博客

California has made history by electing the first Afghan-American member of the U.S. Congress, after progressive state senator Aisha Wahab overcame a $2.5 million opposition campaign funded by major pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC to claim victory in a tight congressional runoff.

State election officials declared Wahab the winner of California’s 14th Congressional District runoff on Thursday, 48 hours after polls closed. The Bay Area district, which stretches along the northern edge of San Jose and includes the populous cities of Fremont and Hayward, became an unexpected political battleground after the seat was vacated earlier this year.

The vacancy opened when former Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell resigned in the wake of public sexual misconduct allegations. His unexpired term runs through January 2025, meaning Wahab will first serve out the remaining months of that term before competing in the November 2024 general election to win a full two-year term of her own in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Wahab, 39, advanced to the runoff alongside her opponent, moderate candidate Melissa Hernandez, after neither candidate hit the required 50% vote threshold in the state’s June nonpartisan primary. Neither candidate centered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their platforms; both campaigns focused heavily on local affordability issues that rank as top priorities for Bay Area voters. But the race drew heavy outside spending after AIPAC invested $2.5 million in negative attack ads targeting Wahab, who has publicly stated that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The lobbying group threw its full support behind Hernandez, who has repeatedly affirmed that Israel “has a right to defend itself.”

Wahab’s upset victory marks the second high-profile win for a progressive Muslim candidate over massive pro-Israel outside spending in 2024. Just two weeks prior, Michigan’s Abdul el-Sayed, an Egyptian-American progressive, won the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary after overcoming a $50 million opposition campaign from pro-Israel advocacy groups that sought to block his nomination.

This historic win adds another milestone to Wahab’s political career. In 2002, she made history as California’s first Afghan and Muslim state senator, and her personal story is deeply rooted in the district she now represents. Born in New York City, Wahab lost both of her parents during childhood and was raised by an Afghan foster family in the 14th District. Speaking to supporters after her victory, she framed the win as a rebuke to corporate and special interest money that increasingly dominates U.S. electoral politics.

For Chen Zhu, a 23-year-old from Guangzhou in mainland China, the monthly trip to Hong Kong has always revolved around one unmissable stop: Hunter Bookstore. Founded four years ago by a former local councillor, this small independent outlet has built a loyal following for stocking titles that Beijing authorities label sensitive – from firsthand accounts of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy movement to iconic critiques of authoritarian rule like George Orwell’s *Animal Farm* and Hajime Isayama’s manga series *Attack on Titan*. Tucked between textile vendors, auto garages and hip cafes in the dense Sham Shui Po district, the shop has long served as a gateway to a different, more open space for curious mainland readers like Chen, who come here seeking answers to questions that are off-limits back home.

When Chen heard that Hong Kong police had raided Hunter in late June and arrested its owner, she broke down in tears. “I was devastated,” she recalled. Her grief reflects a growing crisis that has swept Hong Kong’s independent bookshop sector, a community that exploded in popularity after the 2019 pro-democracy protests but has faced mounting existential pressure as Beijing tightened its control over the city under the 2020 National Security Law (NSL). While Beijing frames the NSL as a critical tool to restore stability to Hong Kong, critics including many Hong Kong residents and international human rights groups argue the legislation has effectively gutted freedom of expression in the city. Thousands of locals, from democracy activists to former lawmakers, have fled Hong Kong in recent years, as the sweeping law has led to hundreds of arrests and convictions on national security and sedition charges.

The June raid on Hunter Bookstore resulted in the arrest of 33-year-old owner Letitia Wong and a 32-year-old male associate on charges of sedition and money laundering. Both have denied all allegations and been released on bail. Hunter was not an isolated case: just three months earlier, the owner of Book Punch bookstore and three of his staff were arrested on identical charges, with police seizing copies of a biography of jailed democracy campaigner and media tycoon Jimmy Lai. On July 15, the opening day of Hong Kong’s annual flagship Hong Kong Book Fair, national security officers raided two more independent outlets – Greenfield Bookstore and Have a Nice Stay – arresting five people on sedition charges who were later bailed. By the end of July, Greenfield, a 50-year-old institution that had served generations of readers, announced it would permanently close when its lease expired, becoming the third independent bookshop to shut its doors in just one month.

For decades, these small independent bookshops have attracted a devoted customer base that extends far beyond Hong Kong’s borders, drawing thousands of curious readers from mainland China every year who travel hundreds of kilometers to access titles banned on the mainland’s heavily censored internet. For 19-year-old Li, a student from Shanghai who requested anonymity, these shops are rare spaces “where you can see so many possibilities, and where existing ideas can be challenged.” For many mainland readers, they offer a sense of open discourse and community that cannot be found back home – a space that is now at risk of disappearing entirely as the crackdown intensifies.

The story of Chen Zhu’s search for reading material illustrates the draw these shops hold for young mainland readers. When Chen started university in 2021, she grew increasingly curious about topics erased from mainland public discourse, most notably the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, a topic completely scrubbed from the mainland’s controlled internet. After watching popular but underground films that touched on the event – including the romantic drama *Summer Palace* and the independent film *Lan Yu* – failed to satisfy her curiosity, she set her sights on finding *The Unburned Book*, a collection of reflections by Taiwanese poet Yang Du on 1989 protesters who went into exile. Immediately after the Hong Kong-mainland border reopened following COVID-19 restrictions in 2023, she traveled to Hong Kong to track down the book, at a time when the city’s independent bookshop scene was at its peak, with readers sharing curated walking routes and recommendations across social media.

At that time, the city was dotted with beloved independent outlets: the discount-focused Luck Win in busy Mong Kok, Greenfield with its floor-to-ceiling packed shelves, the cozy Have a Nice Stay founded by former journalists that hosted popular late-night reading sessions, the cramped but beloved Elmbook where regulars treated browsing like a treasure hunt, Book Punch with its defiant motto “one punch to wake the reader” on Tai Nan Street, Word by Word – a popular spot for foodies in historic Wan Chai – and Hunter, with its outdoor sofa where passersby could rest. It was at Hunter that Chen finally found *The Unburned Book*, after searching through half a dozen other shops without luck.

Beyond accessing banned books, readers value these shops for the open, connected community they foster. During Li’s visit to Hong Kong earlier this year, just months after a devastating apartment fire in Tai Po killed 168 people, she found a wall of black sticky notes at Hunter Bookstore where visitors had left messages of solidarity for the victims and their families. This kind of open public collective grief is rare on the mainland, Li explained, where authorities often restrict unregulated public expression around sensitive events. “People can only express themselves indirectly” back home, she said. She was also struck by the small personal touches: handwritten notes from booksellers next to titles, sharing their own reflections on the work or highlighting meaningful passages – something she had never encountered in mainland bookshops. For Chen, the sense of shared community means she never feels like an outsider, even when browsing alone. “You’ve left mainland China behind. Of course, you know this freedom has its limits. But it’s still better than not being able to say anything at all,” she said.

Today, that limited freedom is rapidly shrinking. In the lead-up to this year’s book fair, two low-profile shops that rarely organized public events, Luck Win and Elmbook, were publicly condemned in Wen Wei Po, a Beijing-controlled newspaper in Hong Kong. The paper accused the shops of selling books that promote “soft resistance,” including *The Hong Kong Diaries* by Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor before the 1997 handover, and *300 Short Essays* by Lee Yee, a late columnist for the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper *Apple Daily* – whose owner Jimmy Lai is currently serving a prison sentence under the NSL.

Tong Kin-long, a researcher at University College London, explained that this vague enforcement strategy is intentional. “The authorities don’t want people to know exactly where the boundaries are,” he said. “They want people to work out the red lines for themselves, or to censor themselves before crossing them.” For many long-time observers of media in China, the crackdown on Hong Kong’s independent bookshops echoes a gradual tightening that has already reshaped the mainland’s bookselling landscape over the past decade. K, a 30-something reader from Sichuan who requested anonymity, recalled that mainland bookshops were once vibrant spaces for open discussion, with liberal titles and magazines prominently displayed and regular public talks. But from 2015 onward, he watched as restrictions gradually tightened: first books about political leaders were pulled, then less obviously sensitive titles disappeared, public events became rarer, and the open atmosphere faded. Chen says a friend who runs a small bookshop in Guangzhou faces regular police harassment, with authorities even cutting power during private film screenings the shop hosts.

Even for readers who manage to travel to Hong Kong, bringing banned books back to the mainland carries significant risk, as customs officials regularly seize titles deemed a threat to national security. Many readers, like K, go to great lengths to smuggle their purchases back, choosing busy border crossings, hiding books deep in luggage or inside clothing, and avoiding titles with prominent covers featuring sensitive names. But today, smuggling is no longer the biggest worry. “In the past, people would simply think, ‘If I can’t buy a book in mainland China, I’ll go to Hong Kong’. Now the feeling is different. You don’t even know which bookshops will still be here the next time you come,” K said.

The wave of closures has accelerated in recent months. A week after Elmbook was excluded from the 2024 Hong Kong Book Fair, it announced it would close its physical location in April 2025. Have a Nice Stay soon followed, announcing it would shut at the end of August 2024, citing both economic pressure and the unpredictability of official “red lines” around what content is permitted. Many in Hong Kong’s bookselling industry have grown deeply pessimistic about the future, with some expecting conditions to worsen before any potential improvement. But despite the crackdown, many readers remain committed to sustaining the remaining independent shops, framing their visits as an act of quiet resistance. “Buying a book has become a quiet way of showing support, and a quiet form of resistance,” said Chris, a 20-year-old mainland reader who requested anonymity, adding that despite the recent arrests he will continue traveling to Hong Kong to visit the remaining independent outlets. As one industry insider put it: readers still have agency. “We can still buy books. We can still read. And we can still read a great many books.”

India’s demographic landscape is shifting rapidly, with Generation Z poised to become one of the largest voting blocs by the 2029 general election – and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), long a leader in digital political campaigning, is scrambling to adapt its strategy to connect with this young, discerning audience.

For years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 75, has cultivated a carefully curated strongman public image, built around scripted speeches, formal national broadcasts and tightly choreographed public appearances. Even with more than 106 million Instagram followers – making him one of the most followed political leaders on the platform – casual, approachable content was never a core priority for Modi or his party’s social media team. That all changed after a wave of youth-led protests rocked the country earlier this year.

The unexpected protest movement, organized by the satirical activist group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), spread like wildfire across Instagram via memes, live streams and short-form reels. What began as an online joke quickly evolved into a mass grassroots movement that gained enough momentum to force a sitting federal minister to step down – catching the BJP’s seasoned digital team completely off guard.

Political commentator and author Anurag Minus Verma notes that for over a decade, the Hindu nationalist BJP has built one of India’s most formidable online political operations, leveraging WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages and X (formerly Twitter) accounts to amplify its messaging and dominate public narratives. But today’s young Indians consume content and engage with politics very differently than older generations. More than 60% of India’s 1.4 billion people are under 35, and experts warn that winning Gen Z’s support requires meeting them where they are: on platforms like Instagram, where unfiltered, personal content resonates far more than stiff, traditional political talking points.

In response to the protest wake-up call, Modi has quickly overhauled his Instagram presence. Where his timeline once featured only carefully polished, curated posts, it now includes more seemingly candid content: a “get-ready-with-me” short reel, multiple selfie-style video addresses where Modi refers to young viewers directly as “friends”, and even a speech that wove in a popular Gen Z catchphrase. At a Delhi graduation ceremony, Modi boasted, “I am the first in my bloodline to build a rocket, a chip and a drone” – a deliberate attempt to speak to young India’s growing interest in technology and national development.

But the outreach has not gone as planned. When Modi dropped his first selfie-style reel addressing the ongoing protests, young users responded immediately with sarcasm and mockery. A long, awkward pause after his opening greeting of “friends” went viral, spawning thousands of edits, memes, and jokes that poked fun at the clip’s poor lighting and awkward camera angles. The clip now has more than 400 million views – but the majority of the engagement comes from users sharing it to mock, not support, the prime minister.

Modi’s team has since adjusted, experimenting with new camera angles, backdrops and lighting to address criticism, but many young Indians remain skeptical of the sudden shift in tone. Ginni Malia, a 22-year-old young voter, says she understands why the BJP wants to connect with people her age, but the timing of the outreach raises red flags. “The videos adopt Gen Z language and formats, but they don’t address any of the core concerns that sparked the protests in the first place,” she explained. For many of her peers, the BJP’s new social media content is treated as accidental comedy, not serious political outreach.

The cringe-inducing attempts are not limited to Modi’s personal account. BJP party pages have also jumped on the Gen Z content trend, posting memes, Gen Z slang and pop-culture references that often miss the mark. One post-protest reel, set in a gym, featured a plot where an older trainer argued young people should avoid the protests – and was widely panned as awkward and out of touch in the comments. Another used the title track from 1990s sitcom *Friends*, a millennial favorite that holds little cultural cachet for Gen Z, with the caption “PM Modi is there for you”.

Recognizing that their initial attempts have fallen flat, the BJP has already made leadership changes. The party recently replaced Amit Malviya, its long-serving social media chief who held the role since 2015. Many analysts attribute the shakeup to widespread online criticism of the party’s handling of the protest narrative on social media. During the unrest, Modi reportedly instructed his cabinet to ramp up their own youth-focused social media engagement, and the Hindustan Times recently reported that federal ministers were given formal performance “report cards” for their social media outreach and ordered to expand their presence across all major platforms.

The BJP is not the only Indian political party courting Gen Z on Instagram. Opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has long posted candid selfies and casual content on the platform, and held a popular Instagram “Ask Me Anything” session after the protests, where he responded to questions with playful quips – including one joke about whether he and Batman are the same person.

But even as the BJP tries to adapt, political analysts say the party faces fundamental structural challenges to winning on Instagram. Joyojeet Pal, a University of Michigan professor who studies the political use of social media, explains that the BJP’s traditional digital strategy relies on a network of loyal supporters to amplify messaging on X and WhatsApp. That model does not translate to Instagram, where the algorithm prioritizes affect-driven engagement – watch time, shares, comments and reactions – over network reach.

“It’s not uncommon for a 200-follower account to get 10 million views on a reel, while a huge verified political account only gets a few thousand,” Pal explains. “The BJP built its strategy for a network-centric internet, but today’s platforms are far more affect-centric. That’s a massive shift.”

Another major hurdle is the loss of narrative control. Modi’s first viral Gen Z-style reel is a perfect example: while it earned hundreds of millions of views, young users re-edited and shared it with sarcastic commentary, turning the prime minister’s intended outreach into a national joke. Verma notes that Instagram is fundamentally built around irony and satire, making it easy for even well-produced political content to be turned against the person who posted it. Learning to operate in that ungovernable space is a major culture shift for the BJP, which has long prioritized controlling the narrative.

Still, analysts caution against overstating the impact of social media performance on electoral outcomes. Pal points out that the BJP’s election success has always depended far more on its robust ground organization and loyal core support base than viral social media content. “It’s important to distinguish between winning a social media narrative and winning an election,” Pal says. “The BJP could still sweep elections even if every Gen Z user hates its content on Instagram.”

For now, the BJP – like every major political party in India – is navigating this unfamiliar new political terrain. Pal notes that the party has a long track record of adapting to new forms of political communication: it was an early adopter of social media campaigning, and has already embraced newer formats like podcasts and influencer interviews. It will likely figure out the Instagram game eventually, but it will take time to learn the platform’s unwritten rules. For young Indian voters, the priority is clear: they want leaders to listen to their concerns, not just chase viral social media trends.