylor, Senior Christian Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies and author of The Violent Take It By Force, analyzes how Christian nationalism merges with racialized politics. At the ACoM briefing, he argued that Trump’s 2015 campaign “enlisted a whole new set of radical Christian actors,” creating a coalition that, while multi-ethnic, was anchored in notions of Christian supremacy. Within this worldview, Trump is imagined as a “quasi-messiah” destined to “deliver the United States and in some cases, Israel, and to realign the world order.” Such mythmaking fuses apocalyptic prophecy, culture-war grievances, and ethno-religious nationalism, energizing a movement that views political victories as divinely mandated.
Measuring the Far-Right’s Expansion
Data confirm what rhetoric and reporting suggest. Devin Burghart, Executive Director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), highlighted Leonard Zeskind’s decades of work tracing the far right’s ascent. Burghart estimates that over thirty years, “the numbers of individuals who the extremist right-wing ideas have influenced have gone up from about twenty-five thousand to about 2.4 million at the height of the COVID pandemic.” These networks—spanning militias, COVID-denialists, anti-Semitic groups, and QAnon circles—have gained footholds among state legislators, members of Congress, and political influencers, some with access to the White House.
A Broader, Smarter Response
Meeting this challenge requires coordinated action, said the experts. First, communities must reject “single-issue” silos; white supremacist politics shift targets constantly, so resistance must cross racial, religious, and class lines. Indian-American groups need deeper alliances with Black, Latino, Muslim, Jewish, and other minorities to protect shared interests in civil rights, due process, and religious freedom.
Second, communities must invest in narrative power. Disinformation fills a vacuum, so we need stories that champion pluralism and counter myths such as “model minority” tropes. Elevating diverse Indian-American voices builds empathy.
Finally, communities must organize where decisions are made, defend digital spaces, expand legal and safety support, and model internal unity—setting aside caste and sectarian divides to strengthen collective credibility.
From Alarm to Action
It is easy to view the resurgence of white supremacy as an unstoppable tide, but that perception is neither accurate nor useful. Giving up is not an option. The very democratic institutions that white nationalists hope to exploit can also be harnessed by engaged citizens to halt their march toward authoritarianism. The same online tools that fuel radicalization can be repurposed to mobilize inclusion, and the same religious traditions invoked to justify exclusion can be reclaimed for pluralism and justice. We must not underestimate the threat to our democracy, but we can meet it with equal resolve—by building smarter coalitions and working toward an America where equality and equity are realized for all.