Union leaders have accused the Trump administration of a “rhetorical shift towards white supremacy” after social media posts by the US Department of Labor drew comparison with a Nazi slogan.
Recent posts from the agency include a video captioned “remember who you are, American”, with the phrase: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage.”
Users of X, formerly Twitter, and Grok, the platform’s AI tool, highlighted a similarity with the Nazi slogan: “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“one people, one realm, one leader”).
“The similarity to that Nazi slogan is bad,” Christopher Hayes, a labor historian and professor at Rutgers University, told the Guardian, expressing alarm over “the motivation behind it, the message, the sentiment and desired outcome”.
Jimmy Williams Jr, general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, said the labor department had repeatedly imitated “far-right and fascist imagery” online: “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”
Puneet Maharaj, executive director of National Nurses United, the largest nurses’ union in the US, added: “It is no surprise that a fascist regime would post fascist propaganda on a fascist social media network like X, but it remains concerning to see the DOL making posts that serve a fascist, white supremacist agenda.”
The Department of Labor did not comment on the agency’s specific rhetoric on social media. “The social media campaign was created to celebrate American workers and the American Dream,” a spokesperson said.
The campaign has triggered a chorus of criticism, alarmed historians and senior figures in the labor movement, and concerned workers inside the agency.
“The whole point is to demonize the foreign worker, to convince the white working-class vision of the guy who loves Trump,” said Hayes. “The point is to convince that guy [that] he is the real American, he has been all along, and people like him made this country, and only people like him, so only people like him belong. It’s the same thing the Nazis did.”
Nazi propaganda featured “idealized smiling Germans with these grandiose slogans … about what your country is doing, how great your country is, what you can do for it, and it erases the other,” said Hayes. “The other, in the case of Germany, was the Jew.”
Under Trump, the labor department has published artwork, apparently generated by artificial intelligence (AI), depicting only white male workers. “Primarily here we have a lot of others, and they’re all erased in those montages,” added Hayes.
Other posts by the labor department frequently cite “Americanism”, decry “globalism” and tout misleading claims that all US job gains under Trump have gone to “native born” Americans.
Maharaj, of National Nurses United, said the agency’s posts form “part of a broader rhetorical shift towards white supremacy that many federal departments and agencies are undergoing under the Trump administration”.
“There are no words strong enough to condemn the propagandistic use of federal departments and their social media channels towards the administration’s ends, which are clearly to harm working people and to benefit billionaires, regardless of immigration status for either,” she added.
Williams Jr, of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, said: “There is a very clear through-line between the administration’s fascist imagery and their violent behavior, like what we all just saw in Minneapolis when Renee Good was killed by an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent.”
Inside the labor department, the agency’s rhetoric has also caused consternation.
A labor department employee, not authorized to speak publicly, described the recent social media activity as “radical and ideological”, and said they feared such posts undermine trust in the agency.
“Fear reduces reporting, cooperation and early resolution. Those outcomes harm workers first and weaken the agency’s mission,” they said. “Political tone on official channels creates discomfort for career staff and weakens credibility with workers and employers. I wish the Department of Labor would remember who they are and what they do.”
A former labor department staffer, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the rhetoric is “disturbing and harkens back to a whites-only era”, adding: “When they publish posts that decry ‘globalism’, as a Jew, I recognize that as an antisemitic dog whistle.”
Another former official at the agency, who also requested anonymity, citing fears of harassment, said the department’s social media profiles were previously a place where workers and employers could find important information, developed by policy experts.
“Now it’s a place where they can find AI slop developed by a 23-year-old, with no discernible insights on work or workers,” they said. “What a difference a year makes.”
