Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH)

Our executive director spoke with @latimes about how elected officials online have used their platforms to promote dangerous narratives targeting Muslims and helped bolster coordinated campaigns by right-wing social media influencers propagating conspiracy theories.

When public figures normalize anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and dehumanizing rhetoric, they help create an environment where radicalisation and violence are more likely to take root. — Our Executive Director told @dwnews

Joint statement by DACSA members on the cancellation of RightsCon - read here: digitalrightsfoundation.pk/dacsa-statemen…

People who oversaw security at the Islamic Center of San Diego said they had received increased threats after October 2023. The overall climate of hate only made things worse. "When you try to put a target on one community and paint them as the other and paint them as the enemy, then you will have people who would take that at face value and do something that they think is right in their own sense," Raqib Naik, the executive director of CSOH told @NPR npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-…

The @csohate, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, released a report last month that documented a 1,450% surge in anti-Muslim social media posts by Republican elected officials from February 2025 to March 2026. buff.ly/2aAhTKm

The deadly attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego is part of a much larger pattern of anti-Muslim fearmongering and dehumanization that has been escalating across the country. For more than a year, Republican elected officials have run a sustained and coordinated campaign portraying Muslim Americans as a threat to the country, pushing conspiracy theories about “Sharia law,” “Islamification,” and “invasion,” while describing Islam and Muslims as “demons,” a “death cult,” a “cancer,” and a “plague.” Our recent report documented a 1,450% surge in anti-Muslim social media posts by Republican elected officials between February 2025 and March 2026. When those in power use their position and platforms to normalize fear and hate toward a community, that hatred often manifests in violence. Journalists covering this incident can reach us at press@csohate.org. Full report : csohate.org/2026/04/21/man…

Report: csohate.org/2026/04/21/man…

Over the past year, we have documented a troubling rise in online dehumanization and incitement targeting Muslims across multiple reports. Social media platforms have repeatedly failed to curb the spread and amplification of violent extremist rhetoric targeting Muslims online. Last month, we published a report documenting a coordinated 13-month campaign of anti-Muslim bigotry by more than 85 Republican elected officials. Using the Dangerous Speech framework, we concluded that this rhetoric carried a serious risk of inspiring violence. Today, two shooters attacked the campus of the Islamic Center of San Diego, which also houses a school. A total of five people, including the two suspects, are reportedly dead. According to CNN, initial reports indicate that hate speech was scrawled on one of the weapons used in the attack, and that one of the suspects left behind a suicide note containing writings about racial pride. We have seen this pattern repeatedly. Elected officials dehumanize an entire community, those dehumanizing narratives spread and radicalize others, and eventually some people act on them. This must end. No community should have to live under the constant threat of violence because politicians choose to spread hatred, fear, and bigotry for political gain. #sandeigo #muslim #islam

Viktor Orbán's electoral defeat doesn't mean Europe can return to some imagined less-racist past. The problem is systemic, institutionalized, and rooted in unresolved colonial hierarchies and it spans the entire European Union: @shada_islam More: youtu.be/DyUsoCSNFZU

Tommy Robinson's “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London on May 16 isn't a one-off protest. It's the product of a coordinated transatlantic far-right network, backed by foreign funders, fueled by disinformation, and amplified by elected officials on both sides of the Atlantic. This transatlantic resonance can partly be explained by the significance that the city of London has long occupied in the far-right imaginary. Narratives of “London has fallen”, of becoming a “no-go zone”, or suffering under a “Sharia takeover” frame multiculturalism as an existential threat to white British identity with Muslim communities cast as the primary source of that threat. London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, is routinely targeted as a symbol of this imagined civilizational decline. These narratives draw heavily from Great Replacement theory, and they travel. Republican elected officials in the US regularly invoke London as a city “destroyed” or “conquered” by Islam through mass immigration and wielding it as a cautionary tale to justify drastic domestic measures and stoke fears of civilizational collapse at home. The rally on May 16 is where that transatlantic current of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry comes into view. More: csohate.org/2026/05/12/uni… #london #unitethekingdom #britain #uk

Watch: How Republican elected officials manufactured a campaign of anti-Muslim hatred and hysteria over the past 13 months. Our new report traces how it began with a single viral X post, how it spread, and why the rhetoric now meets every criterion historically associated with speech that precedes violence against targeted communities. Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government convenes Part II of its "Sharia-Free America" hearing, which is the latest chapter in this coordinated campaign of anti-Muslim bigotry by GOP Members of Congress. More: csohate.org/2026/04/21/man…

🔴GNI joins a chorus of individuals and organizations expressing shock and deep disappointment at the Government of Zambia’s unilateral decision to “postpone” #RightsCon2026. We are appalled by the timing of this decision & the manner in which it was made: globalnetworkinitiative.org/gni-condemns-t…

How did 'remigration' go from social media fringe to UK mainstream politics and how moments of tragedy are weaponised to manufacture crisis? ? Dr Shabna Begum, CEO of @RunnymedeTrust explains. More: youtu.be/DyUsoCSNFZU #uk #remigration

Our Executive Director Raqib Naik will be testifying at the @USCIRF hearing on deteriorating religious freedom conditions in India thisThursday at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Register: uscirf.gov/events/deterio…

“Remigration” sounds like a normal term, but it’s a cover for something far more sinister. CSOH Director of Research Eviane Leidig explains how far-right movements are using it to push for the mass deportation of non-white immigrants across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. More: youtu.be/DyUsoCSNFZU

Last month, an attack on a Shiite place of worship in Herat, Afghanistan killed least 11 people. While the Taliban have pledged protection, a sense of structural vulnerability is growing within the community that constitutes a minority in Afghanistan, predominantly members of the Hazara ethnic group. CSOH’s @nialakhalil spoke with @dwnews on this ongoing wave of anti-Shia violence. “The recent attack in Herat underscores the ongoing vulnerability of the Shiite community in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s ultra-conservative Sunni interpretation of Islam labels Shiite Muslims as heretics. This characterization contributes to their vulnerability and increases their exposure to sectarian violence,” @nialakhalil told @WasHasNaz More: dw.com/en/afghanistan… #shia #herat #afghanistan

More: youtu.be/DyUsoCSNFZU

Journalist @shada_islam identifies five forces behind the mainstreaming of 'remigration' in Europe: a conspiracy theory rebranded as policy, unreckoned colonial legacies, the breakdown of the firewall against the far right, technocratic euphemisms that obscure intent, and the absence of minority voices in EU institutions. #europe #remigration

Meet our 2026 summer interns selected through the Oslo Scholars Program (OSP). This summer, they join us from @TuftsUniversity, @FloridaState, and the University of Oslo, Norway, and will contribute to our research on organized hate, extremism, and online harms.