Last October, President Donald Trump sent a tweet that caused a flutter of excitement in the small but influential Hindu-American community.
“I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh,” Trump wrote.
Since the August ouster of Bangladesh’s prime minister, concern for the religious minority there lit up Hindus worldwide.
A chorus of praise resounded online. A prominent New York physician, Raj Bhayani, thanked Trump.
A professor of medicine at Irvine, Geeta Sikand, who writes for the Hindu advocacy website Voice of Hindus, said tears rolled down her face upon reading Trump’s statement.
Days after Trump’s tweet, both donated five-figure sums to a group called Conservative PAC.
Strangely, for a PAC that advertised itself as “America First” and promises to “reestablish” a Christ-focused ideology in America, its dozen donors all happen to be Hindu immigrants from India.
Bhayani later said that the PAC’s chairman, Preston Parra, recommended donating to it to “help the conservative cause.” He understood Parra would help raise awareness of causes that concern the community, like the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.
Other Hindu donors—among them, the president of a hotel franchise, a practitioner of ancient Hindu medicine, and the owner of a Holiday Inn Express, all three from Georgia—said the PAC had been recommended by a trustworthy person in their circle of influential Indian-Americans as a way of benefiting their community and conservative causes in general.
However, Conservative PAC did not appear to spend any money it raised to benefit the Hindu community—or on any political campaign.
The PAC collected $55,901 in donations. Its expenditures went to just two different things: A social media marketing firm owned by Parra and a VIP table at a fancy Republican gala.
To add insult to injury, the PAC’s owners spent Christmas week heaping abuse on immigrants from India, casting the community as outsiders who would pollute native American stock.
The Conservative brand of businesses, owned by Jake Little and Greg Disser of Georgia, described itself in 2024 as a “marketing firm that works to support Constitutional rights, freedom from tyranny, family values, and Christian morals.”
The enterprise’s network of social channels all use the catchphrase “Reject Modernity. Embrace Tradition.”
The brand includes ConservativeOG, a verified gold-check X account with nearly a half-million followers that promotes affiliates for a fee.
Over time, ConservativeOG has marketed some prominent right-wingers: Laura Loomer, country singer Lee Greenwood, actor Kevin Sorbo, and the former president of the New York Young Republicans Club Gavin Wax.
Over Christmas, ConservativeOG and its affiliates fell out with Elon Musk in a public spat over skilled worker immigration from India. The organization spoke vehemently against the visa program, while Musk insisted that Silicon Valley still needed to import more skilled workers.
During the spat, ConservativeOG lost its verified status, as did all 51 of its paying affiliates. Many of them assumed they were being punished by Musk for opposing him on tech visas.
The week-long MAGA in-fighting had been set off by one of its affiliates, right-wing rabble-rouser Laura Loomer, when she vociferously objected to Trump’s appointment of entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born Hindu, to a policy position. “This is not America First,” she said.
Loomer was the loudest, but far from the only one complaining. Many ConservativeOG affiliates lobbed similar, harsh barbs.
The ConservativeOG account called Krishnan a “gremlin,” asking of his headshot: “I mean what the actual FUCK is this thing?!”
During the several X Spaces that followed the loss of its badges, Parra, speaking from the ConservativeOG account, made the organization’s nativist position clear.
“We don’t want ethnic American stock to be replaced by foreigners,” he said.
The Hindu donors to Conservative PAC seemed unaware of Parra’s anti-immigration views, which matched the official position of the Conservative franchise.
One of the five-figure donors to the PAC, philanthropist Sashibhushan Mocherla, owns a Georgia-based consulting firm that has sponsored dozens of skilled worker visas in the last few years. When asked if he knew that Conservative PAC had argued against such visas soon after his donation, Mocherla did not respond.
Bhayani, one of the top donors to the PAC, seemed entirely unaware of Parra’s views, which included bashing Vice President JD Vance’s wife for being Hindu.
“Laura Loomer is a nutjob, but she is the only one,” Bhayani said in a phone interview. Bhayani said he knew Parra well and had spoken to him a few times. “He seems like a good guy,” Bhayani said.
At least one of the PAC donors, however, had second thoughts. Sikand, who, according to the FEC, gave $20,000 but claimed to the Daily Dot she only sent $10,000, said the PAC hadn’t met her expectations and requested a refund.
Sikand declined to say what she had hoped to achieve, but it’s fair to assume the PAC’s Hindu donors didn’t expect it to become the voice of anti-Indian racism.
Little and Disser’s Conservative brand fancies itself as the home of the America First movement online.
Little, Disser, and Parra did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Dot.
In 2020, they ran a store called Conservative Official that sold MAGA hats, which transformed into a news blog. A firm called Conservative, LLC was established in 2022.
The brand has a Conservative podcast and accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Truth Social. But its biggest is the verified ConservativeOG X account.
In early 2024, the Conservative Official website began advertising its newly created Conservative PAC as a means to “bring Trump back,” suggesting that contributions would go towards the 2024 election.
The PAC’s FEC filings show that it received just $5,000 in donations in early 2024, funds that were used for political ads, marked as independent expenditures for candidate Trump.
During that time frame, Conservative PAC ran Google ads totalling $3,400.
The ads, which mostly ran on YouTube, were low-effort, AI-narrated videos using Trump’s reelection effort to ask for more donations to Conservative PAC.
But the launch of the PAC appears to have come around the time it started a new venture.
Ads on the Conservative Facebook page later that year started advertising products from GodBlessUSA.com and similar pages.
The sites, an e-commerce network built around the Lee Greenwood “God Bless the USA” Bible that Trump began hawking in March 2024, appear to be associated with Little and the Conservative brand.
X, Truth Social, and Instagram accounts all sprang up around when Trump announced the Greenwood partnership in March 2024. All the accounts follow both Little and ConservativeOG. Alongside the Bible, the site sells pro-Trump trinkets and merch.
In October and November 2024, after the dozen well-to-do Hindu Americans gave over $55,000, FEC filings show it spent almost $34,000 on “Social media management and placement services.”
That money either went straight back to Conservative, LLC or yo America First Prospects, a social media marketing firm owned by Parra.
In early March, the founder of the pro-Trump PAC Hindus for America First flagged on X that Little and Disser’s firm had been defunct for months.
That very same day, the owners reinstated the LLC and amended the PAC’s FEC filings, swapping the recipient of the $34,000 social media disbursement from Conservative, LLC as it had been originally listed, to America First Prospects.
While Parra claims on the site to have a network of social media influencers to distribute ads and content, what either Parra or Conservative, LLC spent the money on isn’t clear from the filings.
But a bevy of Facebook ads around that time hyped products from the God Bless the USA site, including a spend of $30,000 to $40,000 on a figurine depicting Trump’s fist pump after the July 2024 assassination attempt.
Other ads during the same time frame pushed the Greenwood Bible and a site selling e-books on buying gold.
The rest of the funds were spent on flights and event tickets to the New York Young Republicans Club Gala in December.
Social media posts by Parra, Little, and Disser show they all attended the gala, which was a grand affair at Cipriani Wall Street, featuring “political prisoner” Steve Bannon as the keynote speaker.
FEC filings show the PAC gave $17,000 to the New York Young Republicans, which matches the cost of a VIP table publicized by the event organizers. One of the guests at the table thanked Parra for hosting him. The fee also seems to have bought Parra a mention in the gala’s honor roll and a sponsor decal on the gala wall.
The president of the club, Gavin Wax, was one of ConservativeOG’s affiliates. During the public spat about skilled immigration from India over Christmas, Wax joined in, skewering Indians by posting pictures of slums, making jabs about the country’s caste system, and telling immigrants to “know their place.”
Earlier this month, Wax was appointed as the chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission.
While it may seem strange that Hindu immigrants gave to a PAC advertising itself as “America First,” it comes after Trump’s inner circle pushed for an alliance with the demographic. Hindus are just 1% of the U.S. population, but punch above their weight in terms of wealth and influence.
Both Trump and Bannon made appeals to the Indian-American diaspora based on their Hindu identity and support for Modi’s policies back home.
In 2019, Bannon joined up with Indian-American businessman Shalabh Kumar to co-chair the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC).
In 2022, when Trump was at his lowest ebb politically, RHC hosted a Diwali party at Mar-a-Lago. Festooned with marigold flowers and oil lamps, the event brought out guests decked in holiday silks. Trump recited a couple of Hindi phrases that expressed love for India and Hindus. The audience whooped and clapped, overcome. Cries of “We love Trump!” rang out.
Another Hindu advocacy group, Americans 4 Hindus (A4H), was impressed with Trump’s early outreach.
Bhayani, one of the top donors to Conservative PAC and a co-founder of A4H, explained in a 2020 interview that Trump won his support because he felt Democrats had challenged Modi’s actions in India, while Trump had supported them.
“There is one man who stood by India, stood by Modi, in the last three years as nobody ever has before,” Bhayani said. “Trump has given us a hand of friendship. As an Indian tradition … it is our duty that we give our heart to him.”
Sikand, who is the vice president at A4H, said on X that Democrats lost her when they pushed an anti-caste discrimination bill in California.
Donors to Conservative PAC appear to have seen it as a way for their community to get a seat at the table in Republican politics, as some MAGA Hindus have found their way into Trump’s circle.
Among them is a physician in Georgia, Shobashalini Chokkalingam, who heads the Georgia chapter of another PAC: the American Hindu Coalition (AHC).
An insider in these circles said that Chokkalingam recommended Conservative PAC to several of her associates as a way to enhance their influence.
But while her ties to the PAC are unknown, there is an overlap.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is a regular at Georgia events hosted by the AHC. At one such event last October, Chokkalingam can be seen in an orange saree next to Greene.
Parra has also posted photos with Greene as well.
Last September, Loomer started another scandal when she made a racist comment about Indians, saying that if former Vice President Kamala Harris won the election, the White House would smell like curry.
Greene, no stranger to online vitriol, rushed to condemn Loomer’s statement as “nasty, racist, and divisive.” That very day, she received effusive praise from Chokkalingam’s organization for her response.
Trump did not condemn Loomer in public. But in private, he called Chokkalingam directly to assuage her concerns.
And after these behind-the-scenes efforts to assuage the community played out, Conservative PAC began taking donations from the community.
But Loomer’s position never changed.
And just months after raking in funds from the Hindu community, Conservative PAC revealed its true feelings.
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