Some Trump administration social media posts mirror extremist rhetoric
A series of recent social media posts from official Trump administration accounts have echoed terminology used by far-right extremists, experts said, adding that the posts leave no doubt that they are references to white supremacist rhetoric.
One of the posts, published Wednesday by the White House X account, shows two groups of sled dogs with Danish flags, one heading toward an American flag and the other toward the flags of Russia and China. Above the photo, the text reads: “Which way, Greenlander?
In August, the Department of Homeland Security’s
This phrase closely mirrors the title of the 1978 book “Which Way, Western Man,” which is an important text for white supremacist groups and remains used by extremists online.
Robert Futrell, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who has studied far-right extremism for more than two decades, said the wording in relation to the way many members of the Trump administration have spoken about immigration speaks to what he calls “the rhetoric of the movement.”
“I think connecting the formulation of ‘Which Way is the American Man,’ especially associated with ideas of cultural decline, ideas of invasion, the idea of homeland, it connects the formulation to a canon of white supremacy.”
Another image posted to Homeland Security’s X, Facebook and Instagram accounts includes a photo of a man on a horse silhouetted against snow-capped mountains as a B-2 stealth bomber flies overhead.
“WE WILL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN,” the text on the image reads. “JOIN.ICE.GOV”
These words are well known in the far-right community as the title and lyrics of a song espoused by white nationalists.
Some on the far right acknowledged that these messages aligned with their views. Wendy Via, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told NBC News which channels on the messaging app Telegram where Proud Boys members were spreading the messages.
“Message received,” read a message posted alongside the Homeland Security message on X.
A third article, published last week on X by the Labor Department, used the phrase “One Homeland. One People. One Legacy,” which some criticized as anti-American. Many other users said it bore similarities to a Nazi propaganda slogan: “Ein volk, ein reich, ein führer,” which translates to “One people, one empire, one leader.” This message angered many union leaders, The Guardian reported.
The White House and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson told Politico in response to questions about the messages: “This line of attack is boring and tired. Take control.” A Homeland Security spokesperson told the publication: “Calling anything you don’t like ‘Nazi propaganda’ is tiresome…DHS will continue to use every tool to communicate with the American people and keep them informed about our historic effort to make America safe again.” »
NBC News reached out to six academics who have spent much of their careers studying extremism. All saw these posts as references to far-right ideology making its way into the mainstream and linked to the Trump administration’s immigration campaign, which has increasingly adopted terms like “invasion” to describe the entry of illegal immigrants into the United States.
“They’re not dog whistles anymore,” said Jon Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “They are megaphones.”
“This sends an encouraging message to neo-Nazis and white supremacists: the government is on your side,” Lewis added.
Lewis said every post “ends up being linked to countless conspiracy theory channels, countless extremist online spaces, and they consider that a success.”
These positions, which represent only a small fraction of government positions, come as some in Trump’s orbit have adopted extremist rhetoric more openly. Tech billionaire and
Jessie Daniels, a professor in the sociology department at CUNY’s Hunter College who has studied far-right extremism and the media for more than three decades, said there was “no doubt” that these messages were intended to echo white supremacist rhetoric.
“They very clearly intend to signal their allegiance to a rather overt white supremacist ideology,” she said.
Throughout his political rise, Trump and members of his family have been scrutinized for posting messages pointing to extremism. In 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone posted images including an Internet meme called “Pepe the Frog,” which became popular with the alt-right. Trump himself has sometimes elevated subtle and unambiguous extremist content, from QAnon conspiracy theories to a 2020 Twitter video of a man wearing his campaign gear and shouting “white power.” Trump later deleted the message, and the White House said at the time that the president did not hear what the man was shouting.
This content presence notably extended to official government accounts during Trump’s second term, with memes, AI-generated images, and unapologetic MAGA messages. Some of these images are more subtle than others, such as in July when Homeland Security posted on social media “A Heritage to Be Proud of, a Homeland Worth Defending” with a photo of John Gast’s “American Progress,” an 1872 painting that depicts Miss Columbia (representing America) and white settlers advancing west as Native Americans appear to flee.
Whether this image was intended to be an expression of patriotism or a nod to white supremacy has been debated.
More recent administration publications whose content can be read as extremist have “gone from episodic to more consistent, and they’ve moved from a grayer area to a lighter area,” said Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who has studied extremist groups since the mid-1990s.
Simi said these messages, as clear as they may be to people versed in extremist rhetoric, provide some cover for the administration to call itself patriotic. He noted the coincidence of the phrase “In what sense, Western man?” » to “In what sense, American?” »
“So even in a fairly open message, there’s an effort to create plausible deniability, and that’s a very common strategy in the far-right type of propaganda creation,” he said.
Lewis noted that the format of these posts, many of which include memes and similar formats, has been used successfully for years by hate groups to get their ideas out to the public.
“But what we’ve seen in recent years is the popularization of this meme culture, of this coded language, of these kinds of ironic, half-joking, wink and nod references that have much more sinister and insidious meanings,” Lewis said.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, professor and director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, said in an email that it is not necessary for people to know the origin of messages for them to be effective messages.
“Propaganda works well when it gets people to transfer warm feelings from previous experiences, stories, or movements to something new,” she wrote. “It’s an effective and very intentional persuasive tactic to try to get Americans to line up behind ICE, behind mass deportations, and to join them on this patriotic journey to set things right.”
For now, protests are limited. While many on social media have pointed out these connections, few, if any, prominent Democrats have weighed in on these links. Some of those who support Trump seem indifferent.
Sam Markstein, communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in an email questioning the social media posts: “Republicans will not take lessons on so-called ‘extremism’ from a Democratic Party that cozies up to sympathizers of jihad, lets tens of millions of illegal aliens flood into the country, believes men belong in women’s bathrooms and sports leagues, and thinks what is happening in streets of Tehran, as courageous civilians protest against barbaric policies. regime, is somewhat equivalent to ICE’s enforcement of immigration law in Minnesota.
Some of the experts who spoke to NBC News pointed out that the messages could resonate far beyond social media and that the phrases and visuals used by the Trump administration could serve multiple purposes: from innocuous messages to the general public, signals of approval to extremists and fueling social media attention.
“In today’s technological age, it’s less about ideological precision and more about the rhetorical and political impact of messages,” Heather Woods, an associate professor at Kansas State University who studies the social impacts of technology, said in an email.
“The benefit for the administration is that these images – often shared directly on social media or tailor-made to go viral on social media after the fact – generate a lot of interest and attention,” Woods added.
“The fact that we are debating whether or not they are specifically aligned with a particular ideology actually amplifies their message,” she continued.
Futrell, the University of Nevada professor, also pointed out that explicit references to extremist texts were only part of the problem and that other terms and ideas once reserved for the margins had made their way to the highest levels of government — something that has not gone unnoticed in far-right circles.
“So you have terms like invasion, remigration, cultural decline, they look like ordinary politics to casual readers, but they function as really recognizable signals within far-right networks,” Futrell said.
