DHS Posts Video That includes Tune Widespread With Nazi Creators

The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety posted a weird new video to social media platforms on Thursday that includes footage of federal brokers arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. The video makes use of a music that grew to become highly regarded amongst Nazis and white supremacists on the tail finish of President Donald Trump’s first time period, in what seems to be a canine whistle to far-right extremists.

DHS captioned the video, “Finish of the Darkish Age, starting of the Golden Age,” on websites like X and Instagram, together with a hyperlink to the ICE recruitment web site. The video was additionally posted to Bluesky, the social media platform that many federal companies joined one week in the past to troll its extra liberal userbase.

Finish of the Darkish Age, starting of the Golden Age.https://t.co/nZkBEj3GGi pic.twitter.com/6TRdCB6Tw2

— Homeland Safety (@DHSgov) October 23, 2025

The music within the video, MGMT’s “Little Darkish Age,” was launched in 2018, although it’s been slowed right down to an absurd diploma. And whereas nothing within the music suggests sympathy with far-right ideology (fairly the other, in actual fact), the music was adopted by far-right content material creators in late 2020 to pair with Nazi and white supremacist imagery.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a British assume tank that tracks international extremism on-line, printed a study in 2021 that famous how well-liked the music was with Nazis. One instance used within the report exhibits how the music was paired on TikTok with a slideshow of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founding father of the American Nazi Get together, who was killed in 1967.

However the report additionally explains how well-liked the music has been to advertise esoteric Nazism, that includes memes and fictional characters with far-right symbols just like the Sonnenrad or Black Sun. The truth that the music can also be slowed down in a really exaggerated method within the DHS video is one other hallmark of the far-right movies that went viral within the early 2020s.

Once more, nothing in regards to the music is smart as a ballad for the far-right, as you may see from among the lyrics, which appear to be criticizing police violence:

Policemen swear to God, love seeping from their weapons
I do know my associates and I’d most likely flip and run
When you get off the bed, come discover us heading for the bridge
Convey a stone, all the fad, my little darkish age

The Guardian described the far-right’s affinity for the music in an article from 2024: “Actually, its adoption doesn’t say a lot in your common neo-Nazi’s capacity to know English. Little Darkish Age’s lyrics are, pretty clearly, an excoriation of Trump-era America and racist police violence.”

Gizmodo reached out to DHS for remark, and the company was characteristically indignant about our questions.

“Simply since you don’t like one thing doesn’t make it Nazi propaganda—that is backside barrel ‘journalism.’ MGMT’s ‘Little Darkish Age’ is wildly well-liked on either side of the political spectrum. Go outdoors, contact grass, and get a grip,” learn an unsigned e-mail, attributed to a “DHS spokesperson.”

The company additionally despatched a hyperlink to a 2022 article in Spin in regards to the music and highlighted a quote from MGMT co-founder Ben Goldwasser that reads, “Quite a lot of occasions, there isn’t a deeper which means.” DHS didn’t reply to a follow-up query about who might have created the video.

That type of response from DHS is to be anticipated, in fact. The far-right typically operates in a world of believable deniability. However since President Trump returned to workplace in January, DHS has posted plenty of fascist content clearly supposed to sign to People simply how excessive the company has turn out to be.

Again in August, Border Patrol, which is a part of DHS, posted a video to Instagram and Fb with the antisemitic lyrics “Jew me” and “kike me,” which solely gained widespread consideration final week. Border Patrol eliminated the video and reuploaded it with new music, however by no means defined why it was posted within the first place. The company simply despatched a press release just like that of a petulant child.

However individuals on social media know what the music “Little Darkish Age” can imply. One right-wing political commentator on X even had the thought back in July, writing, “DHS ought to drop a little bit darkish age edit simply to fuck with individuals.” And lots of far-right accounts on X clearly understood the message that was supposed by posting a video with that music.

“Dhs is posting little darkish age edits. Loopy timeline on our palms,” wrote one account that encompasses a profile image of an anime character carrying a Nazi hat.

One other extremist account quote-tweeted the DHS video with, “Good job @DHS! You caught as much as had been we the place 4 years in the past!” That account included an add of another video, which options Adolf Hitler together with the textual content “12 years not a slave,” and a screenshot from the livestreamed rampage of white supremacist terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

It’s not simply the music that DHS has chosen that implies the company is aware of what it’s doing. The imagery in Homeland Safety’s “Little Darkish Age” edit is fairly haunting, using footage from the protests at an ICE facility in Portland and a glitchy aesthetic that’s so frequent amongst so-called fashwave creators. (Sure, the fash stands for fascist.) The video options an “antifa” emblem that’s usurped by the DHS emblem, in addition to clips of brokers carrying gasoline masks whereas arresting individuals amid a haze of smoke.

Clearly, once you begin speaking about obscure corners of the far-right web whereas utilizing phrases like fashwave it might probably sound a little bit foolish. These are simply web memes, in spite of everything. However there’s a visible language that has developed on-line among the many far-right. And whereas DHS can insist they didn’t intend for it to be interpreted as Nazi propaganda, there are many literal Nazis on-line who consider in any other case.