Supremacist propaganda at the White House: ‘Help your country, report foreign invaders’

At arguably the most tense moment for the Trump administration since January 20—with direct clashes between citizens and police forces over the government’s strict anti-immigration policies—the White House has echoed a supremacist message that its followers have been spreading on social media, in public places, and even on an online sales site for $17.95. It’s a poster depicting Uncle Sam asking Americans for help in reporting the whereabouts of every undocumented immigrant in the United States.

The figure of Uncle Sam, who at the beginning of the last century lent himself to recruiting soldiers for the First and Second World Wars (“I want you for the U.S. Army,” those signs famously read), or in another version also served to attract voters (“I want you to vote”), is now becoming a symbol of an anti-immigrant campaign that seeks to reach a quota of some 3,000 daily arrests, or the equivalent of more than a million in the first year of the Republican administration. The new sign sends a clear message: “Help your country... and yourself... report all foreign invaders.”

The official White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accounts, which shared the image, accompanied it with a phone number for reporting “criminal activity” to ICE. The government and its federal agencies have thus endorsed the message originally posted by an X user, identified on the social network as the author of “war propaganda” and a self-confessed white supremacist.

The user, who goes by the handle Mr. Robert and claims authorship of the poster, posts “Wake up, white man”-style messages almost daily. Still, not even Mr. Robert expected his rhetoric to get so far, and he himself has expressed astonishment that even the White House had embraced this version of the Uncle Sam poster.

He didn’t think it was going to have much of an impact, he wrote in a message on X, although he expressed pride in the fact that “his efforts” are reaching the highest levels. He even ventured to say that “maybe the Great White Hope, The Big Donald will put eyes on it.”

Mr. Robert’s message is in line with the one Donald Trump has been sending out since taking office. White supremacy as an ideology has been present in Washington ever since the first executive orders signed in the Oval Office attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, denying international students access to universities like Harvard, restricting entry to the country to people from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, and stripping migrants of all protections so that they will choose to deport themselves.

In his second term, Trump has also pardoned members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were involved in the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

The controversial poster has generated all kinds of reactions: some have expressed disbelief after seeing it shared by federal authorities, while others have applauded and praised it for being consistent with Trump’s bombastic slogan of “Make America Great Again.” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration attorney and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was astonished by the message. “This country is in serious trouble,” he wrote on X. “I am deeply concerned about this country and about the continuation of all the things that truly made us great: the rule of law, equal rights for all, and a professional civil service.”

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