Politicizing religion as a weapon of attack hurts people of all faiths. Butler's manufactured "Hinduphobia" attacks undermine legitimate concerns for the safety, respect, and civil rights of Hindu Americans. Co-opting a real religion for a political smear campaign is the exact opposite of authentic Hinduism.

Hinduism is one of the world's oldest living traditions. The principle of ahimsa, non-violence toward all living beings, inspired Martin Luther King Jr. ¹⁵ Henry David Thoreau wrote of the Bhagavad Gita: "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial." ¹⁶ The Sanskrit concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam teaches that the world is one family.

The Vedic literature gave the world the concept of zero, the decimal system, and some of the earliest advances in astronomy, medicine, and linguistics. ¹⁷ Bhaktivinoda Thakur (1838–1914), a philosopher, reformer, and Deputy Magistrate in Bengal, wrote that all beneficence to others, including kindness, friendliness, forgiveness, charity, and respect, is included in devotion. ¹⁸ His son Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur taught that "the character of one culturing spiritual love is never devoid of morality" and that "one hostile to morality or fallen from it can never be a spiritual man." ¹⁹

When people like Butler and leaders of the Hindu American Foundation weaponize Hinduism to attack anyone who disagrees with them, they dishonor the very tradition they claim to defend and silence people raising legitimate concerns.

The strategy, in Butler's own words

In March 2015, Chris Butler told his team exactly what the plan was:

For the next two years, Butler deployed it against anyone who questioned Tulsi Gabbard: professors, journalists, newspapers, random internet commenters, and eventually Hillary Clinton. The transcripts show him personally ordering the attacks, writing the templates, reviewing his team's execution, and berating them when they were too "defensive" instead of attacking.

The operational system Butler built

Butler didn't just order the attacks. He built an infrastructure to execute them:

• Recruited Hindu Americans to run social media defense teams.
• Set up three-times-daily monitoring of forums, Reddit, Facebook, and Democratic Underground.
• Assigned Carol Gabbard, Tulsi's mother, to coordinate the searches.
• Distributed pre-written response templates to the team.
• Personally reviewed and critiqued individual responses.

Butler's response: assign someone whose only job was searching forums three times a day.

Deployed against everyone who questioned Tulsi

The transcripts document Butler ordering the "Hinduphobia" label against at least eight separate targets over two years.

1. A University of Hawaii professor (May 2014)

2. An AlterNet journalist (February 2015)

Butler ordered his team to dig up personal dirt on the author:

3. Huffington Post (March 2015)

4. Civil Beat and Star Advertiser reporters (March 2015)

Butler drafted an open letter calling Hawaii's media "blatantly Hinduphobic":

5. Reddit commenters (May 2016)

6. The "Friendly Atheist" website (May 2016)

7. Anyone who mentioned "cult" (March 2016)

Butler wrote templates for answering cult accusations with accusations of Hinduphobia:

8. Hillary Clinton (April 2016)

The escalation. Butler ordered his team to make Clinton personally pay every time anyone criticized Tulsi:

All criticism painted as a Clinton-funded conspiracy

It wasn't enough to label individuals. Butler ordered his team to frame all criticism of Tulsi as a coordinated, paid operation run by Clinton's campaign:

"Cult" questions were all painted as Hinduphobia

When people raised legitimate questions about Butler's control over Tulsi, he had a ready-made deflection. In the "Hindu American Slacktivists" transcript, Butler asks about potential recruits for his social media team:

He was fully aware of how his organization was perceived. His response wasn't to address the concerns. It was to manage them by labeling anyone who raised them as Hinduphobic.

The Hindu American Foundation runs the same playbook

The Hindu American Foundation receives funding from the Wai Lana Yoga Trust, which is controlled by Tulsi's money guy, Sunil Khemaney. HAF operates in the political sphere, not the religious one, and has made weaponizing religion a foundational strategy.

When academics at multiple U.S. universities organized a 2021 conference examining Hindu nationalism, HAF deployed the same "Hinduphobia" playbook against the participants. When activists pushed to ban caste-based discrimination, HAF labeled them Hinduphobic too. In 2025, an investigation by Jewish Currents found that 75 percent of the 161 incidents HAF condemned as "Hinduphobia" did not meet HAF's own definition of the term. More than a dozen scholars told Jewish Currents that HAF has "political incentives to describe as many incidents as anti-Hindu as possible." ^{13 14}

The irony: Butler himself attacks Hindu traditions

The man who ordered the "Hinduphobia" defense has called mainstream Hindu organizations "demons" and attacked traditional Hindu teachings. Other posts on this site document Butler's hostility toward ISKCON and other Hindu traditions in his own words. Butler didn't weaponize "Hinduphobia" to protect Hindus. He weaponized it to protect himself.

The same playbook is still running

Butler invented the "Hinduphobia" defense as a deliberate political weapon, not to protect Hindus but to protect Tulsi from legitimate criticism. He ordered it. He wrote the templates. He monitored the execution. He berated his team when they were too "defensive" instead of attacking.

Anyone who questions Tulsi's guru connection today gets the same label. The transcripts prove it was manufactured from the start.