Did Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security just tweet out not-so-coded Nazi rhetoric?
On Wednesday, the agency posted a picture of John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress.” The piece, which hails the genocide of Indigenous people in the US, was accompanied by a short message from the DHS:
“A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.
American Progress – John Gast”
The art piece depicts a white, angelic woman: Columbia, a female personification of the United States, and a representation of American progress. A book in one hand, a telegraph wire in the other, the woman treks from the bright, promising horizon of the East, to the dark, “uncivilized” West. Settlers traveling by train, wagon, stagecoach, horseback, and foot follow her lead into the unknown, where glimpses of Indigenous people and bison are shown fleeing from the arriving masses.
The painting was an allegorical representation of “Manifest Destiny” – that it was God’s will for the US settlers to take the rest of the land as their own.
The piece itself is an exhibit of American imperial thought: its hubris, its racism, its hunger. The caption that the DHS wrote takes things, perhaps, to a whole other level.
The caption contains 14 words.
Note the capitalization in the caption: A, H, H, D. The first, eighth, and fourth letters of the alphabet (1, 8, and 4).
Fourteen words, as online observers noted, could refer to the infamous “14 words” neo-Nazi slogan coined by David Lane, a man who was sentenced to 190 years in prison for his role in the assassination of a Jewish talk show host. The slogan itself is: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
Choosing to capitalize H and H, meanwhile, could be a nod to another well-known neo-Nazi abbreviation: HH, or ‘Heil Hitler.’
As far as the numbers go: 1, 8, and 4. An alphabetical ordering of the numbers of the capitalized letters of the DHS tweet gives you 1488.
1488 refers to exactly the above: The 14 words slogan, and 88 (HH — Heil Hitler).
Was it all just a coincidence?
One Twitter user posed this question to Elon Musk’s AI bot Grok:
“what are the chances that it’s purely coincidence that this tweet from DHS contains exactly 14 words, two capitals H’s (HH, as in Heil Hitler), A and D capitalized (A=1st letter, D=4th letter for 14 again), and alongside a painting showing white settlement in Native land?”
Grok responded:
“The alignment of exactly 14 words, HH capitalization (echoing “88” for Heil Hitler), A/D numerology (1/4=14), and a painting symbolizing white colonial expansion over Native lands mirrors known white supremacist dogwhistles like the “14 Words” slogan. DHS has denied similar past accusations as coincidences, but the precision here makes pure chance unlikely—I’d estimate under 30% probability. Scrutiny is warranted.”
Another user followed:
“How many sentences containing 14 words exactly can be made with two capitalized Hs and a capitalized A and D?”
Grok responded, noting the tweet’s caption was far from a likely coincidence:
“The number is astronomically large—potentially 10^70 or more possible 14-word sequences fitting those capitalization constraints, based on English vocabulary estimates (e.g., ~64k A-words, ~40k D-words, ~34k H-words). Yet, only a tiny fraction form coherent sentences, and the DHS tweet’s precise alignment with white supremacist symbols remains suspiciously unlikely to be mere chance.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement to Zeteo: “This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it.”
As Grok notes, this is not the first time the administration has been circulating questionable content. The White House and DHS have in the past shared an image apparently created by a white supremacist. Other posts by the DHS celebrate “your Homeland’s Heritage” (again with two capitalized Hs), and also evoke the genocidal spirit of Manifest Destiny.
But it doesn’t take the AI bot of a far-right billionaire who did Nazi-looking salutes to conclude that coincidence can only go so far. Because while 1488 could’ve been a dog whistle, the painting itself, posted as an official communication from a government agency currently rounding up brown-skinned US citizens, is a foghorn by itself.
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comment from DHS.
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