H-1B, rape gangs and fact checks: When narratives boomerang

To students of media, the last week of December and the first week of January have been a treat: a rare occasion to watch narrative wars in real time. The first manufactured narrative was the all-out attack on H-1B Indians. An impartial Martian, on observing this, would have concluded that if only the million Indians (mostly engineers) were sent back pronto to India, all of a sudden world peace would break out, or whatever heralds the Millennium for those who believe in all that.

Au contraire, it was a mountain being made out of a molehill, an astroturfed story that didn’t have legs. It is true that there is resentment in the US about illegal aliens, as the 10 million or so that Biden allowed in are going to be a burden on the country both socially and economically, and are committing horrific crimes such as setting a woman on fire in the New York subway. The subway story got visibility for a day or two (according to Google Trends), but then, all of a sudden, the narrative switched to H-1B Indians taking jobs away from natives. With a heady cocktail of xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry, the story turned into a tirade against Hindus in particular, and how primitive India is, according to extreme right-wing MAGA Trumpies.

‘Manufacturing consent’ usually has somebody instigating it, and normally it is the US left wing: remember the ‘critical caste theory’ circus and accusations of casteism against two engineering managers at Cisco in California, that fell apart in court? Tablet magazine had a long read titled Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment on the ‘permission structure’ created by Democrats like Obama to manipulate public opinion: a proverbial Deep State operation.

But this time, the US right wing was also in the fray. So you have to look further for possible puppeteers. The usual suspects would be China and Pakistan, as those most keen to put India down. But it may be Britain, based on anecdotal evidence: the Economist magazine’s choice of Bangladesh as the “country of the year” while Hindus are being killed and attacked there; and the Financial Times’ decidedly sour take on D Gukesh’s staggering chess world championship win.

Brits continue to be severely prejudiced against India; they left a divided subcontinent with lots of fault lines; and they cannot come to terms with their fall and India’s simultaneous rise. Whitehall also has disproportionate influence on the Anglosphere. But the H-1B controversy boomeranged on them, as it embroiled Elon Musk, who had been on such a visa, as he stoutly defended the idea that the US needed to attract talented immigrants.

It is a bad idea to fight Elon Musk, because he has Trump’s ear, and more importantly, he has the megaphone of X (earlier Twitter). He demonstrated that by bringing up what the entire British establishment had swept under the carpet: the long-running industrial-scale ‘grooming’ and rape of young white girls by Pakistani gangs. The cases in the town of Rotherham received some publicity earlier, but that has long receded in the public memory.

But Musk turned the tables by highlighting the appalling allegation that as many as 250,000 underage, mostly working-class white girls, often residents of foster homes (where they were because of problems with their families), were systematically targeted mostly by Pakistani-origin Britons. Even more appallingly, it appears that UK authorities (including police and politicians) and the media deliberately suppressed all this in the interests of “preserving communal harmony”, a euphemism for political correctness and fear of violence. And instead of calling the perpetrators “Pakistani Muslims”, the term used was “Asian”, which is misleading.

It is even alleged that Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, the UK Prime Minister, may be implicated because he was Director of Public Prosecution (2008-2013). This is a major crisis. The Anglosphere was falling apart already with Trump’s obvious contempt for Trudeau, which may have partly contributed to his resignation. On top of this, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was dispensing with ‘fact-checkers’ and going with community notes, a la X. This is an implicit admission that much of the narrative on Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. has been fake. 2025 is off to a good start. Manufactured narratives are in headlong retreat.