DHS Promoted Neo-Nazi Anthem After ICE Killed Renee Good

Less than two days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis during a controversial enforcement operation, the Department of Homeland Security’s official Instagram account made a recruitment post proclaiming “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” attaching a song of the same name by Pine Tree Riots. Popularized in neo-Nazi spaces, the track features lines about reclaiming “our home” by “blood or sweat,” language often used in white nationalist calls for race war.

The post is part of a growing trend in which the federal government openly embraces the visual language of white supremacy and pop culture cited in instances of racial violence. Over the past year, DHS and its component agencies leaned on mainstream pop music in their social media outreach, pairing enforcement footage with recognizable songs. The approach backfired repeatedly, and the department now appears to be leaning on niche, neo-Nazi-beloved music.

“There was a sense of plausible deniability before,” said Alice Marwick, director of research at Data & Society. Anti-immigrant backers of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement have long been known to spread extremist language and media, but in the past, “those dog whistles were being done by supporters,” she said. “Now they’re being done directly by the administration.”

The DHS is just straight up using neo-Nazi messaging. This is only the latest instance in the Trump administration, which also appears to have just straight up quoted a Nazi SS officer last week.

I don't know what else to say.

DHS isn’t the only department in the Trump administration to openly embrace white nationalist rhetoric. Earlier this week, the Department of Labor drew flak for a post that mirrored a Nazi slogan.

It isn’t new to see extremist right-wing ideology perpetuated in online culture. What is new is seeing it echoed in official messaging from a federal law enforcement agency with the power to detain, deport, and use lethal force.

“Now there is no plausible deniability,” said Marwick. “It’s really clear that the message they’re trying to send is meant to be read one way.”