In Morgan Weistling\u2019s oil painting A Prayer for a New Life, a young, white pioneer couple sit inside a covered wagon, sharing a quiet moment with their swaddled newborn as prairie stretches out behind them. The work could be interpreted as a western take on the birth of Jesus; Mary and Joseph on the Oregon trail. One might imagine it decorating the oak-walled office of an oil executive in a Yellowstone spin-off show \u2013 though it is probably too schmaltzy even for that.<\/p>\n
Last week, Weistling\u2019s painting took on a darker meaning when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)\u2019s official X account posted, to the artist\u2019s consternation, an image of the painting with the caption: \u201cRemember your Homeland\u2019s Heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The main stories that are told through art of the American west tend to focus on white settlersEmily C Burns<\/p>\n
To some, the post seemed like authoritarian propaganda, similar to what was put out by Joseph Goebbels about Aryan motherhood in 1930s Nazi Germany. \u201cIn case you had any doubts about the white supremacist thing,\u201d one X user responded to the post.<\/p>\n
Others nakedly applauded its perceived subtext, a celebration of the right\u2019s vision for America, in which families of strong men and maternal women usher in a pronatalist baby boom<\/a>. \u201cOur people. Our place,\u201d responded<\/a> Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab, a social network popular among alt-right, neo-Nazi and white nationalist users.<\/p>\n Under Trump\u2019s second administration, the DHS has orchestrated sweeping immigration raids<\/a> across the US, and Ice is reportedly detaining a record number<\/a> of migrants. A scroll through the department\u2019s X account shows videos of families torn apart by immigration officers, and then this post, which seems to say: we\u2019re fine with migration and movement \u2013 so long as the families doing it are white.<\/p>\n A post by the Department of Homeland Security on X. Photograph: DHS via X<\/p>\n Experts say the benign look on the couple\u2019s faces and the presence of an innocent newborn distract from the real problem: what\u2019s not in the painting\u2019s frame.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main stories that are told through art of the American west tend to focus on white settlers, which omits the suppression of other populations,\u201d said Emily C Burns, director of the Charles M Russell study for the center of art of the American west and an associate professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma. \u201cIt\u2019s challenging when a single image of something that is incredibly complicated is placed in the foreground. What stories are lost in that?\u201d<\/p>\n Those stories include<\/a> the US government\u2019s violent expulsion and genocide of Indigenous people to clear land for settlers, and the Black cowboys, many of them formerly enslaved or one generation removed from slavery, who went west on horseback and helped develop the country\u2019s nascent ranching industry. Also omitted are the Chinese immigrants who built the west\u2019s railroads and worked its goldmines and factories, and who, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, could not legally gain US citizenship.<\/p>\n Adam Klein, associate professor at Pace University, studies how extremist movements infiltrate American media and politics. \u201cThe [Weistling] painting isn\u2019t violent at all,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the surface, it\u2019s a beautiful image. But when you look at where it\u2019s coming from, with [DHS using] language like \u2018homeland\u2019 and \u2018heritage\u2019, that\u2019s really evocative of anti-immigrant sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein said the post brought to mind similar themes used by VDare, a far-right, anti-immigration website that launched in 1999 and suspended operations last year. VDare was named after Virginia Dare, the first child born to European settlers in the \u201cnew world\u201d. Since the 1800s, white supremacists have glorified her memory, though all we know of her is her birthdate and the fact that she disappeared as part of the \u201clost colony\u201d of Roanoke. Dare\u2019s image and disappearance are ripe for racist projections, including the conspiracy theory<\/a> of a \u201cwhite genocide\u201d perpetrated by non-white immigrants.<\/p>\n In 2018, the VDare founder Peter Brimelow told<\/a> the Washington Post that he chose the name \u201cto focus attention on the very specific cultural origins of America, at a time when mass nontraditional immigration is threatening to swamp it\u201d.<\/p>\n Klein also noted that the DHS\u2019s post seemed like \u201can attempt to stir the pot and be divisive\u201d.<\/p>\n Under the leadership of Kristi Noem, the DHS has taken up Donald Trump\u2019s orders for mass deportation with militant aplomb and an all-out publicity blitz. Noem looked glamorous as she livestreamed<\/a> pre-dawn Ice raids in New York and toured<\/a> the southern border on horseback. Meanwhile, the department shares mugshots of migrants and reminders from Uncle Sam to \u201cREPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.\u201d Last month, it posted<\/a> AI-rendered art hyping Alligator Alcatraz<\/a>, thumbing its nose at critics horrified<\/a> by the detention center\u2019s reported conditions.<\/p>\n A post by the Department of Homeland Security on X. Photograph: DHS via X<\/p>\n On a less aggressive artistic note, it also shared the late artist Thomas Kinkade\u2019s Morning Pledge, a pastoral painting showing two boys walking to their small-town schoolhouse underneath a fluttering American flag. \u201cProtect the Homeland,\u201d the DHS captioned this post.<\/p>\n This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to itDHS spokesperson<\/p>\n Both Kinkade\u2019s perfectly manicured Americana and Weistling\u2019s \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d daydream belie the chaos DHS has sown through its often violent immigration crackdown. But they do align with the retrograde America Trump 2.0 desires, and is ordering US universities, museums and national parks <\/a>to teach.<\/p>\n Weistling, who did not respond to a request for comment, wrote<\/a> on his website that DHS used his 2020 painting without permission. He described the work as two parents with their baby, \u201cdepicted here praying to God for his fragile life on their perilous journey\u201d. His style often canonizes traditional domestic roles<\/a>: girls and young women cook and clean, while men ride on horseback and build things.<\/p>\n When asked about its social media strategy, including the use of Weistling\u2019s work, a DHS spokesperson wrote via email: \u201cIf the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails, forded the rivers, and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook. This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island and founder of the Media Education Lab, says that she teaches her students \u201cthe four pillars of propaganda\u201d: activating strong emotions; simplifying information and ideas; appealing to people\u2019s deepest hopes, fears and dreams; and attacking opponents. The DHS\u2019s post hits all of these pillars.<\/p>\n \u201cThis could be an image from a children\u2019s book,\u201d Hobbs said. \u201cIt\u2019s a vision of America that was sold to generations. I\u2019m a boomer, and I read these kinds of stories as a child. Now I have a critical perspective on manifest destiny, but this taps into my memory, which can bypass critical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n Those feelings, good or bad, are the whole point: \u201cDHS is looking for engagement, and the use of emotional imagery gets people to react, whether they love it or hate it,\u201d Hobbs said. \u201cSo from a PR strategy, these posts are actually working quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Morgan Weistling\u2019s oil painting A Prayer for a New Life, a young, white pioneer couple sit inside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-18364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}