Federal agencies under Trump have been using white nationalist messages
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.
And today on the show, President Trump recently got a lot of attention for posting an overtly racist meme. But researchers who specialize in extremism say it's much bigger than one errant post. There's a pattern of government agencies under Trump using white nationalist messaging. Odette, you have been reporting on this, and I'm hoping that you can just start out by describing some of these messages and images coming from federal agencies so we can get a sense of what we're talking about here.
Sure, yeah. So I'm going to point out just a few of the real top line examples that have happened in the last year, but this is just tip of the iceberg. So in August, the Department of Homeland Security posted an image to a couple of its social media accounts showing an image of Uncle Sam under the words, America needs you, join ICE now. But the caption on that post read, which way American man?
What white nationalist messages have federal agencies used under Trump?
Now, to most people, I don't think that would signal much at all.
Right. Like if I hadn't read your story, that just that doesn't mean anything to me.
Exactly. Yeah. But, you know, to people who are familiar with the literature, the aesthetics, the music of the white nationalist movement, yeah. That caption was taken as a callback to a 20th century book that has the title, Which Way Western Man? It is an anti-Semitic racist book that's largely popular within neo-Nazi circles, Tamara. So, you know, there's one example. Another notable example from DHS, again, was posted just last month. This was an image with the caption, We'll Have Our Home Again. And on Instagram, the post also included an excerpt from a song by that title. That song and the group behind it are largely known and circulated within the white nationalist channels. And I'll give you one final example.
This one from the Department of Labor, actually. This was just last month. They posted something that had the caption,
How do these messages reflect white nationalist themes?
one homeland, one people, one heritage, remember who you are, American. And that struck some as troublingly similar to Nazi Germany propaganda that translates to one people, one nation, One leader. So these are just a few examples, but you know, it's been a year of just seeing image after image a post after post that Are sort of eerily familiar to things that you know, I've seen that other researchers have seen in the world of white nationalism and
Well, Odette, when they say one heritage, what heritage are they referring to?
I mean, a lot of the imagery that is posted features sort of like nostalgic paintings, for example, sort of Norman, Rockwellian images of an America past, presumably what they're saying, an America lost, that overwhelmingly features white people.
You've mentioned several cases. How widespread is this?
To me, you know, it seems at this point quite clear that this is a part of the machinery that is pumping out public messaging from federal agencies. And it's not actually even just the messaging. You know, this is getting woven into federal policy, too. You know, you'll remember we've talked on this podcast before about the how DHS and the State Department have embraced a concept called re-migration, basically encouraging immigrants to self-deport. Re-migration is a term that was popularized by white nationalists in Europe and wasn't largely known in the US until this administration started promoting it. And now the State Department has an office of re-migration. You know, it's also been woven into how some of our federal officials are speaking.
Kristi Noem visited the Chicago area last summer and she was speaking to reporters and she said this phrase. She said, this country was built by citizens. And that just sent alarm bells blaring in my head because it so closely resembled Chicago. what we often hear within the white nationalist movement, white men built this country or white people built this country, kind of a blood and soil type of framing around who belongs here.
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