The United States Department of Labour has adopted slogans and narratives rooted in Nazi ideology, while a Pentagon research office has used imagery associated with neo Nazi movements in its social media posts. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security recently shared lyrics mirroring a song by a band linked to an ethnic nationalist scene.
Official social media accounts affiliated with the Trump administration have turned into a steady stream of coded messages and visuals saturated with Nazi and xenophobic symbolism. Officials from these departments have so far refused to answer questions about their media strategies on social platforms. Yet the pattern is unmistakable. Across federal institutions, officials are calling for a radical new understanding of American values, one not grounded in the vision of the Founding Fathers, but instead drawn from European fascist ideologies.
On 10 January, the US Department of Labour published a video titled “One Nation. One People. One Heritage”, a phrase closely resembling the Nazi slogan “One People, One Empire, One Leader”. The video amassed 22.6 million views.
A week earlier, a Pentagon research office posted darkened images of soldiers from the American Revolutionary era with glowing white eyes. This visual effect, along with filters tinting their boots red and light blue, is commonly used in meme culture among far right circles online. Such content is frequently deployed by neo Nazis seeking to make their views more appealing.
The Department of Homeland Security also recently shared an image of a knight on horseback with a B-2 bomber overhead, bearing the caption “We will take back our homeland once again”. The phrase closely mirrors lyrics from a song performed by a group affiliated with Manowar Bond, a far-right folk band inspired by the German ethnic nationalist Volkisch movement. The song includes the line “My God, we will take back our homeland once again”.
The themes and methods of this imitation vary. Extremist messaging has appeared across several ministerial and agency accounts, particularly those under the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, the growing frequency and diversity of such posts in recent months signal a notable shift.
In August, the Department of Homeland Security shared an image across multiple platforms featuring the phrase “Which way, American man?” referencing the book “Which Way, Western Man?” by William Gayley Simpson, a neo Nazi writer. The book was later published by a far right press known as National Vanguard.
In November, the department released a video highlighting moments from American history, edited in a style resembling content from the so called digital fascist wave. Last month, it posted an image of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents overlaid with VHS style text and a distorted filter, both hallmarks of digital fascist wave memes.
Many of these memes promote the concept of “remigration”. While the term can refer to voluntary return of migrants to their countries of origin, it has gained popularity among white nationalists in Europe and the United States as a euphemism for the expulsion of non-white migrants from Western countries, including naturalised citizens and their descendants.
In November, the Department of Homeland Security posted on X: “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been clearer: remigration now”. In another recent post by the department, viewed by 20 million users on X, an image shows a vintage car on a beach lined with palm trees, overlaid with elegant text reading “America after 100 million deportations”. On the same day, the official White House account posted an image of President Donald Trump accompanied by the phrase “Remigration”.
The idea of deporting 100 million people from the United States is catastrophic at minimum. Deporting all undocumented migrants would involve approximately 14 million people, according to 2023 estimates by the Pew Research Center. Revoking all permanent residency permits would add another 12 million.
Trump has also expressed interest in stripping citizenship from naturalised Americans and deporting them, amounting to an additional 26 million people. Even combined, these categories fall far short of 100 million. Reaching that figure would require including tens of millions of Americans born in the United States.
On what basis would they be targeted? Advocates of remigration have singled out the Somali community in the United States, the majority of whom are American citizens. During a cabinet meeting last month, Trump said of Somalis: “I do not want them in our country, I will be honest with you”, adding that the United States would be heading “in the wrong direction if we keep importing garbage into our country”. The administration then used immigration enforcement measures in Minnesota, home to a large Somali community, to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somalis last week, leaving non-citizens vulnerable to deportation.
Trump attacked Somalis in Minnesota again during a speech at the World Economic Forum, saying: “We are going after more than 19 billion dollars stolen by Somali thieves. Can you believe the Somalis? Turns out they are smarter than we thought”. He added: “They are good pirates, but we shoot them at sea just like we shoot drug boats”.
Trump also made clear that Somalis are not his sole target. “What is happening in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot import foreign cultures en masse, especially those that failed to build a successful society”, he said, repeating rhetoric common among white supremacist advocates regarding immigration from non-white countries.
Some may dismiss the 100 million figure as another example of exaggeration typical of Trump’s rhetoric, now filtering into government-affiliated social media content. Others, however, see cause for alarm.
Wendy Via of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said: “This is a plan for ethnic cleansing. There is no other way to think about it”.
The Trump administration has offered little explanation regarding the intent behind these posts. In an email, I asked Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, about an Instagram post bearing the phrase “We will take back our homeland once again” and its links to German ethnic nationalism.
McLaughlin replied that it was merely “a pleasant phrase expressing the deportation or exit of 20 million undocumented migrants from the country”. When asked directly about the concept of remigration, she avoided discussing its history within the European far right, stating: “There are many political debates to be had. Inventing reasons to feign outrage is contradictory behaviour”.
This appears to be the administration’s general stance. When I asked the Department of Defence about a meme containing clear references to the digital fascist wave, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson responded by email: “If you see pro-American content referencing the American Revolution and somehow your mind links that to the digital fascist wave or neo Nazism, you may be schizophrenic or suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
In theory, the use of language and imagery favoured by white supremacists could be dismissed as a series of unintentional coincidences. Yet the message also emerges through other channels within the administration. Amid the satirical images and criminal mugshots typically shared by the Department of Homeland Security, Micah Book, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Communications, occasionally appears in explanatory videos presenting nationalist viewpoints. In November, in a DHS video posted on X, he attempted to “debunk the lie” that “America is a nation of immigrants”.
On Thanksgiving, Book delivered the customary thanks “for the department’s hard work under President Trump and Secretary Noem”, before telling viewers that “there will be no more opportunities for invaders”.
The book’s rhetoric lacks the overt extremism of many DHS memes, but it advances similar ideas. He tells viewers that Thanksgiving “is not a global potluck. It is a celebration for a specific people remembering specific blessings that God bestowed upon them and their nation alone”.
He does not specify who these “specific people” are meant to be. In another segment, however, he refers to early settlers in New England who endured the brutal winters of the seventeenth century “only for their descendants, four centuries later, to hand the table over to strangers who never thanked the sacrifices made for it”.
His message echoes remarks made by Vice President Vance last summer: “America is not just an idea. It is a specific place, for a specific people, with a specific set of beliefs and a specific way of life”. He added: “Those whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have far greater claim to America than those who say they do not belong here”. This version is more detailed than the memes, but no less revealing.
Taken together, these messages represent an effort to redefine what it means to be American in order to justify the removal of those deemed not to fit that definition. This derives directly from an emerging concept on the right, sometimes referred to as “heritage America” or “heritage American identity”.
Not all right-wing nationalists use or endorse these terms, but they broadly agree on the principle. America, in this view, is not truly the “land” of equality and freedom described by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. Instead, it is portrayed as a specific place with a specific culture, largely composed of Anglo Protestant populations able to trace their lineage in the United States across multiple generations. It is a vision of America grounded not in shared values, but in blood and soil.
