There’s no doubt various dynamics in play, and the ethnic sub-populations vary a lot between cities. Leb gangs are very active in Sydney, but not at all in Perth, that I know of.

It just never occurred to me before that specifically anti-Hinduism might be one of the elements.

The attacker in Perth was a white guy, and they haven’t caught him. In a lot of the attacks in Melbourne, they were white.

i think vermin is too strong of a word. the major issue is that it is not uncommon for evangelical protestants to believe that hinduism is a malevolent cult. naturally hindus do not react positively to this.

As for all other religions being inspired by demons, well, yes, Christians do believe that.

only a minority of american christians believe that.

dude, why do you always overplay your hand with misleading crap??? there are a small minority of evangelicals (e.g., those at bob jones) who are anti-catholic, but those are exactly the type who would reject any affinity with catholics. rather, catholicism is the ‘whore of babylon’ to them. the vast majority of evangelicals are much more comfortable with catholicism than they used to be. the issue with muslims is totally different. though a moderate group of evangelicals would agree with you, and mainline protestants do, a large number now assert that the muslim god is NOT the christian god. rather, they now argue that islam is also a demonic religion. now, you do have an issue where moderate evangelicals will make a distinction between islam, abrahamic, and hinduism, pagan. but these moderates are not the ones who are vitriolic against hindus.

The official line is not credible. Two Indian students were attacked close to my daughter’s university last year: one girl was stabbed in the back while walking home, and a young male was beaten unconscious and dumped in the river. Fortunately both survived. In both cases there was no theft, and no apparent motive. At least in the case of the girl, I know she was not visibly affluent – she was working part time as a supermarket check-out girl to support herself during her studies. In both cases the attacker was ‘a blonde Caucasian male’.

I had been thinking racist attacks (I also wondered if they had been mistaken for Muslims), but I am now wondering if the targeting is at least partly religiously motivated. I had not realised the strength of the anti-Hindu thing among evangelical Christians.

Taking rather a long time to get to the point – do you have insight into these occurrences in Australia, and do you think they are/could be religion-inspired? It is something that has not occurred to me before, and no mention of it has been made in the media, but that does not necessarily mean anything.

And Indians do get victimised by NAM criminals , when they run 7-11 or drive a taxi and in daily life, this is much more than fringe white groups like KKK

Evangelicals dislike Catholics, and Muslims too, but that is as fellow abrahamics with a heretical interpretation of Abrahmism

For Evangelicals, Hindus are anti-Abrahamists, and unlike Europe, where the pagans were exterminated, and belong to history, Hindus are alive and thriving in the USA, in fact as successful as the Jews. This causes a lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort to the Evangelicals. Most democrats on the other hand are nominal christians, and ignore a lot of this stuff

A literal reading of the bible will show huge similarities between Hinduism and the religion of Philistines, Canaanites, Greeks, Romans , Celts , and other pre-christian religions that have been the adversary of the Christian Church

But they need to leave religion out of it and not demand that we convert

The Conservatives in Canada, dont have 50% of their members who demand that Hindus be converted to Christianity, and thats the big difference with the Republicans. Conservatives in Canada will canvass for Sikh votes and attend Sikh functions for fund raising and no Conservative in Canada will make an issue of the Sikh religion as Nikki Haley was attacked for her Sikh origin

In the USA, no republican will attend a Hindu function for fund raising, or canvassing, whereas most Democratic politicians will happily attend Hindu functions and canvass Hindus

The Republicans dont even want Hindu votes or Hindu $
Republicans do want Indian votes and Indian $, only as long as any reference to any non-Christian religion is carefully hidden away

The Hindu vote for Republicans is like the Indian muslim vote for BJP. There are certain niche segments that might vote that way, but the majority will solidly vote against

The HBD people think that Hindu Americans ought to vote Republican, based on education and wealth, and perhaps the Republicans need to tweak their message to Hindu Americans. They dont consider the much bigger hostile element of Evangelicals.

i think it’s closer to 50% now. facts are your friends. work on that.

Hindus can vote for white Nationalists, but not for evangelicals. Nick Griffin of UK-BNP, gets a fair number of Hindu , Sikh supporters. In daily life, Hindu 7-11 owners get robbed by blacks. Hindu families have a very negative view of blacks

Regarding conservative or liberal labels
Compared to whites, Hindus do not tolerate in their kids, pre-marital sex, gay, drugs, drinking, poor academic performance in school. On the other hand, they dont care if their white neighbor is gay or has unwed babies

the pew survey has data. 34 percent of hindus identify as liberal, 14 percent as conservative. additionally, hindus are about as tolerant of homosexuals as the general public (so they are more conservative than you might expect on this issue based on their voting), and more pro-choice. so the idea that hindus are conservatives who are repelled by identity politics may not be right, but it may not be easy to disentangle the causality (there is social science that particular views emerge AFTER identification with a political bloc).

though i think your general model here is probably true. hindus feel existential threat from republicans because of the evangelical drive to convert them.

Where there is doubt as to the genuineness of the conversion, as in the case of Nikki Haley, a very sizeable minority of Republicans is hostile

In terms of unwed pregnancies, welfare, crime, affirmative action quotas, NAMs, Terrorism, Hindu Americans are more conservative than most Republicans, but we can live with the Democrats, since the Democrats dont want us converted

Republicans will never attend a Hindu temple or Hindu function to canvass for donations or votes, whereas nominally christian Democrats often show up at Hindu temples or Hindu functions to canvass for donations and votes

The Democratic Party today is that it is a political chimera of wildly variant interests groups both social, cultural, and racial that mirrors the social and demographic disintegration of America itself.

‘Beshear, who is heavily favored to win re-election this November, is taking heat from his Republican opponent for participating in a Hindu “ground blessing” ceremony last weekend at a groundbreaking for a new Indian-owned Elizabethtown factory. Here’s how Republican Senate president and gubernatorial nominee David Williams put it:

He’s there participating with Hindu priests, participating in a religious ceremony. They can say what they want to. He’s sitting down there with his legs crossed, participating in Hindu prayers with a dot on his forehead with incense burning around him. I don’t know what the man was thinking…’

–
Sen. Satveer Chaudhary, a practicing Hindu, was re-elected in District 50 last week. Rather than call, his Christian opponent, Republican Rae Hart Anderson offered him an e-mail concession that he said read more like a sermon. The following is the text of that e-mail message. – The race of your life is more important than this one–and it is my sincere wish that you’ll get to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior
–

Derogatory comments made by a Republican state Assembly candidate in Iowa about her opponent’s Indian heritage may have backfired on election day, as Indian American Swati Dandekar swept to an easier victory than expected Nov. 5 for the 36th district seat in the Iowa state legislature.

The comfort level is fading.

My Korean born, suburban, fervantly anti-communist, affluent M.D., life long country club member inlaws, who are currently members of congregation of the predominantly white Pentecostal Assemblies of God religious denomination (who have long been naturalized citizens), spent all of the adult lives as naturalized citizens as yellow dog Republicans in New York State. But, they waivered right down to the line in 2008, and they are leaning Democratic in 2012 (notwithstanding the fact that both McCain and Romney are moderates within the GOP).

The GOP has become an uncomfortable place for non-white people with an accent, even for conservative evangelical Christians. Religious and anticommunist commitments are increasingly failing to bridge the race and xenophobia gap. Also, the cultural gap between country club Republicans with Yankee leanings and blue collar Tea Party Republicans with Dixie leanings has never been wider.