DHS Posts Video That includes Music Fashionable 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 track that turned 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 businesses 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 track within the video, MGMT’s “Little Darkish Age,” was launched in 2018, although it’s been slowed all the way down to an absurd diploma. And whereas nothing within the track suggests sympathy with far-right ideology (fairly the other, the truth is), the track 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 suppose tank that tracks international extremism on-line, revealed a study in 2021 that famous how well-liked the track was with Nazis. One instance used within the report reveals how the track was paired on TikTok with a slideshow of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founding father of the American Nazi Social gathering, who was killed in 1967.

However the report additionally explains how well-liked the track 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 track 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 concerning the track is smart as a ballad for the far-right, as you may see from a few of 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 might in all probability flip and run
If you happen to get off the bed, come discover us heading for the bridge
Carry a stone, all the fashion, my little darkish age

The Guardian described the far-right’s affinity for the track in an article from 2024: “Actually, its adoption doesn’t say a lot on your common neo-Nazi’s skill 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 each 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 concerning the track and highlighted a quote from MGMT co-founder Ben Goldwasser that reads, “A whole lot of instances, there isn’t a deeper that means.” DHS didn’t reply to a follow-up query about who could have created the video.

That form 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 meant to sign to People simply how excessive the company has turn into.

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 an announcement much like that of a petulant child.

However folks on social media know what the track “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 folks.” And plenty of far-right accounts on X clearly understood the message that was meant by posting a video with that track.

“Dhs is posting little darkish age edits. Loopy timeline on our palms,” wrote one account that includes a profile image of an anime character sporting 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 track 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 sporting gasoline masks whereas arresting folks amid a haze of smoke.

Clearly, while you begin speaking about obscure corners of the far-right web whereas utilizing phrases like fashwave it will possibly 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.