{"id":197218,"date":"2026-01-17T14:19:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/some-trump-administration-social-media-posts-mirror-extremist-rhetoric-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T14:19:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:19:50","slug":"some-trump-administration-social-media-posts-mirror-extremist-rhetoric-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/some-trump-administration-social-media-posts-mirror-extremist-rhetoric-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Trump administration social media posts mirror extremist rhetoric – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A series of recent social media posts from the Trump administration\u2019s official government accounts have echoed terminology used by far-right extremists, experts said, adding that the posts offer no doubt that they are references to white supremacist rhetoric.
One of the posts<\/a>, published by the White House X account Wednesday, shows two groups of sled dogs with Danish flags, one path headed toward a U.S. flag and the other path headed toward the flags of Russia and China. Above the photo, the text reads: \u201cWhich way, Greenland man?\u201d
In August, the X account for the Department of Homeland Security used similar wording<\/a> as a caption for a drawing of Uncle Sam with a recruitment call for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement: \u201cWhich way, American man?\u201d
That phrase closely mirrors the title of the 1978 book \u201cWhich Way, Western Man,\u201d which is an important text to white supremacist groups<\/a> and remains in use by extremists online<\/a>.
Robert Futrell, a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who has studied far-right extremism for more than two decades, said that the phrasing in relation to the way many in the Trump administration have talked about immigration points to what he called \u201cmovement rhetoric.\u201d
\u201cI think connecting the phrasing of \u2018Which way American man,\u2019 especially paired with the ideas of cultural decline, the ideas of invasion, the idea of homeland, it\u2019s connecting the phrasing to a white supremacist canon.\u201d
Another image posted to the X<\/a>, Facebook and Instagram accounts of Homeland Security includes a photo of a man on a horse silhouetted against snowy mountains as a B-2 stealth bomber flies overhead.
\u201cWE\u2019LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN,\u201d text over the image reads. \u201cJOIN.ICE.GOV<\/a>\u201d
Those words are well known in the far-right community as the title and lyrics of a song embraced by white nationalists<\/a>.
Some on the far right have acknowledged those posts as being aligned with their views. Wendy Via, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, pointed NBC News to channels on the messaging app Telegram in which members of the Proud Boys circulated the posts.
\u201cMessage received,\u201d read one message posted alongside the Homeland Security post on X.
A third post, published last week to X by the Labor Department, used the phrase, \u201cOne Homeland. One People. One Heritage,\u201d which some critiqued as un-American<\/a>. Many others online said it bore similarities<\/a> to a Nazi propaganda slogan<\/a>: \u201cEin volk, ein reich, ein f\u00fchrer,\u201d which translates to \u201cOne people, one empire, one leader.\u201d The post drew the ire of many union leaders, The Guardian reported<\/a>.
The White House and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson told Politico<\/a> in response to questions about the posts: \u201cThis line of attack is boring and tired. Get a grip.\u201d A Homeland Security spokesperson told the publication: \u201cCalling everything you dislike \u2018Nazi propaganda\u2019 is tiresome… DHS will continue to use all tools to communicate with the American people and keep them informed on our historic effort to Make America Safe Again.\u201d
NBC News contacted six academics who have spent much of their careers studying extremism. All saw the posts as references to far-right ideology that is making its way into the mainstream and tied to the Trump administration\u2019s immigration push, which has increasingly embraced terms like \u201cinvasion\u201d<\/a> to describe the entry of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S.
\u201cThese are no longer dog whistles,\u201d Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said. \u201cThey\u2019re bullhorns.\u201d
\u201cIt sends that emboldening message to neo-Nazis and white supremacists that the government is on your side,\u201d Lewis added.
Lewis said each post \u201cends up being linked in countless conspiracy theory channels, countless extremist online spaces, and they view that as success.\u201d
The posts, which account for only a small fraction of the government\u2019s posts, come as some in Trump\u2019s orbit have more openly embraced extremist rhetoric. Tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk, a former Trump administration adviser who dined at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, boosted a post that read in part: \u201cIf white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. White solidarity is the only way to survive.\u201d
Jessie Daniels, a professor in the department of sociology at CUNY\u2019s Hunter College who has studied far-right extremism and media for more than three decades, said there was \u201czero doubt\u201d that these posts were meant to echo white supremacist rhetoric.
\u201cThey\u2019re very clearly intending to signal their allegiance to a rather overt white supremacist ideology,\u201d she said.
Throughout his political rise, Trump and members of his family have been scrutinized for posting messages that nodded to extremism. In 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone posted images that included an internet meme called \u201cPepe the Frog,\u201d which had become popular with the alt-right<\/a>. Trump himself has at times elevated subtle and unambiguous extremist content, from QAnon conspiracy theories <\/a>to a 2020 video on Twitter <\/a>of a man wearing his campaign gear and shouting \u201cwhite power.\u201d <\/strong>Trump later removed the post and the White House said at the time that the president had not heard what the man was shouting.
This content presence has more notably extended to official government accounts<\/a> in Trump\u2019s second term, complete with memes, AI-generated imagery and unapologetically MAGA messaging. Some of that imagery is more subtle than others, such as in July when Homeland Security posted to social media<\/a>, \u201cA Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending\u201d with a photo of John Gast\u2019s \u201cAmerican Progress,\u201d an 1872 painting that portrays Miss Columbia (representing America) and white settlers advancing westward as Native Americans appear to flee.
Whether that image was meant to be an expression of patriotism or a wink at white supremacy was the subject of some debate<\/a>.
More recent posts from the administration with content that can be read as extremist have \u201cgone from episodic to more consistent, and it\u2019s gone from more gray area to more clear cut,\u201d said Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University who has studied extremist groups since the mid-1990s.
Simi said that the posts, even as clear as they are to people versed in extremist rhetoric, offer some cover for the administration to say they are patriotic. He noted the chance of the phrase \u201cWhich way, Western man?\u201d to \u201cWhich way, American man?\u201d
\u201cAnd so even in a pretty overt kind of post, there is an effort to create plausible deniability, and that is a very common strategy in the kind of creation of propaganda on the far right,\u201d he said.
Lewis noted that the format of these posts, many of which embrace memes and meme-like formats, have been used for years successfully by hate groups to push their ideas to the public.
\u201cBut what we\u2019ve seen in recent years is the popularization of this meme culture, of this coded language, these sort of ironic, half-joking, wink-and-nod references that have far more sinister, insidious meanings,\u201d Lewis said.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor and director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, said in an email that it\u2019s not necessary for people to know the origins of the posts for them to be effective messages.
\u201cPropaganda works well when it gets people to transfer warm feelings from prior experiences or histories or movements to something new,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s an effective persuasive tactic and very intentional in terms of trying to get Americans to fall in line behind ICE, behind mass deportations, and to come along and onboard this patriotic journey to set things right again.\u201d
So far, outcry is limited. While many on social media have pointed out the connections, few if any prominent Democrats have weighed in on them. Some who have been supportive of Trump appear unconcerned.
Sam Markstein, communications director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in an email asking about the social media posts: \u201cRepublicans won\u2019t be lectured on so-called \u2018extremism\u2019 from a Democratic Party that cozies up to jihadi sympathizers, let tens of millions of illegal aliens pour into the country, believes men belong in women\u2019s bathrooms and sports leagues, and thinks that what\u2019s happening on the streets of Tehran, as courageous civilians protest a barbarous regime, is somehow equivalent to ICE enforcing immigration law in Minnesota.\u201d
Some of the experts that spoke to NBC News stressed that the posts could resonate well beyond social media and that the phrases and visuals used by the Trump administration could serve multiple purposes: benign messaging to the public at large, signals of approval to extremists and fodder for social media attention.
\u201cIn the current technological moment, it\u2019s less about ideological precision, more about rhetorical and political impact of messaging,\u201d Heather Woods, an associate professor at Kansas State University who studies the social impacts of technology, said in an email.
\u201cThe benefit for the administration is that these images \u2014 often shared directly on social media or tailor-made to go viral on social after the fact \u2014 generate a great deal of interest and attention,\u201d Woods added.
\u201cThe fact that we are debating whether or not they are specifically aligned with a particular ideology is, in fact, amplifying their messaging,\u201d she continued.
Futrell, the University of Nevada professor, also stressed that overt references to extremist texts were only part of the concern and that other terms and ideas that were once confined to the fringes had made their way to the highest echelons of government \u2014 something that has not gone unnoticed in far-right circles.
\u201cSo you\u2019ve got terms like invasion, re-migration, cultural decline, they look like ordinary politics to casual readers, but they function as really recognizable signals inside far-right networks,\u201d Futrell said.
Jason Abbruzzese is the assistant managing editor of tech and science for NBC News Digital.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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