This story mentions slurs used against South Asians. Vivek Ramaswamy was almost done taking questions. Speaking to students at Montana State University on October 7, at an event for the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA , the former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio gubernatorial hopeful reiterated his conservative bonafides. The visit should have been a layup for Ramaswamy—and maybe it would have been, had he been white and Christian. Instead, as the hour-and-a-half-long event was drawing to a close, Ramaswamy got grilled by two white students who felt his Hindu faith and culture put him at odds with the office he hopes to lead. “Christian voices should be the main voice of America. And I want to know basically why you seem to be, and I don't mean to be horribly offensive, but why you seem to be masquerading as a Christian?” one woman in the crowd asked. The young man who followed her was even more direct. “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—what are you conserving? You are bringing change,” he said. The man went on to ask Ramaswamy how he could represent Ohioans, when 64 percent of them are Christian. It’s hardly the first time Ramaswamy has dealt with this type of rhetoric from his own party’s base. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter once told him that she would not have voted for him as president, “because you’re an Indian”; he later said he respected her for speaking her mind. But even as South Asians in the US hold a disproportionate slice of jobs in tech and health care, as well as highly visible roles in the White House, they’re facing a noxious swell of racism online—with much of it seemingly coming from MAGA adherents . Some tell WIRED the vitriol is making them feel duped by the president and fearful that the hateful rhetoric will become a mainstay for the party. “After the victory of Trump, a lot of people started looking for the next enemy,” says Anang Mittal, a creative strategist who’s worked for several Republicans and served under House speaker Mike Johnson. Mittal, who was born in India and voted for Trump twice, resigned in 2024. By his estimation, the newest enemy is Indian American people, including conservatives. “We're the more visible members of the Republican Party,” he says. South Asians with top roles in and around the Trump administration include White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai, FBI director Kash Patel , assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ Harmeet Dhillon, White House AI adviser Sriram Krishnan, National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, and second lady Usha Vance. They are a powerful minority (the majority of Indian Americans voted Democrat in the 2024 election), and some of the few people of color in an overwhelmingly white administration. But they are also part of a government that has made opposition to diversity one of its marquee issues and that’s bolstered by right-wing influencers ringing alarms about the country’s Indian invasion . Indian Americans in the administration work alongside colleagues who’ve said “ never trust a Chinaman or Indian ,” and “ normalize Indian hate .” In a statement to WIRED, Desai says, “Indian Americans were an important bloc in the historic coalition that resoundingly reelected President Trump in 2024, and numerous Indian Americans are playing a key role in the Trump administration. President Trump has repeatedly condemned bigotry in all forms, and remains focused on restoring prosperity, safety, and freedom for every American citizen.” Indian Americans are the highest-earning ethnic population in the country and are often described as a “model minority”—a historically loaded term used to praise Asian immigrants who appear to have assimilated successfully, and pit them against other racial groups. But the positive connotation of the model minority myth has recently flipped into a threat. Groypers, the hyper-online supporters of white nationalist Nick Fuentes , and even some Republican politicians embrace the idea of a “heritage American,” which supposes that the only true American is one descended from white Christians. To them, Indians are assimilating to steal well-paying jobs. In a New York Times op-ed from December titled “Groyperism Isn’t Conservatism. It’s Anti-Americanism,” Ramaswamy wrote of slurs like “Pajeet” and “street shitter” being lobbed at him on X. Still, he lays blame for this hateful speech with progressives, noting that the Groyper movement is a response to “anti-white discrimination over the last half-decade.” In other words, even the racism he’s facing is because of “woke.” Mittal tells WIRED he thinks “academia and the left wing of the Democratic Party” are partially responsible for perpetuating anti-Indian stereotypes. But he says the right’s purity tests, which increasingly rely on race and religion, worry him. Anyone who strays will be eaten alive. “That's what happened to Dinesh D'Souza,” he says. D’Souza, an influential conservative commentator since the Reagan administration, became a target of anti-Indian racism after decrying Groyperism. The mob he still seeks to please—he recently posted racist AI slop on X targeting Somali people and mocking diversity—is turning on him, as he is told by users to go back to India on a near hourly basis. (D’Souza did not respond to a request for comment.) He’s not the only one being told to “go back.” Nine days before he was shot, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk complained about Indians to his followers. “Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full,” he wrote. One of the main sources of resentment toward Indians in the US is the H-1B visa, a program US companies use to hire “skilled” foreign workers. In 2024, roughly 80,000 new H-1B petitions for Indian workers were approved, primarily in tech. The program drew considerable attention last year, in part because of a lengthy post on X by Ramaswamy from the day after Christmas in 2024 that has since been viewed over 127 million times. “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramaswamy wrote, in an attempt to explain why tech companies hire foreign workers. The post was met with a tidal wave of slurs and revulsion towards the visa program. It also reportedly expedited Ramaswamy’s January 2025 departure from DOGE. While Ramaswamy and even Elon Musk defended aspects of the H-1B visa, others want the program scrapped. In January, Texas Republican Party chairman Abraham George—an American citizen born in India—called for the state to ban hiring workers on H-1B visas. Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott have also pledged to eliminate hiring at universities and in the government through H-1Bs in their states. Sidharth, a conservative tech entrepreneur and Musk superfan, says right-wing messaging about H-1Bs—that they’re preventing Americans from building a livelihood—is rife with misinformation.

He’s not sure that matters. “The average American living in the suburbs is not going to figure that out. He's going to believe what he sees on YouTube and X,” says Sidharth. His name is a pseudonym which he uses online and in his professional life to protect his identity, as he says he’s received threats for his posts on X , which often detail the racism facing South Asians, including himself. Trump’s 2024 campaign positioned the candidate as “pro-immigration” but “anti illegal immigration,” which some Indians took as an assurance, says Raqib Hameed Naik, executive director at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. The DC-based think tank has published multiple reports about rising anti-Indian hate on X. Indeed, Sidharth says he voted for Trump in 2024, wanting the administration to do more for legal immigration, and less to accommodate undocumented people. But as a naturalized citizen, he considers Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, which is going before the Supreme Court , to be inexcusable. He no longer considers himself a Republican, but an “issue-based” independent, adding he’s concerned “we’ve lost the party completely, forever, to alt-right, Nazi behavior.” He also claims JD Vance has betrayed his own wife and kids on multiple occasions to appeal to Groypers. At a Mississippi Turning Point event in October, Vance fielded a question about his wife's Hindu faith by saying, “I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.” (For their part, Fuentes and Groypers often target Vance because of his wife. Vance has said anyone who attacks Usha Vance, including Nick Fuentes, “can eat shit.”) In a statement to WIRED, Vance spokesperson Parker Magid says, "Vice President Vance, husband of first Indian-American Second Lady of the United States Usha Vance, has repeatedly spoken out against racism of all kinds, and for Wired to suggest anything otherwise is disgusting.” From the outside, Indian collaboration with a party that trafficks in white nationalist rhetoric and imagery might seem paradoxical. But scholars say there’s precedent. “We are a deeply colonized people,” says Siddhartha Deb, author of Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India and associate professor of literary studies at The New School. In his view, the Indians in the Trump administration are part of a “ comprador class ” cozying up to power, a term first used in 18th- and 19th-century China for merchants who enriched themselves by intermediating between Westerners and locals. “A significant number of Indians wish to identify with the winners,” he says, “in these terms of material wealth, and power, and violence.” (Not every Indian American has used such scholarly terms to describe the Indian representation in the Trump administration. On the Daily Show last year, comedian Nimesh Patel called them the president’s DEI, or “dick eating Indians.”) Still, Trump’s approval rating, already hovering around a dismal 35 percent overall, is even lower (29 percent) among Indian Americans. As Republicans (hopefully) look to find another presidential candidate to run in 2028, they’ll need to decide if anti-Indian racism is a feature of the Republican party, or a bug. You Might Also Like In your inbox: WIRED's most ambitious, future-defining stories In your inbox: WIRED's most ambitious, future-defining stories AI slop backlash is actually having an impact AI slop backlash is actually having an impact Big Story: The cop who took on Flock Big Story: The cop who took on Flock The rise of the 1am job interview The rise of the 1am job interview Watch: I stole a car by hacking this hidden device Watch: I stole a car by hacking this hidden device