From ‘they will make good watch dogs’ to ‘shoot them’

Abstract This study examines hate speech against irregular migrants in Malaysia based on Facebook comments posted in response to an Al Jazeera report on crackdowns on migrants during the COVID-19 period. Assimakopoulos’s (2020) speech-act framework and Culpeper’s (2011) notion of impoliteness are employed to analyze hate speech as an incitement continuum reinforced by impoliteness. The findings show that hate speech is realized mainly through discriminatory incitement rather than overtly violent expressions, suggesting that exclusion is often normalized through everyday online discourse. The analysis further reveals that discriminatory, dehumanizing, and violent speech operate at different levels of hostility to construct migrants as burdens, threats, and illegitimate outsiders. Further, the data show that implicational impoliteness intensifies hostility toward migrants. The findings suggest that indirect forms of hostility play a central role in sustaining xenophobic attitudes, highlighting the need to identify subtle discursive forms that normalize mistreatment and harm.