Hindutva nationalists weaponized social media to label Muslims as Covid spreaders

Evidence

In swift order, Hindutva nationalists took to social media, dubbing the virus “Corona Jihad” and Muslims “human bombs.” These labels were accompanied by vile caricatures of Muslims spitting on bystanders and physicians, bigoted political cartoons spread in newspapers and disseminated on social media. Then doctored videos of Muslims disobeying stay-at-home orders went viral online, shared millions of times over within the country and beyond. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 463

Categorization

• XREF: The “Corona Jihad” label parallels the terrorism-framing lexicon well documented in Kumar’s reading companion and in prior chapters of this book.