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Which way, western man?

That was the title of a racist tract published in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a former leftist Christian pastor turned one of the most influential neo-Nazi ideologues in American history. The book helped radicalize an entire generation of white supremacists in the US, with its vicious antisemitism, opposition to all forms of immigration, and open praise for Hitler. The purpose of the book, wrote Simpson, was “to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the white man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all”.

In recent decades, Which way, western man? has become a popular meme – but only on the far-right fringes of the internet.

Until, that is, the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Last August, the X account of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted an ICE recruitment poster featuring an Uncle Sam figure holding a “law and order” sign while standing by a crossroads post featuring arrows reading “invasion” and “cultural decline”. The DHS caption? “Which way, American man?”

We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is exactly how they start

Shocking? Yes. Coincidence? Nope. Earlier this month, the official White House Twitter account posted a cartoon of Greenlandic huskies with Danish flags on their sleds facing a choice between the White House on one side and China’s Great Wall and Russia’s Red Square on the other. The White House’s caption? “Which way, Greenland man?”

It should be one of the biggest stories in the United States, if not the world. Eighty years after the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US government, in the form of the Trump administration, has a Nazi problem.

Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the copious amounts of evidence. On social media, as recent investigations by CNN, NBC News and PBS NewsHour have all confirmed, official government accounts can’t stop posting Nazi imagery and memes, using dehumanizing language about migrants, and leaning heavily into fascist aesthetics.

The Department of Labor posted a video with the caption “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”, recalling the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“one people, one realm, one leader”). Another tweet from the Department of Labor announced that “America is for Americans,” which sounds a lot like another notorious Nazi slogan: “Deutschland den Deutschen (“Germany for Germans”).

And the Nazi rhetoric goes far beyond internet memes. Earlier this month, DHS secretary Kristi Noem stood behind a podium which said “One of ours, all of yours” – a phrase that “seems related to the practice (although not the explicit policy) of collective punishment used by the Nazis against their enemies”, according to Holocaust historian Page Herrlinger. Last year, the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, gave a demagogic speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service that sounded like it had been plagiarized from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s 1932 speech The Storm is Coming. Even the myth-busting website Snopes could not help but “observe the similarities” between Miller and Goebbels’s fascist rhetoric.

Then there is the staffing issue. In February 2025, it emerged that James Rodden, an ICE prosecutor in Texas, had been running a social media account praising Hitler and declaring that “America is a white nation”. This is a federal prosecutor – not a teenager or a troll – pushing Nazi ideology. He was pulled from his post after the story first broke, but this month it appears he returned to work. When the Texas Observer, which broke the story, called Rodden for comment, he had none, and referred reporters to his press office.

Then there’s Paul Ingrassia, the former White House liaison to the DHS now serving as acting general counsel at the General Services Administration, who once allegedly declared in a group chat: “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.” In June 2024, he was also spotted at a rally in Detroit headlined by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. (In a statement to Politico, Ingrassia’s attorney said about alleged leaked text messages: “Looks like these texts could be manipulated or are being provided with material context omitted. However, arguendo, even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor making fun of the fact that liberals outlandishly and routinely call MAGA supporters ‘Nazis’.”)

There’s also Ed Martin, the pardon attorney at the Trump DoJ, who appeared at multiple events with a 6 January rioter called Timothy Hale-Cusanelli and referred to him as an “amazing guy”, “extraordinary leader”, and “great friend”. Hale-Cusanelli was described by federal prosecutors as a “Nazi sympathizer” who went to work in a “Hitler mustache”. (Martin has since gone on to distance himself from Hale-Cusanelli after scrutiny and has condemned his views.)

How does this rhetoric and behavior from Trump administration officials and social media accounts not amount to the normalization of Nazis and Nazism? And how are the rest of us supposed to be OK with any of this?

As ever, the rot of course starts at the top with Trump himself. His own vice-president once suggested he might be “America’s Hitler” (regarding his vocal critiques of Trump, he has since said “I was wrong”). Trump’s first wife said he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. (Trump said he was “given the book by a friend”.) Trump has repeatedly used language lifted straight out of the pages of Mein Kampf, denouncing his political opponents as “vermin” and accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

In 2022, he hosted Ye, a Hitler admirer, and Fuentes, the Holocaust denier, for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. (While Trump has reportedly distanced himself from Fuentes, he stopped short of condemning or denouncing him.) During his first term, the president’s own former chief of staff claimed Trump spoke admiringly of Hitler and said he did “some good things”. (In a lawsuit against CNN, Trump alleged that any suggestion that he “would be Hitler-like in any future political role” is “false and incendiary”, as it is to suggest any association between [himself] and Hitler”. The lawsuit was dismissed.)

To be clear: this isn’t about calling everyone the left disagrees with a Nazi, as Trump administration spokespersons like to claim; it’s about recognizing when actual Nazis are not just right in front of us but in power. So here’s a simple rule for Trump and his friends: if you don’t want to be called Nazis, stop hiring Nazis, quoting Nazis, and posting Nazi imagery.

But don’t expect any of that to stop any time soon. In his first term, the president praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” and then his acolytes spent years desperately denying he had ever done so. Today, there is very little denial, shame, or contrition. The United States government under Trump has made a deliberate, calculated, and shameful decision to embolden and enable Nazi-glorifying elements within his party; to elevate and amplify Nazi messaging.

Don’t take my word for it. Last year, Dalton Henry Stout, founder of the neo-Nazi Aryan Freedom Network, said the quiet part out loud: “[Trump] awakened a lot of people to the issues we’ve been raising for years. He’s the best thing that’s happened to us.”

Stout went even further: “Our side won the election.”

• Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo

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Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the copious amounts of evidence

‘Eighty years after the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US government, in the form of the Trump administration, has a Nazi problem.’ Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

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