On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a perplexing and deeply contentious video across multiple social media platforms, including X, Instagram, and Bluesky. The clip, which shows federal agents detaining protesters in Portland, Oregon, quickly drew widespread attention—not only for its content but also for its soundtrack and presentation. The video is accompanied by MGMT’s 2018 track *“Little Dark Age,”* a song that was inexplicably co-opted by far-right extremists, Nazis, and white supremacists during the final months of President Donald Trump’s first term. The peculiar choice of this song, paired with an overtly dramatic edit, appears to many observers as a subtle signal—what analysts often refer to as a “dog whistle”—intended to resonate with far-right communities online.
The DHS amplified the sense of provocation by captioning the video with the phrase “End of the Dark Age, beginning of the Golden Age.” This caption appeared on several platforms beside a link directing users to an ICE recruitment website, implicitly blending recruitment messaging with highly charged cultural imagery. The post even surfaced on Bluesky, a newer social network often associated with left-leaning audiences, where government agencies had recently joined—apparently in an attempt to mock or antagonize more liberal users.
The version of MGMT’s *“Little Dark Age”* chosen for the DHS video was modified: the tempo was notably slowed, stretching the track to an exaggerated and uncanny degree. The original song, which criticizes paranoia, alienation, and the social anxiety characteristic of modern times, contains no endorsement of extremist ideologies whatsoever. Nevertheless, beginning in late 2020, far-right content creators started pairing it with Nazi iconography and reactionary memes, giving the track an unintended, disturbing afterlife among extremist internet circles.
A 2021 report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank specializing in monitoring online extremism, analyzed this strange transformation. The study documented numerous instances where the song was matched with visual tributes to figures like George Lincoln Rockwell—the American Nazi Party’s founder, assassinated in 1967. The same report highlighted how *“Little Dark Age”* became emblematic of a strain of so-called “esoteric Nazism,” where digital extremists combined cryptic memes, occultist imagery, and symbols such as the *Sonnenrad* or Black Sun. The slowed-down, almost haunted quality of the DHS video’s version of the song further aligns it stylistically with those far-right edits that circulated online in the early 2020s.
Ironically, the lyrical content of *“Little Dark Age”* offers a message diametrically opposed to the violent ideology it was later appropriated to represent. The band’s words criticize state violence and authoritarian power, directly addressing themes like police brutality and societal breakdown. For this reason, publications like *The Guardian* have noted the absurdity of the far-right’s adoption of the track, describing it in a 2024 article as evidence that extremist groups often misunderstand or willfully reinterpret cultural works. According to the paper, MGMT’s song constitutes a lamentation of Trump-era divisions and systemic injustice, not a hymn to nationalism or racial hate.
When confronted by journalists about its rationale for using the track, the DHS responded with hostility rather than clarity. In a curt, unsigned email attributed to a departmental spokesperson, the agency dismissed inquiries as “bottom barrel journalism,” claiming that the song’s popularity spanned “both sides of the political spectrum.” The response ended with the exasperated remark “Go outside, touch grass, and get a grip,” language that seemed unusually undignified for an official government communication. The DHS also pointed reporters to a 2022 *Spin* article quoting MGMT co-founder Ben Goldwasser, who remarked that “a lot of times, there is no deeper meaning,” apparently to deflect questions about the artistic or ideological implications of the song’s use.
This defensive posture fits a larger pattern of behavior seen in far-right and authoritarian communication strategies, which rely heavily on plausible deniability. Agencies or groups operating in these ideological spaces often present extremist-adjacent content while maintaining a veneer of ambiguity, allowing them to deny any explicit endorsement. Observers argue that since President Trump’s return to office in January, DHS’s public messaging has increasingly echoed such tactics. Several of its recent social media posts have incorporated iconography and rhetoric evocative of fascist aesthetics, signaling a troubling shift in tone and institutional self-presentation.
A striking precedent occurred in August, when the U.S. Border Patrol—an agency under DHS—uploaded a promotional video to Facebook and Instagram containing a well-known song whose lyrics included explicitly antisemitic slurs. After public backlash, the video was quietly replaced with a new version featuring different music, but officials offered no meaningful explanation for the original choice. The terse, dismissive statement that followed mirrored the tone of the response to the *“Little Dark Age”* controversy, reflecting an organizational culture that appears defiant rather than reflective.
In online spaces, meanwhile, far-right commentators immediately recognized and celebrated the implications of DHS’s new video. A right-wing pundit on X had, even months earlier, proposed the idea that DHS should release a “Little Dark Age edit to mess with people,” suggesting that the choice was anything but coincidental. After the official post appeared, numerous extremist accounts expressed satisfaction, interpreting it as validation. One account, featuring an anime avatar wearing a Nazi-style cap, proclaimed disbelief at the “timeline” yet admiration for the apparent brazenness of the post. Another user applauded the DHS for “catching up” to the kind of propaganda they had circulated years before, adding archival footage of Adolf Hitler and referencing the Christchurch massacre perpetrator Brenton Tarrant—a chilling reminder of the real-world violence tied to such imagery.
Moreover, the visual composition of the DHS video reinforced these associations. Its editing style—a mixture of dark tonal filters, glitch transitions, and grainy footage of riot police—echoed the aesthetic known as “fashwave,” a genre born out of the fusion of fascist iconography and retro-futurist, synthwave-inspired visuals. This visual subculture thrives within the extremist internet ecosystem, where irony, nostalgia, and provocation intertwine. The DHS version incorporated images of smoke-filled streets, masked agents, and a distorted “antifa” emblem modified to include the DHS logo—a symbolic inversion that many interpreted as mocking anti-fascist activists.
While such online aesthetics might appear trivial or meme-based to casual observers, experts note that they constitute a complex form of communication—a semiotic system through which ideological allegiance is signaled. In this context, even if DHS insists that it did not intend to broadcast a nationalist or white supremacist message, the chosen imagery and soundtrack operate within a visual tradition unmistakably associated with far-right propaganda. Consequently, many viewers have concluded that the agency either lacks awareness of the cultural codes it is invoking or, more troublingly, is weaponizing that ambiguity deliberately.
In sum, the controversy surrounding the DHS “Little Dark Age” video serves as a case study in how cultural symbolism, digital aesthetics, and political messaging can intersect in disquieting ways. Whether the agency’s intent was negligent or purposeful, its actions reveal a profound misunderstanding—or manipulation—of how online extremist languages have evolved. In today’s hyper-connected media environment, where context determines meaning as much as content, even a single song choice can carry immense ideological weight.
Sourse: https://gizmodo.com/dhs-little-dark-age-nazi-video-2000676359
