There’s desperation in the air at the Department of Homeland Security. That’s my reading of a new report from The New York Times that 21-year-old Peyton Rollins, who worked as a social media manager at the Labor Department as the agency pushed out posts echoing white supremacist rhetoric, will now help run social media accounts for DHS. (The Times said it had reviewed screenshots of an updated DHS staff directory, which MS NOW has not seen.) It’s a fitting development, really, given that DHS’ social media accounts have already become megaphones for racist propaganda — a trend I wrote about last year that has only ramped up since then. One could also argue it reeks of desperation for the department to essentially promote someone who has spread bigoted propaganda to handle a major part of its public messaging, just as opposition to Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown continues to mount. DHS, of course, has downplayed the demonstrable links between its posts and ones promoted by avowed white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and it has sometimes tried to hide its cruel posts mocking immigrants behind a veil of sadistic humor. Amid these denials, I’ve been reading a lot of writings from historian Elaine Frantz, whose work focuses heavily on propaganda deployed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, including the use of humor, tactful deflection and other strategies to obscure their menacing ways or valorize themselves in the eyes of the public. One of the most important things I’ve…
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