They’re Echoing Nazis. It’s Not an Accident. It’s a Strategy

When fascists tell you who they are, believe them.

The Trump Administration is resurrecting the visuals, slogans, and symbols of Nazi Germany and of American white nationalists. Do not be fooled — this is not accidental. These displays of fascism are strategic.

Of course, when confronted about the vile trend, Trump administration officials cry foul — presenting a facade of innocence: It is offensive that anyone could perceive these posters, slogans, and fashion statements as anything inappropriate.

Take the Department of Homeland Security’s reaction to backlash over an ICE recruitment poster stating: “We’ll have our home again.” Extremism experts immediately linked the slogan to a white nationalist anthem, with the same lyrics, favored by the Proud Boys. (The Instagram version of the DHS post, since deleted, reportedly even played the song.) But when asked about the controversy on CNN, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin played dumb: “‘We will have our home again’ is now a white nationalist dog whistle!?” McLaughlin then accused “embarrassing” slogan critics of “manufacturing fake outrage.”

President Trump and his top advisors have bristled at similar charges. “They call me a Nazi all the time,” Trump scoffed during a 60 Minutes interview in November. “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite.” A month prior, White House deputy Stephen Miller blasted actor Robert De Niro for likening him to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Their indignation is a ploy — a hypnotizing tantrum. They aim to deceive average Americans, of whom they ask for the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, the administration is using lightly-coded visuals and language to signal to its allies on the radical right that they stand with them, not with us.

The visual evidence speaks for itself. Let’s look at four examples.

Exhibit #1

In January, the White House posted an AI-altered image of Black organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, a former NAACP chapter president who was arrested for organizing an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church. The administration leaned into a double whammy of stereotypes, distorting the stern-faced civil-rights activist into a hysterical, cartoonish woman. They darkened her skin, inflated her body, and ballooned her face. Creating exaggerated and harmful caricatures of Black Americans is nothing new — it is a bedrock of white supremacist propaganda, as seen in the Jim Crow era card below:

New York Historical Society Library

Exhibit #2

National Digital Archive of Poland

Governor Newsom Press Office@GovPressOffice

Wow. Greg Bovino admits he’s owned his nazi style coat since the 1990s. His admiration goes even deeper than we thought.

11:12 PM · Jan 23, 2026 · 207K Views

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780 Replies · 1.05K Reposts · 7.18K Likes

In December, then-Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino donned an alarming uniform that embodied the aesthetic worst of Nazi leaders, like Heinrich Himmler. California Governor Gavin Newsom observed that Bovino looked as if he “literally went on eBay and purchased S.S. garb.”

While Bovino denied his overcoat was Nazi costuming, he still made it his signature style. He attempted to project order and dominance as he patrolled the streets flanked by haphazardly uniformed Border Patrol agents. German journalists saw clear parallels. Der Spiegel writer Arno Frank noted that Bovino “stands out from this thuggish mob, just as an elegant SS officer stands out from the rowdy SA [Nazi paramilitary] mob.”

Exhibit #3

ICE.gov

Miami University’s Digital Collections Library

When launching its “Defend The Homeland” recruitment campaign for ICE officers, DHS mixed white-nationalist sentiment with a patriotic call to duty. (The recruiting materials that accompany the poster declare: “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.”) In 1964, the Klu Klux Klan preached much the same message — “Save Our Land” — seeking new members to maintain a country they viewed as owed to them because of the “God-given supremacy of the white race.”

Exhibit #4

© Art.IWM PST 8398

In January, the Department of Labor championed a “One Homeland” motto, in an almost direct pull from Adolf Hitler’s One Reich slogan. With one distinct substitution — of “heritage” for “leader” — the dog whistle grows into a megaphone.

A Dark Renaissance

Many of the Trump administration’s visuals and slogans demonstrate a disturbing — and it seems intentional — embrace of fascist tradition from Hitler’s Europe. The Reich’s propaganda machine dedicated itself to ostracization and dehumanization. Jewish people, political opponents, communists, and other groups were declared “undesirables” and “enemies of the state.” The Nazis revoked these groups’ legal status, leaving German-born individuals as either second-class citizens or illegal occupants. Why? It is easier to carry out fascist policies when the public is manipulated — either too scared of retaliation to fight back, or viewing the regime’s victims as subhuman or somehow deserving of their suffering.

We’re seeing a similar pattern from the Trump administration. In an egregious X post last November, DHS blamed a long list of American economic woes on the “tens of millions of criminal illegals in our country.” The post condemned immigrants for everything from high rent to unaffordable healthcare and signed off with an appalling call to action: “Many problems. A simple answer.” Hitler likewise blamed Jewish people and others for the Great Depression. The Nazis propagandized that without these undesirable groups, the economy, public safety, and culture would flourish once again. With this demonization, the Nazi leaders justified the “Final Solution.”

Our Own Atrocious History

Many have (correctly) flagged the parallels between Trumpian propaganda and Nazi indoctrination. But as the visuals above demonstrate, the administration is also dredging up symbols and propaganda from America’s own past — ranging from the Jim Crow South to the organized terror of the KKK. This is an all-American history so gruesome that it actually inspired the Nazis’ reign of terror. As the poet Langston Huges wrote in 1936: “Fascism is the new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America.”

Such racial terror was also inflicted on Hispanic Americans in the 1930s under the Hoover administration. The administration condemned “Mexicans” for the Great Depression and spurred a grotesque partnership between the government and big businesses under a racist policy known as “American Jobs for Real Americans.” They expelled Mexicans from the job market, yanked their legal status, and initiated widespread, violent deportations. The raids expelled an estimated 1 million “Mexicans.” However, as many as 60 percent of the deportees were actually American citizens.

In the runup to the 2024 election, Stephen Miller took to the stage in Madison Square Garden and directly echoed the language of this sinister chapter, declaring: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Even the branding of Trump’s “America First” movement revives a slogan from a xenophobic, isolationist movement from the 1930s, whose parallels to the Nazis of the same era were so obvious that Dr. Seuss satirized them in his cartoons.

Why Is This Their Strategy?

Why is the Trump administration anchoring itself to these fascist tactics? Well, historically, it works. Right wing propaganda has won many cases in the court of public opinion — by preaching that state violence against vulnerable groups benefits public safety or helps secure “white race dominance.”

The current administration’s “dog whistles” also serve another dark purpose: to recruit and integrate white nationalists and other extremists into federal law enforcement, including ICE and the Border Patrol. Trump is now building paramilitary forces whose first allegiance is to him — not to the American people or the constitution.

Vice President J.D. Vance confirmed this when he boldly — and falsely — proclaimed that federal ICE agents enjoy “full immunity” from prosecution. The kind of lawless paramilitary violence Vance invoked has American roots. In the pre-Civil War era, slave patrols also acted “without warrant or permission” and enjoyed free reign to enter homes, arrest, and brutalize Black individuals regardless of their freedman status. (After the Civil War, thuggish slave patrols skirted accountability for their violence and instead morphed into southern police departments.)

This is why it is vital we understand that fascist — and even Nazi — ideology is deeply ingrained in American history. Extremist sentiment may withdraw to the edges of society in times of progress, but it doesn’t disappear. Instead, it waits for ripe conditions, and then reemerges, uglier than before.

As reflected in the visuals above, these dark ideas continue to pop up and infest our society. If left unaddressed fascist propaganda will remain a potent threat. It is past time that America’s white supremacist roots are exposed, ripped up, and prevented from anchoring again.

Ciera Stone is the Editorial Associate of The Contrarian