Western rightwing’s George Floyd?
In the days after the 9/11 attacks, a T-shirt with a reassuring message became increasingly visible on the London Underground. “Don’t freak, I’m a Sikh.” It was a reference to the hostility directed at turban-wearing men in US, because some Americans mistakenly believed their facial hair and headgear revealed them as members of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida and Taliban.
The T-shirt with its jaunty slogan seemed a fitting riposte by Sikhs. Scattered around the West and elsewhere, the roughly 1.5-million-strong diasporic group felt themselves to be well-regarded. They were seen as an exuberant, self-confident and well-integrated community, often throwing up frontline politicians in their adopted home countries, such as a Canadian opposition leader and the premier of British Columbia. Add to that the conspicuous hosting of langars and ceaseless habit of sewa, and Sikhs were bathed in the glow of being a model minority.
That was then.
In 2026, the community is in the crosshairs of an international far right movement led by the Trump administration and Elon Musk to bend public policy towards an iniquitous new standard, “white lives matter”.
…https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/western-rightwings-george-floyd/
