- DHS’s official X account engaged with a known white nationalist influencer, sparking backlash and accusations the agency is normalizing extremist figures.
- Critics say DHS social media borrows far-right tropes and dog whistles, raising concerns about agency ideology and priorities on domestic extremism.
WASHINGTON—In the hyper-charged world of government social media, where every like and retweet can ignite a firestorm, the Department of Homeland Security just handed critics a match.
On Monday, the agency’s official X account fired off a provocative post—”SEND THEM BACK,” paired with the stark caption “You have a duty, American”—aimed at rallying support for its aggressive immigration crackdown.
What followed was a thread that veered straight into controversy: a lighthearted reply to a user known online as Hermes, whose digital footprint is littered with white nationalist rhetoric, anti-Semitic memes, and outright Nazi imagery.
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Hermes, an American influencer who keeps his real name under wraps, shot back: “I like the propaganda and all but let’s actually start rounding them up.”
Instead of ignoring the escalatory bait, DHS’s account quipped, “Working on it!”
The exchange, which unfolded in real time on X, quickly drew a torrent of backlash from users who saw it as the federal government flirting with the fringes.
“Why is [an] official government account engaging with an actual Nazi?” one commenter fumed. Another piled on: “Why tf is the gov interacting with Nazis bro.” A third cut straight to it: “You just replied to an actual Nazi.”
This isn’t some anonymous troll getting a pass—Hermes has built a brand around inflammatory content.
His YouTube channel, @hermesdiditagain, features street interviews laced with racial provocations, like “Why are criminals always black?” or “Should Blacks use self-checkout?” and even “Can we have white pride?”
His merch site, Good Goy Apparel, peddles T-shirts with slogans such as “I hope I don’t get stabbed for being white today,” alongside designs dripping with homophobic and anti-Semitic undertones.
Just this month, he shared a screenshot of a post promoting Nazi symbols, including a photo of an Adolf Hitler swastika ring.
It’s the kind of online ecosystem that thrives on outrage, and DHS’s nod felt like an unwelcome endorsement to many.
Mass Implications of the Incident
The incident lands like a gut punch amid a broader pattern that’s had watchdogs sounding alarms for months.
Under Secretary Kristi Noem—often dubbed “ICE Barbie” for her photo-op-heavy stunts in Immigration and Customs Enforcement gear—the department’s X feed has leaned hard into visuals and phrasing that echo far-right talking points.
Take the August recruitment graphic: an AI-tweaked Uncle Sam poster urging folks to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” which originated from a white nationalist account run by someone whose bio screams “Wake Up White Man.”
Or the “Which way, American man?” caption on another post, a not-so-subtle riff on William Gayley Simpson’s 1978 white supremacist tome Which Way Western Man?, a staple in neo-Nazi reading lists that rails against Jewish influence and pushes eugenics.
Southern Poverty Law Center researchers have tracked how these posts borrow from “extremist numerology and iconography” straight out of neo-Nazi and Christian nationalist playbooks, all while ramping up ICE recruitment.
One July tweet featured John Gast’s 1872 painting American Progress, showing a white-robed Columbia goddess ushering settlers westward while Native Americans scatter into shadow—a romanticized nod to Manifest Destiny that justified Indigenous genocide.
DHS captioned it: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending,” with those telltale capitalized H’s that some decode as “Heil Hitler” in far-right code (HH for the eighth letter).
Another post swapped in a Thomas Kinkade scene of a pristine 1950s town with “Protect the Homeland,” evoking white nationalist fantasies of a lily-white, pre-diversity America.
Even Kinkade’s estate pushed back, slamming the use of his work to “promote division and xenophobia.”
Racists Subliminal Messages or Just Speculation?
And then there’s “remigrate.” On October 15, DHS dropped the single-word tweet linking to a self-deportation portal—a term experts say has been weaponized by European far-right groups for mass ethnic expulsions to preserve “white ethnic purity.”
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a extremism researcher, called it a potential “dog whistle” that white supremacists would lap up, even if unintended: “They should choose a different word because (remigrate) is a signal.”
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin waved it off, tweeting a dictionary definition—”to migrate again; migrate back; return”—and snarking to The Daily Beast: “Is the English language too difficult for you?”
When pressed on the “Which way” phrase, she told Newsweek: “Where are we quoting a white supremacist?”
Defenders might argue it’s all in service of a tough-on-immigration mandate, especially with top DHS brass pulled from anti-immigrant circles in the second Trump term.
The feed’s vibe—chained deportees on planes captioned “literally anywhere but here,” AI-generated white dudes with eagles and machine guns—plays like a meme war against “invasion” narratives.
But critics, including historians, see it as a slide toward Christian nationalist undertones, with posts like a pioneer family in a wagon captioned “New Life in a New Land” glossing over the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples.
This isn’t DHS’s first brush with accusations of downplaying domestic threats while amplifying others.
A 2020 whistleblower complaint revealed orders to soft-pedal intelligence on white supremacists and Russia, while hyping antifa—echoing claims that the agency under Trump marginalized far-right violence.
Earlier drafts labeled white supremacists the “gravest terror threat,” but political appointees reportedly balked at calling their attacks “domestic terrorism.”
Fast-forward to 2019, when then-Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan did elevate white supremacist extremism in a strategy update, calling it “an abhorrent affront” after the El Paso shooting hit close to home—six victims tied to DHS staff.
Yet here we are, six years later, with the agency’s online presence looking less like counterterrorism and more like a wink to the very ideologies it once vowed to fight.
What comes next?
As the Hermes dust-up ripples out, it underscores a deeper unease: In chasing viral engagement for border security, is DHS normalizing the extremists in its mentions?
The department and Hermes didn’t respond to requests for comment, but the outrage on X suggests the damage is done.
For an agency born from 9/11’s ashes, flirting with the ghosts of history’s worst chapters feels like a risky pivot—one that could haunt far beyond a single tweet.
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