The US Department of Homeland Security posted a bizarre new video on social media platforms on Thursday that features Federal agents arresting protesters who have arrested protesters in Portland, Oregon. The video uses a song well known among Nazis and white Suracists to tail the end of President Donald Trump’s first name, in what appears to have been a dog whistle to the right arsonists.
DHS posted the video, “The end of the dark ages, the beginning of the Golden Age“On sites like X and Instagram, as well as a link to the snow rental website. The video was also sent to Bluesky, a social media platform that has many organizations that joined last week to pull its previous userbase.
The end of the dark ages, the beginning of the Golden Age. pic.twitter.com/6trdcb6tw2
– Homeland Security (@dhsgov) October 23, 2025
The song in the video, MGMT “darkness” by Mgmt, “was released in 2018, although it was reduced to something absurd. And although there is nothing in the song that raises sympathy in the right sense (on the contrary, in fact), the song was accepted by the creators of the right content in late 2020 to pair with images of the night and the Nazis.
The strategic discussion center, a British think tank that follows global extremism, published a study in 2021 that noted how the song was popular with the Nazis. One example used in this report shows how a song was paired on TikTok about George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi party, who was killed in 1967.
But the report also explains how popular the song is to promote Esoteric Nazism, with memes and fictional characters with distant symbols such as sonnenrad or the black sun. The fact that this song is also dropped in a very promising way in the DHS video is one of the real videos that go viral in the early 2020s.
Also, there is nothing about the song that makes sense as a ballad on the right, as you can see from other songs, which seem to criticize police violence:
The police swear by God, the love they see from their gunsI know my friends and I can turn and runWhen you get out of bed, come get us a BridgeBring the stone, all the rage, my dark years
The Guardian explained the relevant relationship of the song’s case in the story from 2024: “Certainly, its discovery does not mean that your words are Neo-Nazi which is obvious, it is clear that you are facing brutal police violence.”
Gizmodo reached out to DHS for comment, and the agency responded angrily to our questions.
“Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it Nazi propaganda – this is bottom-barrel journalism. ‘ MGMT’s ‘Young Age’ is popular on both sides of politics. Go outside, touch the grass, and get an unregistered email,” said a DHS spokesperson.
The agency also posted a link to a 2022 article in Spin about the song and highlighted a quote from Mgmt Co-Founder Ben Goldwasser that read, “A lot of times, there’s no deeper meaning.” DHS did not respond to a follow-up question about who may have created the video.
That kind of response from DHS is to be expected. The far right always works in a world of irrational denial. But since President Trump returned to office in January, DHS has revealed a lot of fascist content intended to be clear to Internals, the agency’s most trusted agency.
Back in August, the border patrol, which is part of the DHS, posted a video on Instagram and Facebook with antisemitic lyrics “geike me,” which only received widespread attention last week. Border Patrol removed the video and re-uploaded it with new music, but never explained why it was posted in the first place. The agency just sent a statement like a petulant child.
But social media people know that the song “Little Dark Ages” can mean. One right-wing political commentator on X even had the idea back in July, writing, “DHS should drop the ridiculous young age just to be organized to fuck people. ” And many right-wing accounts on X understood exactly the message that the video was intended to send with that song.
“DHS is posting lower age lines.
Another extreme account-topped the dhs video with, “good job @dhs! You caught what it was 4 years ago!” That account included the upload of another video, which shows Adolf Hitler and the text “12 years not a slave,” and a photo from black and white stramples in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the year 2019.
It’s not just DHS’s chosen song that suggests the agency knows what it’s doing. The scene in Homeland Security’s “Little Age of Security” is a beautiful scene, using footage from the protests in Portland and the glitchy aesthetic that is common among the most famous creators. .
Obviously, when you start talking about the unseen corners of the Internet while using words like fashwave it can sound a little sinister. These are just internet memes, after all. But there is a visual language that has grown online in the middle right. And while the DHS would insist that it does not intend for it to be interpreted as Nazi propaganda, there are plenty of Online Nazis who believe otherwise.
