CSOH report finds anti-South Asian hate speech rose sharply on X
A CSOH report counted a 240% rise in monthly hateful X posts targeting South Asians, while a separate study tracked rising slurs and threats.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
A new report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, or CSOH, found that anti-South Asian hate speech on X rose sharply in the United States. The report counted a 240% increase in the monthly volume of hateful posts targeting South Asians, from 12,904 in January 2024 to 43,843 in June 2026, according to Al Jazeera’s account of the research.
The finding measures online posts rather than hate crimes or a national count of offline incidents. CSOH’s report, titled “The Rising Tide of Anti-South Asian Hate in the United States,” said it identified more than 542,000 hateful X posts aimed at South Asians in the US between January 2025 and June 2026, Al Jazeera reported.
What did the anti-South Asian hate speech report find?
CSOH said its researchers applied the United Nations definition of hate speech, followed recurring slurs and narratives, and reviewed posts to remove criticism that did not reach that threshold. According to the report, five of the six months with the highest volume of posts came near the end of the period it examined.
Nearly half of the hateful X posts identified by the researchers claimed that South Asians were invading the US, taking jobs or presenting a demographic threat, Al Jazeera reported. Posts portraying South Asians as dirty or unhygienic increased 171%, which CSOH described as the fastest-growing narrative.
The report said the content often grouped distinct communities together, conflating Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and treating Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian identities as one group. It also reported that the slur “pajeet” and related terms appeared in 30% of the hateful X posts it counted and in 45% of posts on fringe platforms.
How do the CSOH and Stop AAPI Hate findings differ?
CSOH’s researchers attributed the increase to factors including political disputes over immigration, economic resentment, the increased public visibility of South Asians and generative AI tools that can produce hostile material. Those are the report’s interpretations, rather than independently established causes.
The report identified the H-1B visa program as a point of conflict and linked several increases in hostile content to political arguments over the program, according to Al Jazeera. It also said X accounts had exposed personal information about South Asians accused of taking jobs or committing visa fraud.
Separate research from Stop AAPI Hate offers corroborating but non-comparable evidence. Its September 2026 brief said anti-South Asian slur use rose 109% from January 2023 through December 2025, and that South Asians were the targets of 71% of anti-Asian online threats of violence recorded from August 2024 through December 2025.
Stop AAPI Hate said its work combines online monitoring with a 2025 survey of South Asian adults, immigration-enforcement data and reports submitted to its reporting center. Its figures therefore should not be combined with CSOH’s X-post count: the organizations used different measures, data sources and time periods.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.