This past year, official social media accounts from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and other government agencies have adopted a distinct voice online. The posts look like memes, utilizing dramatic AI-generated art, general patriotic slogans, and cinematic language about “defending the homeland” and shaping America’s future.
But if you look closer, a pattern emerges.
Many of these phrases, images, and attached media aren’t just regular social media content. They repurpose language, symbolism, and cultural references with direct connections to neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements. It’s content that experts say is instantly recognizable to those who are in the white supremacist know, but can be largely invisible to everyone else.
There has been not one, but two posts from our government institutions that reuse a phrase ripped straight from William Gayley Simpson’s book Which Way Western Man?. It was published and promoted by the National Alliance—considered one of the “best organized” neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The book is antisemitic, racist, and explicitly states that Adolf Hitler was right.
Y’know I cringe so hard now at that whole humorous “Muricah” stereotype. You know, gun-nut, God and Country, Reagan was so great, filthy commies blah blah blah. Always with a wry chuckle…it used to be a funny ironic schtick…Colbert parodied it really well.
…Except it’s hitting hard and fast that it wasn’t a schtick and no small percentage of people adopted it in all seriousness.
(Like how many people didn’t understand the Space Marine fascism in 40k was supposed to be over the top parody.)
I’ve been screaming it for years because I was raised in the back-country by apocalypse preppers surrounded by ruraloid hicks preparing for the great coming race war/battle with China and the homosexuals.
Somehow media has been right all along with its stereotypes and we broadly kind of ignored the warnings, I guess because the message that movies and shows aren’t real? Like a generation of parents telling kids whatever they see on TV or on the internet isn’t real and can’t harm us.
Well, it was all very real and it’s all harming us.