Last week social media platform X revealed the national origins of all its user accounts – divulging many top political voices on hot-button US issues are actually keyboard warriors based in Africa and Asia.
For many, such as fake Native American grievance accounts run from Bangladesh and Nigerians posing as Trump-loving Midwestern moms, their motivation is simple – trying to make money (usually from selling T-shirts).
For others it’s more complicated, such as Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysian-born, Dubai-based writer and X celebrity with 1.2 million followers.
He’s built his brand on acerbic social criticism and championing the new right in US politics, but says it was all on his followers for assuming he was actually in the country.
The idea that you can’t have a say on anything regarding America just because you don’t live there is kind of silly because what happens in America happens everywhere else,” Cheong, 40, told The Post.
“On top of that, practically every country has a US military base at this point. It’s an empire, like it or not, and people are going to have opinions.”
Cheong became the target of attacks once it was revealed he is actually in Dubai.
“You’ve never set foot in America and yet you spend every day trying to influence our culture and politics. You talk about our country exclusively and never say a word about your own.
“If you don’t see why that might rub Americans the wrong way, I don’t know what to tell you,” one prominent American podcaster wrote to him.
Hellbound and Down 