You have probably seen the two DHS postings below. Or you are at least familiar with the painting on the right from your history books (it was often used as an illustration in chapters about Americans’ concept of Manifest Destiny.)

Both images were posted by Kristi Noem’s US Department of Homeland Security; the left image was provided with a caption asking us to remember our Homeland’s Heritage. The artist, Morgan Weistling, protested the use of the image, saying it violated copyrighted material and had been done without his consent.

“Weistling appears to have an ongoing partnership with conservative evangelical nonprofit Focus on the Family—which has been one of the longest and most aggressive opponents of abortion access and LGBTQIA+ rights—to sell prints of his paintings through Focus’s online store. One of the prints on offer is a reproduction of the painting posted by DHS. There it is titled A Prayer for a New Life, with the text noting that it “celebrates the value of life despite the many hazards a young family would have faced on their journey through the pioneer west.” (Ref.)

The Heritage and Homeland references again come up in a more recent posting of the painting American Progress, a 19th century work by John Gast that was first published in handbills and brochures encouraging people to move westward and take part in the colonization of those parts of America.

We see a depiction of Columbia, the predecessor of Lady Liberty, a large white woman clad in a white robe, the star of empire in her hair, carrying a book and telegraph wires, symbols of knowledge dissemination and modern, speedy communication. She moves from the light filled East to the dark West, driving bison and Native Americans out of the picture; we see them fleeing while various stages of “civilization” are depicted, from horse drawn wagons, to stage coach, to trains bringing goods from Eastern harbors.

Everyone is white, except for those indigenous people disappeared. The painting, made by a white German immigrant in 1872, resides these days in L.A.’s Autry Museum of the American West.

“It was purchased after being a part of a controversial 1991 exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Art that sought to reinterpret art of the American West with fresh context on conquest and colonization. Several lawmakers criticized the exhibit as overtly political, and threatened to defund the Washington, D.C., cultural institution in retaliation. Critics and patrons felt the exhibition unnecessarily villainized America’s history — a sharp contrast to the shining beam of progress depicted in Gast’s piece.” (Ref.)

At the Autry, it is usually surrounded by art from indigenous artists, both Native American and Mexican in origin and discussed as a form of romanticizing the Manifest Destiny concept, including one of the core ideas, looming larger than life here quite literally, that white women needed to be protected, brought civilization as well as Christianity, and ensured racially pure progeny. Never mind that at the time, Mexican women had more rights than American women in the East, and Native women had participatory power in tribal councils for millennia.

(Photographs today out of the dirty car windows with an iPhone, driving I5 South to L.A. The way the West looks now…)

Of course it was not white women who physically uprooted, enslaved and killed indigenous people at the time, just as it is not primarily white women who currently physically harm brown immigrants. (Screenshots from media below.)

But the idea of Manifest Destiny, the idea of an ordained group of people not only permitted but required to eradicate other groups of people, to decide who belongs and who doesn’t, is likely shared by Christian Nationalists of all genders. What we are asked by DHS to honor here, is a conception of a duty and a blessing to conquer the land even if it meant killing its inhabitants, and, historically, move slavery westward, (or alternatively use Chinese contract labor for the railroads until no longer needed (quick: Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882.) (I wrote about enslavement of Native Americans in California previously here.)

The DHS caption under the John Gast image says: A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.

Why do we want to look proudly on a period of violence and genocide, of settler colonialism, a dark chapter in our history, if anything? Why does this matter? Because the fight over birthright citizenship begins here and there are currently attempts to challenge the 14th Amendment that seemed to guarantee belonging to all who are born here’s established in 1868. Except in 1870, 92% of the Native American population – more Indians lived in 5 states and 10 territories than settlers – were still not included as citizen. The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act tried to remedy some of it, but they still could not vote; in 1948 you could find numerous state laws that barred them from voting. Only the Civil Rights Act in 1965 changed that.

When you listen to Christian Nationalists or read their publications you find two kinds of arguments. One is, that Christian, White, anglo-saxon protestant people who came to this land were not immigrants but settlers. And land belongs to those who settle it (a philosophy supported by John Locke, of all people, who claimed that any “savages” hunting, or roaming, or gathering, leading a semi-nomadic existence, had no property rights. Only those who build on land and cultivate it, were legally owners, and could claim dominion.) The only ones truly belonging, claiming their Homeland and their Christian heritage, were the settlers and now their descendants. (Which reminds me: we now have new administration policies that not only allow but encourage people to proselytize at the workplace, and churches can now endorse political candidates – you can just intuit the amount of dark money that can flow in this way…)

The tweet, by the way, that accompanies American Progress contains 14 words and each “H” is capitalized. Lots of people have pointed out that neo-Nazis interpreted this (who are we to judge if correctly?) as both an allusion to the German greeting of the Führer, and a Nazi code for the “14 words” white-supremacist mantra by David Eden Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children, … because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.”

It is no secret that the Aryan Nations drew on frontier ideology and iconography to promote a secessionist and segregationist White homeland. DHS seems to be willing to share the idea. Here is something they published in June. Note, that this was shared from a Whitelandia social media account that is “transparently pro-Nazi and antisemitic. It has mocked remembrance of the Holocaust, shared a post from the “Aryan Defense League” featuring a Nazi soldier that calls on people to “Embrace your race,” and argued that only three flags should be allowed in the United States: The Stars and Stripes, the Confederate flag, and the Nazi swastika.” (Ref.)

Where is the firewall? You tell me….

Then again, we could be looking at the DHS cosplay Barbie’s selfie postings about evolving threats.

Music today is Neill Young’s take on Western expansionism.