DHS, White House Used White Nationalist Song in ICE Recruitment Materials

Department of Homeland Security and White House Share Content Linked to White Nationalist Group

Federal government social media accounts have come under scrutiny after sharing content directly connected to a secretive white nationalist organization, according to an investigation of posts and archival materials.

On January 9, multiple Department of Homeland Security (DHS) communications staff accounts posted an image with the caption “We’ll have our home again” on Facebook and X. The image featured a man in a cowboy hat riding through a snowy field with a military plane overhead, alongside a link to apply to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Instagram versions of the post, which appeared on both DHS and White House feeds, included lyrics from a song titled “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” attributed to a group called the Pine Tree Riots. This organization has been identified as an a cappella group affiliated with the Mannerbund, a self-described “fraternity for right-wing men” or “pro-White fraternal order” previously listed as a white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This isn’t the first instance of DHS using imagery associated with white nationalist movements. In October, the agency tweeted a video featuring the “Moon Man” character, which had been co-opted by white nationalists and neo-Nazis in the mid-2010s. Another post shared an image of Uncle Sam with the caption “Which way, American man?” – echoing the title of an influential white nationalist book called “Which Way Western Man?” published by the neo-Nazi National Alliance in 1978.

The song “We’ll Have Our Home Again” was released by Pine Tree Riots on various streaming platforms in 2020. Other songs by the group include one with lyrics referencing the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists clashed with protesters and one extremist murdered an antiracist activist.

Open Measures, an organization monitoring social media activity, identified over 450 posts sharing the song on Telegram since 2020, with nearly all coming from white supremacist channels. Since its release, the song has been played or sung at rallies and events by extremist groups including the Proud Boys, and used in recruitment posts by prominent white supremacist organizations.

The Mannerbund, which takes its name from a German word meaning “alliance of men,” was apparently launched in late 2019 by individuals using the pseudonyms “Nam” and “Apache.” In blog posts and podcast appearances, Mannerbund affiliates have described it as modeled after social clubs like the Elks or Freemasons, but with explicitly white nationalist goals.

“The bond that we’re creating is the seed of an eventual government,” wrote one of the founders in a 2019 blog post on the now-deleted Mannerbund website.

Though supposedly “not a public facing organization,” the Mannerbund gained attention within white nationalist circles through the song. On a 2020 episode of the white nationalist podcast “Full Haus,” Nam attributed the song’s lyrics to a member of the group and described recording it after a “powerful moment” singing it together.

The Pine Tree Riots name references a 1772 uprising where American colonists rebelled against British crown restrictions on white pine timber. While the song’s lyrics don’t specifically mention race, they evoke imagery consistent with blood-and-soil nationalism popular among white supremacists: “In our towns we’re foreigners now, our names are spat and cursed,” reads one verse.

After DHS shared the content, an X account called pine_tree_riots responded to commenters who described the post as a “dog whistle,” writing that it’s “not really a ‘dog whistle’… it’s all pretty explicitly laid out in the lyrics.”

Mannerbund’s social media accounts portray the group as explicitly whites-only. In a 2020 podcast appearance with members of the Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi organization linked to racist violence, Nam described Mannerbund as a group “for white men” with a national leadership structure and local “lodge leaders” handling operations, vetting, and events.

The organization has documented connections to identified white nationalist figures, including Matthew Gebert, a former Department of State employee who was removed after being identified as a white nationalist activist in 2019. Gebert introduced Nam and Mannerbund on his podcast and, along with his co-host Michael McKevitt, encouraged listeners interested in the group to reach out.

A Telegram account associated with Mannerbund shared links to the DHS posts referencing “We’ll Have Our Home Again” on January 9, indicating the group was aware of the federal agency’s use of their content.