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    Will Asian American Voters Continue to Rally Behind Democrats?

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    The party confronts a mood of frustration among the rising electoral force that helped vault it to power. The campaign in Georgia will test that bond.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At a brightly lit restaurant in suburban Atlanta, nestled in a tidy neighborhood of office buildings and private drives, State Senator Michelle Au brought up the mass shooting that lingers as a singular trauma in the local Asian American community.Addressing a predominantly Chinese American group of about 40 people, Dr. Au, a practicing anesthesiologist, delicately alluded to “the shootings that took place in metro Atlanta on March 16 of 2021” as she launched into a plea for new gun-control laws that Georgia Republicans oppose. She did not need to remind her audience of the details of the deadly attack carried out last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people including six women of Asian descent.“Republicans, while they talk a big game about public safety, they don’t seem to be as interested in actually proposing concrete solutions to deal with it,” Dr. Au told the crowd.The issue of gun safety is one of several that Democrats like Dr. Au are putting at the center of their argument to Asian American voters ahead of the November elections, as they work to win over the array of communities that make up America’s fastest-growing demographic group.Dr. Au’s district — a well-paved tangle of shopping centers and office complexes where law firms list their names in Korean and Indian grocers compete for space with bubble tea chains — is a case study in the social and political complexity of an electoral force rising in swing states: the diverse collection of communities jammed into the census label “Asian American.”The attack last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn 2020, Georgia voters turned out in force to eject Donald J. Trump from office and then elect two Democratic senators in a runoff that decided control of the Senate. It was a breakthrough in Asian American mobilization, with turnout surging nationally by about 40 percent over the 2016 election — the largest spike of any demographic group. It amounted to an emphatic repudiation of a president who trafficked in race baiting amid a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans.Yet just two years later, Democratic candidates in states like Georgia are confronting a mood of frustration and fear among Asian American voters that threatens to weaken the political coalition that turned Georgia blue for the first time this century.The anxious mood, voters and local leaders say, comes from persistent alarm about public safety and a feeling of being overlooked by national political leaders despite growing electoral clout.They warn that too many Democrats are still treating Asian Americans as a constituency of secondary importance, while Republicans continue pushing an agenda that is broadly unfriendly to Asian American communities even as the G.O.P. makes sporadic overtures on issues like education and crime.The ongoing scourge of racist harassment and violence, stirred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and stoked by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, has kept the electorate on edge and heightened concerns about lax gun laws and crime. At Dr. Au’s event in Johns Creek, one speaker brought up attacks against Asian Americans on the New York City subway as part of a national atmosphere of menace.Narender G. Reddy, Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesSeveral state elections in Georgia will represent a revealing test of Democrats’ bond with the Asian American electorate. The party has nominated a number of Asian Americans for important races, including Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese American state legislator running for secretary of state against the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi American seeking a State Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.Republicans have put forward a handful of Asian American candidates, too: Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, Narender G. Reddy, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor who has pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans to do more to woo South Asian voters. There are signs this year that Mr. Kemp is making a meaningful effort.Gun Violence and Gun Control in America2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.Ending a Stalemate: A bipartisan bill, the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in decades, was forged by an unlikely coalition of senators.California’s New Law: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that provides a minimum $10,000 award to residents who successfully sue makers of illegal guns. The measure is modeled after a Texas anti-abortion law.Armed and Ready to Teach: Lawmakers in Ohio have made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns. The move is part of a wider strategy by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be trained and armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack.Democrats are counting on voters in communities like Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, to help Stacey Abrams defeat Mr. Kemp and re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. About a quarter of residents in the area identify as Asian American.In an interview, Dr. Au, 44, said Democrats needed to connect with Asian American voters on policy issues like gun safety and abortion rights rather than assuming Asian Americans would continue to vote Democratic chiefly out of distaste for Republicans. Economic frustrations over inflation and gas prices were part of the Asian American experience, too, she said.The community, Dr. Au said, wants “to have a voice and have power and be listened to.”“It’s not a safe thing to say that all voters of color, uniformly, will vote for Democrats because they have a more inclusive platform,” she said. “And I think it’s not safe to say that all Asian voters will vote for Democrats, because of that same reason.”Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, could be a pivotal community for the Democratic Party in November. About a quarter of the residents in the area identify as ethnically Asian.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAsian American voters have steadily shifted in the direction of Democrats since the turn of the century, as a younger and more liberal generation has come of age politically, while conservative-leaning older voters have turned away from the Republican Party’s increasingly hard-line views on race and national identity.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats in November because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights. The law enacted by Georgia Republicans to ban most abortions, Ms. Xu said, reminded her of the repressive reproductive policies in China, where she lived for the first half of her life.But Ms. Xu, 51, who works in the financial industry, said she still considered herself a political independent and did not see either party as having a dominant advantage with voters like her.“Just like the country’s split, our community is very split,” Ms. Xu said.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats this year because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA Fragile AllianceThe relationship between Democrats and the Asian American community was tested almost immediately after the 2020 election, in tense exchanges between Mr. Biden and Asian American lawmakers who questioned whether the incoming president understood the role their community had played in his victory.Asian American voters made up about 4 percent of the national electorate in 2020, with studies showing they voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a margin of roughly two to one. That was enough to secure victory for Democrats in a narrowly split state like Georgia.Still, Republicans maintained support in more right-leaning parts of the community, particularly among older and more religious voters; in Southern California, Vietnamese American voters helped elect to Congress two Korean American Republican women who branded the Democratic Party as a vehicle for socialism.Mr. Biden struggled at the outset to forge a tighter bond with Asian American political leaders, clashing with lawmakers over the near-absence of Asian Americans from early appointments to his administration. Private frustrations exploded into a damaging public spectacle when Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat of Thai ancestry, threatened a blockade of Mr. Biden’s nominees until the administration pledged to put more Asian Americans in important positions.Representative Judy Chu of California, the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said lawmakers had been “severely disappointed” during the transition but that the president had given convincing assurances he recognized the influence of the Asian American vote.After the spa shooting, Mr. Biden traveled to Georgia to meet with Asian American leaders. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian American immigrant. Weeks later, Mr. Biden returned for a rally marking his 100th day in office.Asian businesses along Buford Highway in Doraville, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIntroducing him on that April day was Long Tran, a cafe owner in Dunwoody who said he spoke backstage with Mr. Biden about the shooting and the impact of “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” The president, Mr. Tran said, stressed that he and Ms. Harris “haven’t forgotten that Asian hate is still rising in the country and it’s something that needs to be addressed.”Yet in the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans recovered some ground with Asian American voters in New York City and Virginia, offering a hard-edged message about crime and opposition to liberal education policies that would have reformed or abolished certain kinds of selective public-school programs that are popular with Asian families but that many Democrats regard as exclusionary of Black and Hispanic students.Asian American voters motivated by similar concerns helped upend local politics in San Francisco, ejecting members of a left-wing school board and a progressive district attorney in recall elections that showed powerful currents of discontent within the overwhelmingly Democratic city.This summer, focus groups conducted by national Democratic pollsters found Asian American voters expressing dismay that Democrats often prioritize other constituencies defined by race or sexual orientation above Asian Americans, according to two people briefed on the studies.Long Tran, a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters, said many people he met were uneasy about left-wing ideas on police reform and concerned about support on the right for lax firearm laws.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesStill, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll conducted annually, found in July that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent. Those voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on issues including guns, the environment and race — but split evenly on which party they preferred to handle the economy.Mr. Trump remained intensely unpopular with Asian American voters.EunSook Lee, the head of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a progressive nonprofit, said Democrats still had a window to solidify their political relationship with the Asian American electorate.Of Asian American voters, she said, “They care about reproductive rights. They care about gun control. And on all those issues, the Republican Party isn’t budging.”Divide and ConquerIn a real estate office in Duluth, Ga., minutes away from Johns Creek, Mr. Reddy — Dr. Au’s Republican opponent — gave a blunt assessment of his party’s efforts to court Asian Americans: “Still not there.”Mr. Reddy’s office is all but wallpapered with photos of himself with Republican politicians like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an expression of his personal devotion to the G.O.P. But Mr. Reddy, 71, said most of his Indian American friends saw the Republican Party as “all white.”“That’s the only popular perception,” he said. “And there is truth to it, actually.”The party, he said, had been harmed by episodes like a rally at the end of the Georgia Senate runoffs when Senator David Perdue, a Republican incumbent, had mocked the pronunciation of Ms. Harris’s first name. National Democratic organizations, including the advocacy group Indian American Impact, mounted a fierce campaign targeting Asian American voters with information about Mr. Perdue’s insulting conduct.The G.O.P.’s business-friendly economic agenda could resonate in the community, Mr. Reddy argued, but Republicans were still seen as “anti-immigrant” and overly tied to Mr. Trump. A supporter of Mr. Trump for years, Mr. Reddy said it had grown difficult to justify his behavior.Republicans in Georgia have taken something of a divide-and-conquer approach to the Asian American vote. The governor appointed the first Asian American justice to Georgia’s Supreme Court and Republicans have recruited a few Asian American candidates to run in state legislative seats.At the same time, the Republican-dominated legislature has used gerrymandering to break up ethnically Asian communities and mute their influence at the polls. Dr. Au became a victim of that strategy last year when Republicans demolished her State Senate district, prompting her to run for a Democratic-leaning seat in the lower chamber instead.Mr. Tran, the businessman who introduced Mr. Biden last year in Atlanta, is now a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters. Mr. Tran, 46, said he often found voters expressing unease about left-wing ideas on police reform.He said he had encountered pervasive concern about gun violence and Republican support for lax firearm laws. “Everyone is scared to death about guns,” Mr. Tran said. “I was eating dim sum and the waiters were saying, ‘We can’t stop looking at the door and wondering if the next person who comes in will have a gun.’” More

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      Anti-Asian Attacks Place Andrew Yang in the Spotlight. How Will He Use It?

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      Mr. Yang is seeking to become New York City’s first Asian-American mayor, but critics say that some of his past comments have fed racial stereotypes.During a surge in attacks on Asian-Americans last spring, Andrew Yang — then recently off the 2020 presidential campaign trail — wrote an op-ed suggesting that “we Asian-Americans need to embrace and show our Americanness in ways we never have before.”To many Asian-Americans, the message seemed to place yet another burden on victims, and it stung.One year later, as Mr. Yang hopes to make history as New York City’s first Asian-American mayor, some New Yorkers have not forgotten that op-ed, or their sense that Mr. Yang’s remarks during the presidential campaign — describing himself as “an Asian man who likes math,” for instance — could feed stereotypical tropes.But many Asian-Americans also see in his candidacy an opportunity for representation at the highest level of city government, an increasingly meaningful metric amid violent attacks on Asian-Americans in New York and across the nation, including the fatal shootings in the Atlanta area last week that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent.“I grew up Asian-American in New York, and I was always accustomed to a certain level of bullying, of racism, but it took a form of mockery, of invisibility, of disdain,” an emotional Mr. Yang said at a news conference in Times Square the next day. “That has metastasized into something far darker. You can feel it on the streets of New York.”As New York’s diverse Asian-American constituencies grapple with both overt violence — the city saw three more anti-Asian attacks on Sunday — and more subtle forms of bigotry, Mr. Yang and many of the other leading mayoral candidates are racing to show how they would lead a community in crisis. They are holding news conferences, contacting key leaders and attending rallies in solidarity with Asian-Americans who have at once demonstrated growing political power and are experiencing great pain now.But more than any other candidate, it is Mr. Yang who is in the spotlight, with the moment emerging as the most significant test yet of his ability to demonstrate leadership and empathy under pressure. He is also looking to respond in a way that will strengthen his support among Asian-Americans, a group whose backing he is counting on, while simultaneously building a broader coalition.In recent weeks, Mr. Yang has visited a branch of Xi’an Famous Foods, a popular New York restaurant chain that has been hit hard by anti-Asian harassment. Along with other contenders he joined a rally against Asian-American hate in Manhattan late last month and participated in a vigil on Friday and other outreach efforts over the weekend.“We have to start building bonds of connection with the Asian-American community to let them know that this city is theirs, this city is ours,” Mr. Yang said at a rally on Sunday. “One great way to do that is by electing the first Asian-American mayor in the history of New York City. Because you know I’ll take it seriously.”Throughout the race he has made frequent visits to heavily Asian-American neighborhoods across the city, expanding his coalition of “Yang Gang” supporters, a cohort that in his 2020 campaign included many young, white men. He has also taken multiple turns on national television to discuss attacks on Asian-Americans, including an appearance with his wife, Evelyn, on ABC’s “20/20” on Friday. Earlier this month, Mr. Yang visited Xi’an Famous Foods, a popular New York restaurant chain that has been hit by anti-Asian harassment. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesMr. Yang was not, however, the first contender to condemn the Georgia shootings, tweeting late that night instead about a St. Patrick’s Day scarf, in a move that struck some observers as tone deaf. (He later said that he had not seen the news on Tuesday. He issued a series of tweets about Atlanta on Wednesday morning, before making public remarks.)On Thursday, Mr. Yang’s voice appeared to waver with emotion as he spoke at an event convened by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader. Speaking in starkly personal terms, Mr. Yang discussed the importance of “seeing that Asian-Americans are human beings, Asian-Americans are just as American as anyone else.”“I’m glad that he’s leaning in,” said Representative Grace Meng, the only Asian-American member of New York’s congressional delegation. “I felt like he was getting a little emotional. And I think that the Asian-American community likes to see more of that.”Jo-Ann Yoo, the executive director of New York’s Asian American Federation, said there were signs that Mr. Yang was connecting in particular with younger Asian-American voters.“They’ve said, well, nobody has invited us, drawn us into politics, we don’t see ourselves reflected in any of these spaces,” she said. “If those are the reasons Asian-American young people are not engaging, I think Yang’s done a pretty good job of leading the conversations and drawing young people in.”But, she added, “Other non-Asian candidates should not assume that Asians only vote for Asians.”Interviews with around a dozen community leaders, elected officials and voters suggest that the candidates who are best-known to Asian-American New Yorkers include Mr. Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants, and two veteran city officials: Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller.“It’s really a test of whether people are going to lean into longer-term relationships with electeds like Eric and Scott, or are they going to base their decision, especially the newer voters, on more identity politics, like with Andrew Yang?” said Ms. Meng, who has not endorsed a candidate.Some also mentioned interest in candidates including Maya D. Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio; Dianne Morales, who has relationships with community leaders from her time as a nonprofit executive; and Councilman Carlos Menchaca, a low-polling contender who represents a significant Asian-American population in Brooklyn. Ms. Meng also described Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, as being especially proactive in her outreach.Like every other constituency in New York, the Asian-American slice of the electorate encompasses a diversity of views on high-priority issues including education, the economy, poverty and health care. But community leaders say that the matters of security and confronting bias have plainly become among the most urgent, though there are differences of opinion around the role policing should play in combating the uptick in attacks.“Especially during these times, it’s really important to be that candidate to show that you can empathize with the Asian-American community, that you’re reaching out actively to the community and you’re thinking of ways to bring different coalitions together,” Ms. Meng said.In Queens, the borough with the largest population of people of Asian descent, Mr. Yang’s greatest competition for those voters appears to be Mr. Adams, a former police officer who has been vocal in calling for more resources to combat anti-Asian attacks, and who is widely seen as a strong mayoral contender despite trailing Mr. Yang in the little public polling that is available.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has been vocal in requesting more resources to combat anti-Asian attacks. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Eric seems to have engaged in the broadest level of outreach in communities across the city, in particular, in Asian-American communities,” said State Senator John C. Liu of Queens, an influential voice in New York Asian-American politics.Asked about Mr. Yang’s outreach, he replied, “I’m going to limit my comments to things I will positively say about specific candidates.”“You can use that as my response to your specific question,” he added.The parents of Wenjian Liu, a police officer who was fatally shot in a patrol car in Brooklyn in 2014, endorsed Mr. Adams on Sunday.“Eric Adams was there for us when we lost our son — and he’s always been there for the Asian community, not just when he decided to run for mayor,” Wei Tang Liu and Xiu Yan Li said in a statement provided by the Adams campaign.It’s a message that some may see as a swipe at Mr. Yang, who has lived in New York City for years — building a career in the nonprofit and start-up worlds — but has not been active in local politics until now.At the rally against Asian-American hate late last month, Jessica Zhao, 36, said she felt torn about his candidacy. She approved of his outreach to Asian-American voters as a mayoral candidate, but she remained concerned by last spring’s op-ed, in which Mr. Yang offered a wide range of recommendations — including advising that Asian-Americans should wear red, white and blue.Indeed, Ms. Zhao had outfitted her husband — a Navy veteran — with masks bearing the military logo out of a “desperate” concern for his safety. But she detested the notion that proof of patriotism might ward off hate crimes, and was deeply bothered that, in her view, Mr. Yang seemed to put the onus for safety on Asian-Americans under attack.“To put even more of a burden on us — we could do even more to supposedly pacify racists enough that they won’t attack us? — really hit a nerve,” said Ms. Zhao, who is active with the Forest Hills Asian Association in Queens. “To say that he felt ashamed to be Asian, it was like the opposite of what we needed in that moment. We were so desperately hoping he could be a galvanizing voice for us.”In an interview last week, Mr. Yang declined to say whether he regretted writing the op-ed, but said repeatedly that he was “pained” by how it was perceived.“It pained me greatly that people felt I was somehow calling our Americanness into question when really my feeling was the opposite,” said Mr. Yang, who also pledged to be more active in New York’s Asian-American communities. “Which was, we are just as American as everyone else, and then, how can we help our people in this time when there is so much need and deprivation?”Asked whether he had changed how he approached matters of race and identity since running for president, he paused.“This is a very difficult time,” Mr. Yang finally said. “Our sense of who we are in this country has changed appreciably in the last number of months.”And in the last few weeks, Ms. Zhao’s sense of Mr. Yang has changed, too, she said.“Seeing his, I guess, evolution, in being able to properly address anti-Asian sentiment in this country, that has been encouraging,” she said. “I can tell that he brings a unique perspective of what Asians are suffering through. And that’s when representation really does come through. That’s when it does matter.”Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting. More

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      How Anti-Asian Activity Online Set the Stage for Real-World Violence

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      On platforms such as Telegram and 4chan, racist memes and posts about Asian-Americans have created fear and dehumanization.In January, a new group popped up on the messaging app Telegram, named after an Asian slur.Hundreds of people quickly joined. Many members soon began posting caricatures of Asians with exaggerated facial features, memes of Asian people eating dog meat and images of American soldiers inflicting violence during the Vietnam War.This week, after a gunman killed eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at massage parlors in and near Atlanta, the Telegram channel linked to a poll that asked, “Appalled by the recent attacks on Asians?” The top answer, with 84 percent of the vote, was that the violence was “justified retaliation for Covid.”The Telegram group was a sign of how anti-Asian sentiment has flared up in corners of the internet, amplifying racist and xenophobic tropes just as attacks against Asian-Americans have surged. On messaging apps like Telegram and on internet forums like 4chan, anti-Asian groups and discussion threads have been increasingly active since November, especially on far-right message boards such as The Donald, researchers said.The activity follows a rise in anti-Asian misinformation last spring after the coronavirus, which first emerged in China, began spreading around the world. On Facebook and Twitter, people blamed the pandemic on China, with users posting hashtags such as #gobacktochina and #makethecommiechinesepay. Those hashtags spiked when former President Donald J. Trump last year called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu.”While some of the online activity tailed off ahead of the November election, its re-emergence has helped lay the groundwork for real-world actions, researchers said. The fatal shootings in Atlanta this week, which have led to an outcry over treatment of Asian-Americans even as the suspect said he was trying to cure a “sexual addiction,” were preceded by a swell of racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans in places like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.“Surges in anti-Asian rhetoric online means increased risk of real-world events targeting that group of people,” said Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, which tracks misinformation and extremism online.He added that the anti-China coronavirus misinformation — including the false narrative that the Chinese government purposely created Covid-19 as a bioweapon — had created an atmosphere of fear and invective.Anti-Asian speech online has typically not been as overt as anti-Semitic or anti-Black groups, memes and posts, researchers said. On Facebook and Twitter, posts expressing anti-Asian sentiments have often been woven into conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon and in white nationalist and pro-Trump enclaves. Mr. Goldenberg said forms of hatred against Black people and Jews have deep roots in extremism in the United States and that the anti-Asian memes and tropes have been more “opportunistically weaponized.”But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious. Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation, said the misinformation and racist speech has led to a “dehumanization” of certain groups of people and to an increased risk of violence.Negative Asian-American tropes have long existed online but began increasing last March as parts of the United States went into lockdown over the coronavirus. That month, politicians including Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California, used the terms “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese coronavirus” to refer to Covid-19 in their tweets.Those terms then began trending online, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley. On the day Mr. Gosar posted his tweet, usage of the term “Chinese virus” jumped 650 percent on Twitter; a day later there was an 800 percent increase in their usage in conservative news articles, the study found.Mr. Trump also posted eight times on Twitter last March about the “Chinese virus,” causing vitriolic reactions. In the replies section of one of his posts, a Trump supporter responded, “U caused the virus,” directing the comment to an Asian Twitter user who had cited U.S. death statistics for Covid-19. The Trump fan added a slur about Asian people.In a study this week from the University of California, San Francisco, researchers who examined 700,000 tweets before and after Mr. Trump’s March 2020 posts found that people who posted the hashtag #chinesevirus were more likely to use racist hashtags, including #bateatingchinese.“There’s been a lot of discussion that ‘Chinese virus’ isn’t racist and that it can be used,” said Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, who conducted the research. But the term, she said, has turned into “a rallying cry to be able to gather and galvanize people who have these feelings, as well as normalize racist beliefs.”Representatives for Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Gosar did not respond to requests for comment.Misinformation linking the coronavirus to anti-Asian beliefs also rose last year. Since last March, there have been nearly eight million mentions of anti-Asian speech online, much of it falsehoods, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights firm..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-coqf44{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-coqf44 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-coqf44 em{font-style:italic;}.css-coqf44 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-coqf44 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#333;text-decoration-color:#333;}.css-coqf44 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In one example, a Fox News article from April that went viral baselessly said that the coronavirus was created in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan and intentionally released. The article was liked and shared more than one million times on Facebook and retweeted 78,800 times on Twitter, according to data from Zignal and CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analyzing social media.By the middle of last year, the misinformation had started subsiding as election-related commentary increased. The anti-Asian sentiment ended up migrating to platforms like 4chan and Telegram, researchers said.But it still occasionally flared up, such as when Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a researcher from Hong Kong, made unproven assertions last fall that the coronavirus was a bioweapon engineered by China. In the United States, Dr. Yan became a right-wing media sensation. Her appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in September has racked up at least 8.8 million views online.In November, anti-Asian speech surged anew. That was when conspiracies about a “new world order” related to President Biden’s election victory began circulating, said researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute. Some posts that went viral painted Mr. Biden as a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party.In December, slurs about Asians and the term “Kung Flu” rose by 65 percent on websites and apps like Telegram, 4chan and The Donald, compared with the monthly average mentions from the previous 11 months on the same platforms, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute. The activity remained high in January and last month.During this second surge, calls for violence against Asian-Americans became commonplace.“Filipinos are not Asians because Asians are smart,” read a post in a Telegram channel that depicted a dog holding a gun to its head.After the shootings in Atlanta, a doctored screenshot of what looked like a Facebook post from the suspect circulated on Facebook and Twitter this week. The post featured a miasma of conspiracies about China engaging in a Covid-19 cover-up and wild theories about how it was planning to “secure global domination for the 21st century.”Facebook and Twitter eventually ruled that the screenshot was fake and blocked it. But by then, the post had been shared and liked hundreds of times on Twitter and more than 4,000 times on Facebook.Ben Decker More

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      Searching for Motives in the Atlanta Shootings

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      Readers discuss the role that religion and sexual guilt may have played. Also: Who should be mayor of New York; the decline of air travel.More from our inbox:Elect the Best Person as Mayor of New YorkWho Needs Air Travel?Three women were killed on Tuesday at the Gold Spa in Atlanta.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Racism and Sexism Shadow Many Interactions for Asian-American Women” (news article, March 19):Two-thirds of the way into this piece, The Times finally offers the beginning of wisdom on the Atlanta shootings: “Very little is known about the motives of the Atlanta gunman.”Yet the story has already been pervasively framed primarily as a case of anti-Asian violence and of violence against women. Many observations about the disturbing rise of anti-Asian violence over the past year have been adduced, as if these findings explained the Atlanta shooter’s actions. But they cannot be so used.Anti-Asian animus and misogyny may well have played a role in the gunman’s twisted thinking. But there are good reasons to think that his reported distress about his sexual proclivities and his church’s moral teachings will prove to be an important part of the story as well.Unfortunately, the race and gender framing of the story is now so reflexive and ingrained that it may never be possible for the country to understand the tragedy in Atlanta.John TorpeyMontclair, N.J.The writer is a professor of sociology and history at the CUNY Graduate Center.To the Editor:Re “Sex and Guilt Defined Life of a Suspect” (front page, March 19):Sorting out the factors that contributed to the murders at Atlanta massage parlors, we must not ignore the role likely played by Robert Aaron Long’s religious background. By inculcating in him an extreme opinion that premarital sex is a sin, his religious upbringing made him feel that the normal sexual strivings of any young male make that person a sinner. This caused unbearable guilt when he succumbed to his sexual urges.There needs to be a more enlightened attitude toward premarital sex among those religious extremists. Sexual relations between two consenting adults should not be regarded as a sin or as a crime. Until this becomes universally accepted, expect to see more conflicted young men like Mr. Long act out their sexual conflicts via violence.Harvey M. BermanWhite Plains, N.Y.The writer is a psychiatrist.To the Editor:Re “Asian-Americans Ask: Why Not Call It Hate?” (front page, March 19):Quick question: How many people demanding increased investigation and prosecution of anti-Asian hate crimes supported last year’s protests to “defund the police”?They can’t have it both ways. If you want more enforcement of hate-crime laws, you’ll need more money. It doesn’t grow on trees.Jonathan ZimmermanPhiladelphiaThe writer teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania.Elect the Best Person as Mayor of New YorkKathryn Garcia, center, the former sanitation commissioner, was one of the first mayoral candidates to urge Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign.Mike Segar/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Women Running for Mayor Say Cuomo Shows Need for Change” (front page, March 18):The best person — be it he, she or they — should be elected mayor of this city, which desperately needs to be brought back from its current state.Frankly, it is insulting to women to promote the idea that one should vote for a woman just because she is a woman. In my view, this city needs someone who comes in with a record of excellent administrative experience, actually getting things done.If the best person for mayor happens to be a man, then that man should be elected and, moreover, should also be held to an “inclusive style of leadership” and “not rely on bullying.” You can have both.Ellyn S. RothNew YorkWho Needs Air Travel?Many airlines, including United, American, Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic, began running flights only to haul cargo after the pandemic began and commercial passenger travel plummeted.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Do You Really Need to Fly?,” by Farhad Manjoo (column, March 15):Back in the ’90s I flew to Chicago from New York for a one-day meeting at the O’Hare Hilton. I got off the plane, and walked through the terminal and into the hotel. After the meeting I left the hotel, walked through the terminal and boarded my return flight.My friends asked me how Chicago was. I told them that I had no idea, as I had never even been outside.Charlie PerrinLeesburg, Fla.To the Editor:Farhad Manjoo’s points against “gratuitous business travel” apply to academic travel as well.The Zoom conferences I attended this past year promoted a focus on ideas, bypassing not only tedious air travel but also the tedious pseudo-socializing that often infests in-person academic conferences.After a session of philosophical discussion, I was delighted to socialize with my cat rather than with someone bent on professional advancement.Felicia Nimue AckermanProvidence, R.I.The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University. More