Shreshtha Das on Online Hate Against Racialized Migrant Women and 2SLGBTQI+ People in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/05/20

Photo by Mercedes Mehling on Unsplash

Shreshtha Das is a Researcher/Advisor on Gender with Amnesty International, focusing on gender, racial justice, refugees, and migrants’ rights. In this interview, they discuss Amnesty International’s research on xenophobic technology-facilitated gender-based violence against racialized migrant women and 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada. Das analyzes online hate narratives, “great replacement” conspiracies, platform dynamics, anonymity, dehumanization, self-censorship, and the links between digital abuse, public participation, and offline safety.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Shreshtha Das about Amnesty International’s briefing on online hate targeting racialized migrant women and 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada. Das explains how xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic narratives circulate through social media, often framing marginalized visibility as invasion or moral decline. The discussion covers anonymity, platform differences, “great replacement” conspiracies, organized harassment, self-censorship, professional harms, counter-speech, solidarity, and the movement from online violence to offline threats.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How would you describe the current overall state of the LGBTI+ community in Canada online, particularly in terms of the trajectory you have seen? Is it improving, remaining stable, or worsening?

Shreshtha Das: Yes, I mean, in the report, we specifically focus on racialized migrant women and 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada, including people who are perceived as migrants. But, as part of the broader research, we also looked at patterns affecting LGBTI+ people more generally. Overall, we are seeing common trajectories.

Whether it is racialized migrants, LGBTI+ people, or racialized LGBTI+ people, any kind of visibility or assertion by a marginalized group is framed as taking over public spaces, almost as an invasion that the country needs to be protected from. There are many dehumanizing stereotypes, whether directed at racialized migrants or LGBTI+ people, that paint them as dangers to what is presented as public safety and morality. Their being visible or public about who they are is framed as a threat to how national identity is construed.

Increasingly, whether in Canada or globally, we are seeing national identity being construed in very limited terms. In Canada, for example, that often means centering a white, Christian, patriarchal identity. Any visibility by queer people is seen as something that needs to be put down because it is portrayed as a sign of the country’s moral decay.

That is something we are seeing globally: dehumanizing language claiming marginalized groups are taking over public spaces, alongside an inversion-of-victimhood narrative in which every assertion of rights by queer people is framed as taking rights away from cisgender men or heterosexual people.

That is the kind of narrative we are seeing. What all of this does is justify online attacks against LGBTI+ people. If they are portrayed as grooming children, threatening women, or, for example, if trans people are framed as having unfair advantages in sports, the narrative constantly paints them as threats to the way society is organized. The implication is that they will lead to the country’s moral decay.

The response then becomes: we need to protect ourselves, and we need to protect ourselves through violence. That violent language becomes normalized in online spaces, and we then see it translated into offline spaces as well.

So, overall, I would say we are seeing globally, and also in Canada, that any assertion by marginalized groups, especially intersectionally marginalized groups, who, as we noted in this briefing, face compounded forms of hate, is treated as something that needs to be immediately suppressed because it challenges entrenched ideas of what “society,” “family,” and “tradition” are supposed to look like.

It starts with violent language online, but then proceeds to actual attacks offline. I guess the last thing I would say is that, unfortunately, we are entering an era in which social media platforms, and I am not going to name any specifically, are increasingly reducing the checks and balances that previously existed. Content moderation systems and mechanisms that people facing these attacks could once rely on to report or seek removal of harmful content are increasingly being weakened. Human rights standards, and platforms’ ability or willingness to uphold them, are declining. As a result, this kind of hateful language is becoming normalized and amplified.

Jacobsen: I know the demographics of Canada matter here. We have seen a significant decline in self-identifying Christians and in Christian religious practice since the 1970s. Looking at census data, including from 2001 and 2021, the broader trend line has been downward. Yet you are describing a contemporary period shaped by social media and the internet, including online or technology-facilitated hate and xenophobia. For people unfamiliar with those terms, we are essentially talking about broad-based hostility and discriminatory treatment amplified through digital spaces.

When it comes to white identity politics, “great replacement” theory, and similar narratives, Canadians are often more willing to discuss these issues critically in the context of the United States than in Canada itself. Yet groups such as the Proud Boys, founded by Gavin McInnes, originated in Canada before expanding into the United States. So there are homegrown dimensions to this within the Canadian context as well.

Do demographic trends in the country influence this dynamic? Do the characteristics of online spaces, such as anonymity and the ease with which hateful rhetoric can spread, also intensify these trends?

Das: Yeah, on the demographic question, I would say that what online spaces are doing is allowing the circulation of very reductive narratives. There can be many reasons why people may or may not identify with a particular religion, and that does not mean another religion is coming in and “taking over.”

This idea of “great replacement” theory has been heavily challenged and exposed for what it is: a conspiracy theory. There is no factual basis to it. But understanding broader demographic or social changes requires much more effort than accepting a simple scapegoating narrative.

What people often see visibly is what politicians or public narratives encourage them to see. Simplified scapegoating narratives become easier to circulate and easier to believe.

Even in terms of demographics, for example, many of the people we interviewed noted that frontline-facing jobs are often disproportionately occupied by South Asians, particularly Indians. That developed during a period of labour shortages when the Canadian government actively sought migrant labour to fill essential positions that were not necessarily being filled otherwise.

As a result, the visibility of racialized people in frontline jobs can become interpreted as evidence of a dramatic demographic transformation, whether or not the statistics actually support that perception. To my knowledge, demographic data does not support the idea that white Christians have become a minority in Canada. It is simply a much easier and more emotionally charged narrative to sell politically.

Again, because people encounter more racialized individuals in visible public-facing roles, some interpret that as evidence of a sweeping demographic replacement, even when that is not reflected in the broader population data.

I think anonymity contributes to that because people are able to say hateful things without being held to account. One of the key things we are seeing is that anonymity allows people to make certain comments more freely.

But where this language is circulating strongly is not only in anonymous spaces. It also comes from politicians and media outlets. That is not hidden behind the veneer of anonymity. They are, in fact, pushing certain narratives about racialized migrant women, and also about LGBTI+ people.

What anonymity does is take those narratives to a particular extreme. The hate then becomes very violent. Honestly, this was difficult research to conduct because some of the messages people received were extremely violent. They were told how they would be beaten to the verge of death, but not actually killed.

These are things people are able to say because they are anonymous: explicitly racist language, including the N-word, and horrible racist stereotypes and tropes. This is not something they would necessarily say openly because it could invite criminal penalties. But because they are hiding behind a screen, they are able to do much more of that.

So, yes, anonymity comes in to capitalize on a narrative that is already being peddled by politicians and media outlets. That is why we need to look beyond anonymity alone.

Jacobsen: How far do we go in differentiating online spaces? For example, what about broader internet domains and social media platforms compared with more video-centered spaces such as YouTube? How are these differentiated in terms of the predominance or form of the hate being expressed?

Das: One of the things we did look at, and again, I do not want to name specific platforms, is cross-platform patterns. When you write this up as well, we want to be careful about the role we ascribe to social media platforms because that was outside the scope of this research. We have not done an in-depth analysis of where specific platforms may be falling short of their responsibilities. So, in this briefing, we are not assigning legal or institutional responsibility to particular companies.

We may do that in future work. But I just want to begin with that clarification because I want to be careful about what I ascribe to specific platforms, especially since we have not conducted the kind of platform-focused investigation necessary to support those conclusions.

That said, in terms of methodology, we did look at cross-platform trends in how hate is amplified, and also at the specific features of digital platforms that shape how hateful narratives spread.

For example, on X, where there are character limits, people become very strategic about framing their language. We saw extensive use of hashtags and coded messaging in the spread of hateful narratives.

On Facebook, users can write much longer posts. There, we saw people fleshing out racist narratives in much greater detail, including extended conspiracy theories and broader ideological framing.

With YouTube, we only analyzed one video and its comment section, so I do not want to generalize too broadly. But, as we note in the briefing, the comments we reviewed included significant transphobic content. Once concerns were raised with YouTube, those comments were removed. So different platforms appear to respond differently in terms of moderation and enforcement.

YouTube is also structured differently because people post videos that can then attract highly reactive comment sections. Sometimes the comments become even more racist or transphobic than the original content itself.

We also looked at Telegram. Similar to Facebook in some ways, Telegram allows closed groups and channels. In many cases, those spaces became echo chambers in which highly violent narratives circulated. Some channels would be removed after being flagged, but then new ones would quickly appear.

So I would say that platforms differ according to factors such as text length, whether they allow closed or semi-private groups, the scale and nature of follower networks, and their content moderation policies. As I mentioned, YouTube responded relatively quickly in the example we examined, whereas on some other platforms, moderation appeared much weaker.

The kind of content that circulates on a platform is shaped by all of those structural features: how communication works technically, whether closed communities can form easily, and how moderation policies are enforced.

Because we have not conducted a platform accountability investigation, we have been very careful when engaging with social media companies and sharing our findings. At this stage, we are not assigning responsibility to specific companies in this briefing. In other Amnesty reports, we have examined platform responsibilities more directly, but not in this one.

Jacobsen: Then my last question for this session concerns online and social media responses more broadly. Were there visible counter-responses, either from public figures or anonymous users? Did you observe meaningful levels of healthy or respectful pushback against hateful or stereotypical language?

Das: That is a very interesting question. I would not say that was something we mapped extensively because we conducted a computational text analysis, and the purpose was more to assess negativity and map hateful narratives through that kind of data processing. We were looking primarily at the hateful narratives themselves. We did not map the pushback to the same extent.

But part of the research also involved looking closely at some of the hashtags and Twitter posts, which I did directly as well. I would say there was pushback. “A lot” is relative, but there was pushback, including from known people. Much of it came from people saying things like, “Please look after yourself,” when someone was being subjected to significant hate.

One of the people we looked at in depth was Erica Ifill, who is a Black Caribbean journalist and was at the centre of a lot of organized hate. We included screenshots of some of the messages she received, which were really racist and also extremely violent.

There were many comments asking her to look after herself, to centre herself and her mental health, and saying that this was racist language. People were also asking, “How can we show up?” So we did see quite a bit of that.

I remember one instance Erica described to us. She said that when she was being subjected to this level of online hate, an online community actually came together. Because I think her location was doxed, and someone who had emailed her said they knew where she lived, she was very scared for her personal safety. The online community managed to arrange an Uber for her to ensure that she could move safely.

So, while there have been these horrible instances of people flooding posts with really hateful comments, there have also been spaces where organic solidarity, and meaningful organic solidarity, has emerged to support people.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Shreshtha.

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