Front Burner - The rise of anti-South Asian content online

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

 A recent rise in hateful online posts directed towards South Asian immigrants in Canada and cases of South Asians being harassed and attacked in public has many in the community raising the alarm.Jaspreet Dhaliwal, a recent international student turned post-graduate work permit holder, talks about a concerning encounter at a local park. Press Progress reporter, Rumneek Johal, takes us through more examples of hateful online content about South Asians and recent cases of real-life harassment.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcriptsTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Joytha Shingupta, a producer here on FrontBurner. You see all kinds of crazy, far-fetched claims on the internet. Usually they come and go, or maybe they never make it past the niche forums they came from. But sometimes, they catch on.

They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating, they're eating the pets of the people. A rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating local pets has led to weeks of xenophobic discourse, bomb threats, and lockdowns. And for some here in Canada, it sounded familiar. An oddly specific and othering story about a group of foreign newcomers. Earlier this summer, a TikTok of a woman claiming that people at Ontario's Wasaga Beach were digging holes in the sand and defecating in them was making the rounds. And it's not locals doing it. It is people coming from out of town and it is immigrants that think it's okay

to dig a hole, pop a squat, and bury their poop. Where kids play in the sand. In another video, she was more specific. Yes, there are Indian families that dig holes and put tents and poop. They do it on the beach now and they do it, they did it off my backyard. There was like three different families of maybe 25. It spread like wildfire.

This and several other videos about people defecating on the beach have garnered hundreds of thousands of views and has been the talk along the beachfront. If this is something that's happening and people are actually doing this, because if it is, that's serious and it shouldn't be happening. Ontario Premier Doug Ford addressed it. Folks, don't be pooping on the beach. Simple as that. Which in turn led to a bit on Late Night with Stephen Colbert. What I particularly love is how defeated he seems at having to say that out loud.

Folks, don't be pooping on the beach. And I guess you need to hear it. Don't be showing your boobs to a moose. The mayor of Wasega came out and said there was no evidence that this was happening at all. But still, people were commenting on the original TikTok, and others like it, saying that they'd seen similar things, and not just at Wasega, but at other Ontario beaches. Sobble, Grand Bend, Crystal.

This idea that immigrants from India were bringing their alleged outdoor defecating habits to Canada, that's happening in a larger context. Especially online. That South Asians are taking all the jobs. I'm not racist, you know what I'm saying? But the Punjabs, the Indians, the Ticket, they have all the sauce right now. The Walm are taking all the jobs. I'm not racist, you know what I'm saying, but the Punjabs, the Indians, the ticket, they have all the sauce right now. The Walmarts, they have it. Other stores, they have it. The McDonald's, they have it.

Popeyes, they've been having it. That they're disorderly and hard to be around. I was on a lineup earlier waiting for a bus and these group of Indians came out of nowhere and cut the line. Sometimes it's just videos of groups of South Asians simply existing in public

with sinister-sounding music underneath and captions like, Welcome to the new Canada. It comes at a time when public opinion has started to shift against Canada's immigration levels. In a study conducted by Environics last fall, around 40% of people said there was too much immigration to Canada. And among those newcomers, South Asians make up the largest share. For a long time, Canada's had a reputation for being one of the most immigration-friendly

countries in the world. So Canada, like back in 2018, like coming to Canada was actually a really big opportunity. And I remember like going to an immigration agent in 2018 and the first country he actually recommended me was Canada. That's Jaspreet Taliwal. He arrived here six years ago as an international student at Sheridan College, and he now works full-time for a trucking company based in Mississauga as a dispatcher on a postgraduate work permit. Jaspreet says most of his time here has been overwhelmingly positive. People have been kind, he's found opportunities, and he's had family here to help him settle in.

He wants to stay here. But over the last few months, he's noticed a change. I mean, there's a lot of like alarming posts that I've seen on like Twitter or like other online platforms as well, which are actually highlighting the racism against mostly the immigrants and as you said, the South Asian community in Canada. I've actually came across a lot of them, like, recently. I mean, back then, like in 2018, 19, it was nothing like this before. But, I mean, since last, like, I would say three to four months, it keeps increasing. It's dangerous too, right?

As a practicing Sikh, Jaspreet says he's started to feel more unsafe and aware of the way he might stand out because of his turban, even though it hasn't been an issue before. And last month, his fears came true. Me and my friend, we visited a park in Caledon and we encountered a strange situation right so what happened is we were standing in the park we noticed a woman who was was actually recording us without our consent like videotaping us we approached her to to ask like why why is she recording us and instead of giving us any reason see uh she started seeing this group of like immigrants this group of Indian people is standing here blah blah blah I mean our remarks let us confused and like uncomfortable because we couldn't couldn't

understand like why our background or where we came from is relevant simply standing in a public park you know what I mean And this experience raised important questions like about our privacy. And I mean, if people go to public spaces, they are not feeling safe. Like, as I said myself, I don't feel safe anymore just to like go out in the late night or early mornings. So that is what I mean when I say it's actually dangerous. So that is what I mean when I say it's actually dangerous. According to StatsCan, hate crimes against South Asians in Canada increased by 143% between 2019 and 2022. There isn't data out yet about what's been happening over the last couple years. Ramneek Johal, a reporter with Press Progress, has been reporting on online content targeting

South Asians in Canada. Hi Ramneek, thanks for joining me. Hi, thank you so much for having me. In August, the World Sick Organization put out a statement about rising hate, and they mentioned three incidents. All of them happened to be in Ontario. Can you take me through them and what happened? Yeah, so we're seeing a spike in hate crimes, specifically against visible minorities, and in these three cases, against turbaned sick men. So one of them was reported to police in Peterborough, Ontario, after a man had his turban knocked off and stepped on. And in others, allegedly a man was attacked and had his turban removed and stolen. And in Sudbury, Ontario, there was a man who was attacked and threatened to be run over for wearing a good bond, a sick article of faith. And so again, it is these visible minorities who are being targeted for their visible differences.

And I want to get into what's driving this, because when you go online, it definitely feels like we're seeing more hateful or negative posts about South Asians. But in your reporting, you've come across some data showing that there's been an actual surge, right? Yes, absolutely. And we're seeing online specifically, there's an organization called the Global Project Against Hate and Racism, and they track transnational hate and far-right extremism. And there is a very large and visible increase in hate and slurs directed towards South Asians globally since January 2023. And so we're seeing this as a result of anxieties around losing jobs or the cost of housing. We're seeing posts about cleanliness and immigrants being unclean or

making this country unclean. We're seeing a lot of posts essentially calling for them to go back home. And so on platforms and Donald Trump's Truth Social, hate speech and slurs against South Asians increased over 250% in the same time span. And so again, we're seeing this very large and very evident spike over the last year or so. You sort of touched on the uncleanliness thing. I guess that sort of also kind of connects to this ongoing theme of poop being associated with with south asians like i'm sure like you've probably seen like those ai images and it's always like sinister looking indians and for some reason they're always covered in poop yeah absolutely and i think that the fact that this is the infinite conversation we have to have at one point i was talking to my editor because there were the the influx of poop related content on my social media was

abnormal and I said the fact that I'm reading and sifting through this much poop quite literally makes me want to pull my hair out you know the origins of this is that in rural India some people don't have access to toilets it's become a meme. And again, it's just to have some sort of imagery, again, to point to of Indians being unclean or not belonging or not conforming to Canadian society as another justification for why they should leave, essentially. Yeah. And I guess it's just a newer sort of theme that I've been seeing in this like recent wave of of online hate towards South Asians. Another thing that I've been seeing is I guess they have a new fun of Indian names, which often have suffixes, Jeet being one of them. But it then became like this trope of a quintessential Indian man. And again, like you said, some of these AI images or memes paint them as very sinister, very scary looking, very unclean, very dirty. Often I've seen even

on social media of saying the Jeets or the Pajits need to go home or in a more horrible scenario, I've seen even, you know, a news article you posted where a south asian or sick man has died in in a car crash or something and the the replies on social media are horrible and we see again almost as a vocal and visible bold celebration of this and again this deployment of the term Jeets and Bajits, the theme is othering. It's to other these South Asian and Sikh immigrants and to say, you know, we have these terms or these images for them because they are so different from us. They are other and they just do not belong here. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. In your reporting, you make a connection between this uptick in anti-South Asian hate and content from far-right Canadian influencers. Can you tell me more about that? Who are they and what kind of reach do they have? did a whole report on a Canadian white supremacist organization, Diagon, led by Canadian far-right influencer Jeremy McKenzie. And this group has very vocally and very visibly ramped up their hate speech and racism towards South Asians, advocating for the deportation of Indian immigrants from Canada and kind of calling for re-emigration, which argues for ethnically cleansing the continent of non-Europeans

through forced deportations. And that's something that Diagon is also calling for. The only real option you have is to try and make these invaders' lives as miserable as possible. They're not just out there harassing immigrants online and in real life. They're encouraging others to do the same because they believe that if they do, they may be successful in their ultimate goal of removing these people from this country. And what exactly does Diagonal's campaign specifically look like? Like, where does it take place? Can you describe it a bit more for me? Yeah, so Diagonal functions a lot through

online groups, online either video chats or podcasting, but more specifically through Telegram, which is a private messaging chat. And so they have these private chats where, you know, their names are all visible, but you're only able to see the messages if you are approved to be in that conversation. And their community has thousands and thousands of members and they speak with impunity they really don't care about what they say they are not shying away from calling for for these people to leave this country or again in not shying away from explicitly calling for the harassment of these groups. I mentioned earlier that StatsCan has tracked, you know,

an increase in hate crimes targeting South Asians in recent years. But a couple of my CBC colleagues, Rajpreet Sohota and Josiah Sinanen, have both done stories on this in Sudbury and Windsor, respectively. And Rajpreet was told by Sudbury police that hate crimes against South Asians were extremely underreported, while Josiah, he found that there were no report hate crimes against South Asians where he was reporting, which was in Windsor, even though newcomers there were expressing concerns about hate there. And add to that the fact that there hasn't been a ton of mainstream media coverage about this specifically. Why do you think there is a reluctance to call out or report anti-South Asian hate? I think on the part of new immigrants, I think, or just immigrants in general, I think there is just a general reluctance or fear of engaging with police and reporting

crimes. So I think that that, and also I think when you're being faced with this onslaught of hate or these repeated kind of tropes or slurs or online messages, you don't even recount it. And a lot of these folks don't even recount it as a criminal offense, because if you think about it, a lot of immigrants dating back decades have had their turbans knocked off, have had their articles of faith, you know, removed or stolen or have been tormented or made fun of for being different. This obviously isn't something that's new. I think this idea that this is a crime and you should report it and that you should be able to talk about what you've experienced is in some ways very new to a lot of these immigrants. But I think on the other side of the conversation, what really surprises me is that this has been missing from the mainstream Canadian media to a large extent. It's a conversation that for some reason isn't being touched on. And sometimes I wonder if it's, you know, that conundrum where we don't want to talk about it

because we don't want to feed into it. I feel like often when we don't talk about these things, what we're really doing is allowing these groups to continue unchecked and really strengthening their ability to spread their messages because there isn't anything countering it. You know, one of the things that maybe might be more difficult to talk about is the fact that like, sometimes you see South Asians themselves join in on anti-South Asian immigrant discourse. We really do see that a lot and I think it what happens is often older immigrants children of immigrants who were born in Canada like to kind of juxtapose themselves from newer immigrants to to kind of say oh we're not well we're not like them we're we're different um

we're quote unquote better we're more civilized and and i think this really goes back to this internalization of of the model minority myth uh for a lot of south asians that um you know we have to be quote unquote perfect to to make it in this this country. And that's something that many immigrants for a very long time built their lives upon or built their livelihood upon. Well, maybe if we are the quote-unquote perfect immigrant, we won't have to deal with racists or people won't be racist against us. You know, seeing all of this, I'm just reminded that Canada is no stranger to hate motivated violence. In just the last decade, we saw the Quebec City mosque attack. The shots rang out during the sacred evening prayers at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre with 50 worshippers inside.

Six were killed, more than a dozen injured, five critically. There was the Pakistani-Canadian family in London, Ontario, who were attacked with a van. Mourners came to pay tribute to a family of five run down while out for a walk. A nine-year-old boy was the sole survivor. You know, that's just off the top of my head. What do you think needs to be done to help stop that from happening? Yeah, I think, again, conversations like these are very important and a good first step. I think getting community members to report these crimes are important. getting community members to report these crimes are important.

But I also think that social media companies need to crack down on hate speech on their platforms because what often happens is these influencers are able to post their content, most of the time unchecked, or if they are reported, they'll remake their accounts and continue doing the same thing. They'll remake their accounts and continue doing the same thing. And so I think there needs to be one greater, you know, greater impetus on these big tech companies to to act and to work with governments to kind of crack down on online hate speech, as well as, you know, either campaigns or targeting or conversations about these real-life hate crimes and it's very important to name them for what they are and to talk about them for what they are to highlight the fact that they are trending upwards right now and that it is a common theme for for South Asians or Sikhs to be targeted in this country And I think that these conversations need to be brought to the forefront because if we continue to look at them as isolated incidents, like even the examples that you mentioned, if we continue to say that these are horrible,

you know, things that happened, we're ignoring the context in which these things happened. We're ignoring the fact that these these ideas these ideologies these thoughts feelings and opinions about immigrants were not born overnight and if anything they're being actively fostered and amplified right now and so we cannot look at all of these incidents as um isolated because they're not They're a part of a greater context. And we really need to acknowledge that if we're going to make any kind of leeway in addressing them.

All right. Ramnik, thank you so much for this. Thank you so much for having me. That's all for today. I'm Joyta Shingupta. Thanks so much for listening to Frontrunner. Jamie will be back tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.