Just days after Renee Good was shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent during an altercation in Minneapolis, Minn., ICE recruitment posts popped up on federal government social media accounts.
They featured the phrase “we’ll have our home again,” which is also the name of a song by the Pine Tree Riots Band, apparently named after riots preceding the American Revolution. A song that is associated with neo-Nazi groups, white supremacists and the Proud Boys, according to multiple sources.
Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, the song was released by the Pine Tree Riots on YouTube, Spotify and other streaming platforms in 2020. It noted that the group has also released a song with the lyrics: “Well, another Charlottesville wouldn’t do us any harm,” in an apparent reference to the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
“Open Measures, an organization that monitors social media activity, found over 450 posts sharing the song on the social media app Telegram since 2020,” said the SPLC. “Nearly all the posts, the group said on Bluesky, came from white supremacist channels.”
Salon reported that the “We’ll Have Our Home Again” lyrics equate “living in a diverse community with being oppressed,” and that it has become “an anthem for racist terrorists, neo-Nazi groups and, crucially, the Proud Boys.”
That group in particular – established by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes during the 2016 election season – has been linked to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot and has been identified by the SPLC as a hate group and by the Anti-Defamation League as “a right-wing extremist group with a history of using violence.” Proud Boys identify themselves as “Western chauvinists”
According to the George Washington University Program on Extremism, “the organization’s membership is open exclusively to men, recruiting potential members by appealing to what they perceive as the erosion of Western culture by feminists, socialists, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community in an ultimate plot to oppress men.”
“As a local journalist in California reported at the time, the Proud Boys covered their faces and sang [“We’ll Have Our Home Again”] at a November 2020 Sacramento event, vowing to ‘put ourselves on the line,’” to help current President Donald Trump. While Trump lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden, he claimed that the election was stolen from him and held a rally in Washington D.C. on that theme on the day that lawmakers gathered to approve electoral votes for Biden.
Last January, Audacy reported that Trump pardoned members of the Proud Boys arrested for involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. His administration has also put up a web page with its own claims about the riot.
In 2022, Deadline reported that veteran reporter Jonathan Choe was fired from a Seattle, Wash., ABC affiliate after sharing footage of a Proud Boys rally in Olympia, Wash. It featured “We’ll Have Our Home Again” and social media commenters accused him of being a white supremacist.
“Let me start off by saying I am not a neo-Nazi, fascist, or white supremacist,” Choe wrote on Medium. “Those are just some of the names I have been called over the past few days for my recent coverage of a protest in Olympia, WA. It was advertised as a ‘rally for America.’”
Lyrics from “We’ll Have Our Home Again” also opened the manifesto of Ryan Christopher Palmeter, The Intercept noted. He was a 21-year-old white supremacist who killed three Black people in a Jacksonville, Fla., Dollar Store in 2023.
Regarding the social media posts featuring “We’ll Have Our Home Again”, The Intercept said they are “part of a growing trend in which the federal government openly embraces the visual language of white supremacy.” Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem (who made news for admitting in her memoir that she shot her own dog that she “hated” and found “worthless”) has also leaned into mainstream pop music in messaging, The Intercept said.
“The approach backfired repeatedly, and the department now appears to be leaning on niche, neo-Nazi-beloved music,” said the outlet. It added that the DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ICE was established more than 20 years ago through the Homeland Security Act. Congress granted the agency with a “unique combination of civil and criminal authorities,” in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Salon said that “ICE’s current aesthetics owe much to the Proud Boys, from the masks they use to hide their identity and their corny but racist language about ‘heritage’ to their attachment to the phrase ‘FAFO,’ which is short for ‘eff around and find out.’” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also used that phrase recently when referring to captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
“Noem hasn’t just changed the way ICE presents itself,” said Salon. “The tactics the agency now uses and the ideas fueling its mission are eerily identical to the vision of the Proud Boys that McInnes laid out from the group’s very beginnings.”
This week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, even sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Noem “demanding records and information about the hiring of individuals connected to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and the use of face coverings by federal law enforcement officers to hide their identities.”
Audacy station WCCO News Talk in the Twin Cities also reported this week that the Minnesota ACLU is filing a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging racial profiling by ICE agents in the state. That suit comes amidst ongoing controversy related to the Good shooting incident and ICE deployments around the nation.