By ‘Eklavya’
The Case of a Failed Comedian
The United States is quickly becoming the focal point of hatred for the world’s only surviving polytheistic religion, Hinduism, and America’s alt-Left have unwittingly joined hands with Islamofascists in a vitriolic campaign of racist hate — one that most Hindus have no idea even exists.
Many Hindus outside of the West know little about the social dynamics and the domestic politics of the Western world. In a globalised world, however, and with the advent of the Internet, one cannot help but be sufficiently informed about the happenings of the more prominent countries in the West. This was particularly demonstrated during the recent U.S. election in the States — an event that was covered globally.
The exposure to America’s domestic politics challenged some beliefs many Hindus might have held. Some of us might have been under the assumption that there was a clear binary, an even cleave, in the socio-political fabric of the United States. The “good” — being the Democratic Party and its followers, often called the “Left” on the Western political spectrum — and the “bad”, being the Republican Party and its followers, often called the “Right”. That is obviously a rather simplistic view of politics, which is, more often than not, far too complex to neatly box into a binary.
Our view of the political parties and movements in the United States, or really any foreign country and society, is therefore defined by the affinity — or lack of — that they have for our people, their cultural proximity to us, and their position in geopolitical matters that concern us. We generally believe that the Americans most likely to fulfil all three prerequisites are the liberal Left. After all, they are the ones who — from our perspective — seem to be infatuated with Indic religions, and with their associated practices, like Yoga, Ayurveda, and Dhyana. They, by virtue of rejecting the religion they were born into, are the ones likely to oppose the neo-colonial American elements that seem bent upon destroying Hinduism, like the missionary Evangelist networks that have aided and abetted secessionism and terrorism in India. They are the ones likely to ally with Hindus and Buddhists in the global arena, given that they come to our countries in a quest for solace, a la ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.
Unfortunately, that could not be further from the truth.
A foray into their online spaces reveals an odious amount of racist Hinduphobia that can leave one reeling. This can often leave Hindus in a state of severe cognitive dissonance and confusion. If, for example, a Hinduphobic movement were to mobilise in certain left-wing circles in the West, perhaps in response to an Indian state act perceived to be hostile to a demographic classified as a ‘victim group’ in the West, it would be jarring for Hindus, who would then be open targets, in spite of the fact that they do not practice a religion that has inflicted hostilities on a global scale.
Casual Hinduphobia has a wide range of motivations, and is distinct from academic Hinduphobia — a term coined by the author, Rajiv Malhotra, to describe the prevalent anti-Hindu bias in Western schools of Indology. This Hinduphobia does not inhabit the academic sphere, but rather exists in the social sphere. It is perpetuated not by the academic and political elite, but by everyday people — appropriative Western Yoga ‘gurus’, social media stars, independent reporters with a largely online presence, and now, stand-up comedians.
Casual Western Liberal Hinduphobia as something that is irrational and wholly unwarranted simply because the Indian state, as the sole representative of Hinduism, has not done anything that could be interpreted as inimical to the continued existence of the Western world. The Indian state has not attempted to sabotage, subvert, imperil, or invade any Western polity. India, through its historical apparatus of soft power, has contributed intangibly to the well-being of the average Western citizen — even in spite of the colonial injustice meted out to India’s own people by the Western world.
Conversely, the West has a long history of settler-colonialism, invasion, genocide, and all manner of ills that have destroyed a great many peoples. India, a victim of British imperialism, is only just beginning to recover — 70 long years after breaking free. India, unlike the West, has had every reason to become a hostile, anti-Western state, but it has always toed the moderate line in the international arena.
The vast majority of Western Hinduphobes do not hate Hindus, in the strictest sense of the word — it is indeed true that some are driven by the Judeo-Christian or Islamic hatred of non-Abrahamic peoples — but financial incentives and personal agendas also come into play. For these people, the accruement of wealth, and a play for power, has made billions of innocent Hindus a convenient scapegoat. More often than not, these motivations intersect — to varying degrees.
One ‘liberal’ Hinduphobe, driven strictly by financial interest, is the Australian C J Werleman. It would be a waste of time to go into the ins and outs of this despicable attention seeker who is, by the way, the very kind of Islamophobic bigot he claims to hate. A summary is however in order: Werleman is an independent Twitter ‘journalist’ with a long history of duplicity — a simple Google search will reveal the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim stance he used to take before magically turning over a new leaf.
Werleman has crudely and racistly targeted reformist Muslims, like Maajid Nawaz and Tarek Fatah, has used his status as a privileged white male to talk over actual brown Muslims who seek the reformation of Islam, and has railed against just about every single state for their perceived ‘Islamophobia’ — India, China, Myanmar, Russia, Israel — the list goes on. Werleman has excused highly incendiary and even murderous incidences of kafir hatred from his Islamofascist supporters who congregate around his online persona (and who number in the tens of thousands) — mostly targeted at Hindus and Buddhists. He also supports the secession of Kashmir from the Indian state, which frankly, is absolutely none of his business. (As an Australian, he himself is complicit in one of the largest acts of genocide in human history, and continues to benefit from it by squatting on Aboriginal land).
It is not our concern here to dedicate this entire article to covering an odious, intellectually dishonest white male racist that has already been exposed for having ties to Salafist media organisations. Follow the money, Werleman. Revel in your ill-gotten gains. When your conscience finally nibbles at you — which will perhaps happen when your own loved ones get targeted by the very elements that control your puppet strings — it might just be too late for you to repent.
The aim of this article is to instead focus on a lesser-known liberal Hinduphobe. This person, driven by a combination of financial incentives and Abrahamic bigotry — a part of a growing axis of capitalist Abrahamism — is Jeremy McLellan. McLellan appears to be an obscure and (presumably) struggling self-identified ‘comedian’ from the United States, who has sought the revitalisation of his comedic ‘career’ by positioning himself as an ally of America’s Muslim diaspora. Whether his allyship is real is something only he knows, but his blatantly Orientalist overtures and his virtue-signalling make him come off as phony and somewhat performative.
McLellan, a Catholic, appears to have tapped into the American Muslim diaspora’s biases in order to carve a niche for himself, in order to market himself as the sole white male ‘comedian’ who just ‘gets it’. It would appear that his initial shtick involved a criticism of Israel in order to gain brownie points from the wider Muslim community, but that was apparently not sufficient enough for him — given that Israel-bashing is no longer a niche activity. McLellan then apparently decided to piggyback on the biases of the subcontinental (i.e. Pakistani) Muslim diaspora in order to cast his net as wide as possible, which makes perfect sense: given that these people have a bone to pick with both Israel and India.
The financial incentives that awaited McLellan lead to him zeroing on Hindus as the perfect demographic to be made the butt of his ‘jokes’. When McLellan criticises Israel, he is careful to refrain from criticising Jews and/or Judaism so as to avoid accusations of him being an anti-Semite — a highly taboo prejudice in the West. Hindus, however, lack a sympathetic position in the Western psyche, which has given him an avenue to not only ridicule the Indian state, but to specifically target Hinduism and its adherents — all in the name of comedic relief and attacking ‘fascism’.
In 2017, a Twitter user called McLellan out for his mischaracterisation of Hindus. McLellan then responded by claiming that it was a bread-and-butter issue that motivated him to crucify Hindus in front of predominantly Muslim audiences.
At one point, McLellan’s Hinduphobia crossed the line — to the point where it even became too much for some of his otherwise supportive Pakistani Muslim fans. On February 2018, McLellan posted an extremely incendiary and racist statement about Hinduism’s Deities, which is ostensibly something he would never say about Allah, Jesus, or any other monotheistic Abrahamic deity.
The backlash from Hindus on the Internet was swift, and when some Hindus understandably called him out on it, he resorted to the tried-and-tested method of gaslighting that white men have managed to perfect to a fault: Just call them liars/over-reactive/mad/fascists.
For the first time though — and this was unexpected — some of his Pakistani Muslim followers turned against him for disrespecting Hindu people, even though the vast majority of them joined in the chorus of Hinduphobia.
As expected, McLellan — in his cowardly fashion — did not address them. White men, naturally, do not actually care if an entire demographic becomes collateral damage in their quest for money and attention.
In the same month, McLellan decided to engage in a further spot of gaslighting. The detractor, shahtash, was clearly irked by his eagerness to court Islamofascists in his quest for relevance.
In what is perhaps the most ironic, boomerang-like display of anti-brown racism ever, a liberal white woman then responded with xenophobic rhetoric. Ever been so against racism — to the point where you became a racist yourself?
Unfortunately, this is not the only example of brazen white liberal racism. In the next section of this article we look at some of the countless examples that McLellan’s social media pages are littered with, of white, Western liberals tag-teaming with Islamists and engaging in mob-like Hinduphobic racism in response to specific acts of the Indian state or Indian people.
Read the next section of this post here.