Culture

Over the past few weeks, activists taking part in protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the United States have donned inflatable animal costumes. The aim is to disrupt the Trump administration’s claim that the protests are violent “hate America” rallies.

The result is a sight to behold, with many encounters between police and protestors going viral.

Whether they know it or not, these costumed activists are contributing to a rich history of using humour and dress to mobilise against and challenge power.

The ICE crackdowns

Since its creation in 2003, ICE has enforced immigration laws on the ground, arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of criminal activity.

During Donald Trump’s first term as president (2017–2021), the agency expanded its operations to target and deport many people with no criminal record.

This expansion sparked the June 2018 Occupy ICE protests, inspired by the broader global Occupy movement challenging corporate power and economic inequality.

The first major Occupy ICE action in 2018 occurred in Portland – a city known for its creativity and dissent. It grew from a rally organised by the Direct Action Alliance into what federal officials called a “very, very peaceful” encampment with kitchen tents, kids’ spaces and media hubs.

The protesters forced the temporary closure of the facility for about eight days, before federal officers cleared the site and erected a fence around its perimeter.

Following Trump’s re-election this year, ICE operations have intensified again, with the repealing of policies that prevented enforcement operations in sensitive areas such as schools and hospitals. Protests have followed.

In Portland, tensions escalated again this September, when Trump described the city as “burning to the ground” and “overrun with domestic terrorists,” announcing his plans to deploy the National Guard.

A federal judge has so far blocked Trump from doing so, saying the protests don’t meet the requirements for rebellion. He will likely keep trying.

Operation inflation

Protesters in Portland and across the US have long used humour and costume in their demonstrations. In October, a TikTok video showing an ICE agent spraying pepper spray into the air vent of an activist’s inflatable frog costume amassed more than two million views.

The clip exposes the absurd levels of police force against peaceful demonstrators. The protester, Seth Todd, said his intention was to contradict the “violent extremists” narrative, and “make the president and the feds look dumb”.

The Portland frog has quickly became emblematic of resistance, appearing on shirts, signs and street art, including parodies of artist Shepard Fairey’s iconic OBEY design – the authoritarian face replaced by a cartoon amphibian surrounded by the words DON’T OBEY.

And the frog costume has spawned imitators, with creatures multiplying in protests across the country, including at the recent No Kings rallies. One group of activists launched Operation Inflation, a website that crowdfunds inflatable suits for protesters, aiming to make resistance more visible, playful and safe.

Strategic silliness

One example that echoes Portland’s blow-up menagerie is London’s Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). Members of CIRCA dressed as clowns during anti-war protests in the early 2000s. They played tag around police lines, hugged officers, and marched in absurd choreography.

As scholar Eve Kalyva notes, such actions employ “strategic frivolity”: silliness or absurdity in a way that disrupts the scripts between police and protester. By appearing playful rather than menacing, costumed activists directly counter narratives that paint them as violent threats.

The Portland frog and its friends work with the same strategies of silliness. Their dancing and cartoon-like actions make it impossible to frame them as thugs. Their soft forms bounce in contrast to the hard utility of riot gear.

From suffragette sashes to handmaids

Beyond frivolity, activists throughout history have also used dress and costume to more serious effect. In Britain in the early 20th century, suffragettes wore coordinated purple, white and green sashes to project unity in the fight for women’s voting rights.

In the US, dress and costume have played important roles in successive movements for African American liberation. During the 50s and 60s Civil Rights Movements, many marched in their best suits and dresses to assert their dignity against dehumanising racism.

The Black Panther Party had an unofficial uniform of sunglasses, berets and black leather jackets, embodying a more defiant style.

More recently, demonstrators in the US, Northern Ireland and Argentina have donned the red cloaks and white bonnets of The Handmaid’s Tale to protest abortion bans.

Similarly, The Extinction Rebellion–affiliated group Red Rebel Brigade stages actions in flowing red robes to mourn environmental loss.

And the wearing of the fishnet-patterned keffiyeh has now become a global symbol of Palestinian support.

Naked solidarity

On October 12, Portland’s anti-ICE demonstrators – many in their inflatable suits — were joined by thousands of naked cyclists in the Emergency World Naked Bike Ride. As costume designer and historian Camille Benda writes in Dressing The Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest (2021), nakedness in protest lays bare the body’s vulnerability to state violence.

In Portland, the mix of bare skin and soft blow-up animals heightens both the absurdity and tenderness of the scene. These protesters offer new avenues for direct action at a time when many people’s rights and freedoms are at stake.

At the time of writing, ICE was reported to have increased its weapons budget by 700% from last year.

Whether Trump will ultimately deploy the National Guard remains unclear. But across the US, the frogs (and their friends) keep multiplying. Their placards declaring “frogs together strong” remind us of the strength to be forged in unity and laughter.

Blake Lawrence, PhD Candidate (Design) and Performance Artist, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.

The post is not an outlier.

In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.

The White House has released AI images of Trump as the Pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.

Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.

Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.

As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.

White House style

In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.

While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.

They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.

Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.

In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.

Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.

In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.

Talking to the base

While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.

The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.

Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.

As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.

In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.

Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.

On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”

In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.

Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.

But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.

Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.

These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.

Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.

In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.

Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.

The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.

The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.

Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago and Tanja Aitamurto, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Homeland Security head Kristi Noem promised that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “would be all over the Super Bowl.” President Donald Trump called the selection “absolutely ridiculous.” Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson bemoaned the fact that the rapper has “no songs in English.” Bad Bunny, conservative pundit Tomi Lahren complained, is “Not an American artist.”

Bad Bunny – born Benito A. Martínez Ocasio – is a superstar, one of the top-streaming artists in the world. And because he is Puerto Rican, he’s a U.S. citizen, too.

To be sure, Bad Bunny checks many boxes that irk conservatives. He endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024. There’s his gender-bending wardrobe. He has slammed the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. He has declined to tour on the U.S. mainland, fearing that some of his fans could be targeted and deported by ICE. And his explicit lyrics – most of which are in Spanish – would make even the most ardent free speech warrior cringe.

And yet, as experts on issues of national identity and U.S. immigration policies, we think Lahren’s and Johnson’s insults get at the heart of why the rapper has created such a firestorm on the right. The spectacle of a Spanish-speaking rapper performing during the most-watched sporting event on American TV is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to paper over the country’s diversity.

The Puerto Rican colony

Bad Bunny was born in 1994 in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated U.S. territory that the country acquired after the 1898 Spanish-American War.

It is home to 3.2 million U.S. citizens by birth. If it were a state, it would be the 30th largest by population, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.

But Puerto Rico is not a state; it is a colony from a bygone era of U.S. overseas imperial expansion. Puerto Ricans do not have voting representatives in Congress, and they do not get to help elect the president of the United States. They are also divided over the island’s future. Large pluralities seek either U.S. statehood or an enhanced form of the current commonwealth status, while a smaller minority vie for independence.

But one thing is clear to all Puerto Ricans: They’re from a nonsovereign land, with a clearly defined Latin American culture – one of the oldest in the Americas. Puerto Rico may belong to the U.S. – and many Puerto Ricans embrace that special relationship – but the island itself does not sound or feel like the U.S.

The over 5.8 million Puerto Ricans that reside in the 50 states further complicate that picture. While legally they are U.S. citizens, mainstream Americans often don’t see Puerto Ricans that way. In fact, a 2017 poll found that only 54% of Americans knew that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens.

The alien-citizen paradox

Puerto Ricans exist in what we describe as the “alien-citizen paradox”: They are U.S. citizens, but only those residing in the mainland enjoy all the rights of citizenship.

A recent congressional report stated that U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans “is not equal, permanent, irrevocable citizenship protected by the 14th Amendment … and Congress retains the right to determine the disposition of the territory.” Any U.S. citizen that moves to Puerto Rico no longer possesses the full rights of U.S. citizens of the mainland.

Bad Bunny’s selection for the Super Bowl halftime show illustrates this paradox. In addition to criticisms from public figures, there were widespread calls among MAGA influencers to deport the rapper

This is but one way Puerto Ricans, as well as other Latino citizens, are reminded of their status as “others.”

ICE apprehensions of people merely appearing to be an immigrant – a tactic that was recently given the blessing of the Supreme Court – is an example of their alienlike status.

And the bulk of the ICE raids have occurred in predominantly Latino communities in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. This has forced many Latino communities to cancel Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations.

Bad Bunny’s global reach

The xenophobic fervor against Bad Bunny has led political leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson to call for a more suitable figure for the Super Bowl, such as country music artist Lee Greenwood. Referring to Bad Bunny, Johnson said “it sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience.”

But the facts counter that claim. The Puerto Rican artist sits atop the global music charts. He has over 80 million monthly Spotify listeners. And he has sold nearly five times more albums than Greenwood.

That global appeal has impressed the NFL, which hopes to host as many as eight international games next season. Additionally, Latinos represent the league’s fastest-growing fan base, and Mexico is its largest international market, with a reported 39.5 million fans.

The Bad Bunny Super Bowl saga may actually become an important political moment. Conservatives, in their efforts to highlight Bad Bunny’s “otherness” – despite the United States being the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world – may have unwittingly educated America on the U.S. citizenship of Puerto Ricans.

In the meantime, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the U.S. Latino community continue to wonder when they’ll be accepted as social equals.

Ediberto Román, Professor of Law, Florida International University and Ernesto Sagás, Professor of Ethnic Studies, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The release reflects the continuing vitality of Woody Guthrie in the United States. There is an ongoing process of updating and redefining his figure and artistic legacy – one that does not always take into account the singer’s radicalism but sometimes accentuates his patriotism.

The story of “This Land Is Your Land” is a case in point. There are versions of the song containing verses critical of private property, and others without them. The first version of “This Land” became almost an unofficial anthem of the US and, over the years, has been used in various political contexts, sometimes resulting in appropriations and reinterpretations. In 1960, it was played at the Republican national convention that nominated Richard Nixon for president, and in 1988, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush used it in his presidential campaign.

However, Guthrie made his contribution by supporting both the Communist Party and, at different times, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. He borrowed the idea that music could be an important tool of activism from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union. In the party, Guthrie saw the ideological cement; in the union, the instrument of mass organization. It was only through union – a term with a double meaning that Guthrie often played upon: union as both labour union and union of the oppressed – that a socialized and unionized world could be achieved.

‘Deportee’

The release of Woody at Home, Vol. 1 & 2 was preceded by the single “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” a song that had long been known, but whose original recording by Guthrie had never been released. The artist wrote it in reference to an event that occurred on January 28, 1948, when a plane carrying Mexican seasonal workers crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California, killing everyone on board.

This choice was not accidental, as explained by Nora Guthrie – one of the folksinger’s daughters and long-time curator of her father’s political and artistic legacy – in an interview with The Guardian, where she emphasized how his message remains current, given the deportations carried out by the President Donald Trump’s administration.

Woody Guthrie read the account of the tragic plane crash in a newspaper, and was horrified to find that the workers were not referred to by name, but by the pejorative term “deportees”. In their story, he saw parallels with the experiences of the 1930s “Okies” from the state of Oklahoma, impoverished by dust storms and years of socioeconomic crisis, who moved to California in search of a better future. It was a “Goin’ Down The Road,” according to the title of another Guthrie song, in which the word “down” also conveyed the sadness of having to hit the road, with all the uncertainties and hardships that lay ahead, because there was no alternative – indeed, the full title ended with “Feeling Bad”.

The Okies and the Mexican migrant workers faced racism and poverty amid the abundance of the fruit fields. Mexicans found themselves picking fruit that was rotting on the trees – “the crops are all in and the peaches are rotting” – for wages that barely allowed them to survive – “to pay all their money to wade back again”. In “Deportee,” in which these two lyrics appear, Guthrie provocatively asked:

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?

Visions of America and radicalism

“We come with the dust and we go with the wind,” sang Guthrie in “Pastures of Plenty” (1941, and also included in Woody at Home), the anthem he wrote for the migrants of the US southwest, denouncing the indifference and invisibility that enabled the exploitation of workers. In this way, Guthrie measured the gap separating the US’s reality from the fulfillment of its promises and aspirations. For him, tragedies were also a collective issue that allowed him to denounce the way in which a minority (the wealthy capitalists) deprived the majority (the workers) of their rights and well-being.

The artist’s political vision owed much to the fact that he grew up in Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s, where the influence of Jeffersonian agrarian populism – the vision of an agrarian republic inspired by president Thomas Jefferson, based on the equitable distribution of land among citizens – remained deeply rooted. It is within this framework that Guthrie’s radicalism, which took shape in the 1930s and 1940s, must be situated. These periods were marked by intense debate over the health of US democracy, when Roosevelt’s New Deal sought to address years of economic crisis and profound social change.

Against racial discrimination

Guthrie’s activism sought to overcome racial discrimination. This was no small feat for the son of a man said to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a fervent anti-communist, who may have taken part in a lynching in 1911.

Moreover, Woody himself, upon arriving in California in the latter half of the 1930s, carried with him a racist legacy reflected in certain songs – such as his performance of the racist version of “Run, N----- Run”, a popular song in the South, which he sang on his own radio show in 1937. Afterward, the artist received a letter from a Black listener expressing her deep resentment over the singer’s use of the word “n-----”. Guthrie was so moved that he read the letter on the air and apologized.

He then began a process of questioning himself and what he believed the United States to be, going so far as to denounce segregation and the distortions of the judicial system that protected white people while readily imprisoning Black people. These themes appear in “Buoy Bells from Trenton”, also included in Woody at Home. The song refers to the case of the Trenton Six: in 1948, six Black men from Trenton, New Jersey were convicted of murdering a white man by an all-white jury, despite the testimony of several witnesses who had seen other individuals at the scene of the crime.

“Buoy Bells from Trenton” was probably included on the album because of the interpretation it invites concerning abuses of power and the “New Jim Crow”, an expression that echoes the Jim Crow laws (late 19th century to 1965) that imposed racial segregation in the Southern states. These laws were legitimized by the Supreme Court ruling Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which established the principle of “separate but equal”, before being abolished by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Popularized by Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow (2010), the contemporary term refers to the US system of racial control through penal policies and mass incarceration: in 2022, African Americans made up 32% of convicted state and federal prisoners, even though they represent only 12% of the US population, a figure highlighted by several recent studies.

Guthrie’s song can thus be reread as a critique of persistent racism, both in its institutional forms and in its more diffuse manifestations. Once again, this is an example of the enduring vitality of Woody Guthrie and of how art does not end at the moment of its publication, but becomes a long-term historical phenomenon.

Daniele Curci, PhD Candidate in International and American History, Università di Siena

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The proposed coin depicts Trump in profile on one side (the obverse). On the other side (the reverse) the president raises his fist in defiance accompanied by the words “fight, fight, fight”.

While only a draft proposal, the coin could be minted in 2026 to mark 250 years since the US declaration of independence. But an old law prohibits the “likeness of any living person” from being “placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States.”

More than 2,000 years ago, the depiction of living figures on Roman coins caused similar ructions.

It came at a time when the Roman republic was in trouble. The republic would crumble altogether soon after, ushering in the long period of Rome being led by emperor-kings who saw themselves as almost akin to gods.

Perhaps the American republic is at a similar stage.

Sulla’s image on a coin

Rome was said to be founded by the mythical king Romulus, who killed his own twin (Remus). The fledgling state was led by seven kings before it became a republic in about 509 BCE.

By the late second century BCE it was led by Roman general and politician Gaius Marius. Marius and his later rival, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, broke many of the republic’s long-held conventions. They also fought Rome’s first major civil war.

In 88 BCE, while consul, Sulla marched an army on Rome to defend the city from “tyrants” (by which he meant the faction of Marius, who had ousted him). After Sulla won the civil war that followed, he held the dictatorship from 82-79 BCE. Dictatorships were only to be held for six months in times of emergency. Sulla claimed the emergency was ongoing.

As part of this he ordered a list (known as proscriptions) of enemies drawn up. Hundreds or even thousands were killed and had property confiscated.

In the same year a silver coin (called a denarius) was minted in Sulla’s name. One side featured Sulla himself riding in a four-horse chariot.

This was the first time a living person was depicted on a Roman coin. Up to this point only gods and mythological figures had that honour.

It was highly unusual.

Caesar’s challenge to the old republic

Sulla was the first but he wouldn’t be the last leader of the Roman republic to have his image on a coin.

In 44 BCE Julius Caesar went a step further. Only months before his assassination, coins appeared with Caesar’s bust dominating their obverses. Some included the words dict perpetuo meaning “dictator for life”.

By this time, Caesar and many before him, including Marius and Sulla, had broken the mould of the old republic.

Early in 44 BCE, Caesar took the dictatorship for life.

From 46-44 BCE he held the consulship, which was only meant to be held for a one-year term at a time. (Sulla held the dictatorship three years running, which partly set the scene for Caesar’s later emergence and the final breakdown of the republic.)

For many at the time, it seemed Caesar was moving the republic in the direction of monarchy. In January 44 BCE, when a throng hailed him as “rex” (king) Caesar responded, “I am Caesar and no king”. His very name was by now more powerful.

The coins of 44 BCE containing a profile bust of Caesar were an important part of his public program, and part of his challenge to republican convention.

Sulla paved the way 40 years before.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss

Some emphasise that Caesar did not directly order his image to be placed on coins. Those wanting to curry favour read the room and Caesar did not object.

A similar scenario appears to be playing out with the coin design bearing Trump’s image.

The parallels with Trump are hard to miss. Trump has signed more than 200 executive orders in less than nine months. His predecessor Joe Biden issued 162 in his entire presidency.

Trump’s deployment of federal troops to US cities under emergency decrees provokes cries of tyranny. Sulla’s march on Rome and the proscriptions that followed drew a similar response.

The possibility of a one dollar coin depicting Donald Trump on both sides echoes the coins of Sulla and Caesar.

They might not technically break the law but they would break convention. In the process they also symbolise a notable shift in the US from democracy to autocracy.

When the “no kings!” demonstrations took place in the US earlier this year, they reminded us of a key motivation for the declaration of independence.

A coin celebrating its 250-year anniversary may well symbolize its journey to demise.

Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many people commenting on the press conference reacted to this confusing reference to Valhalla with a mixture of amusement and disdain, with some pointing out the contradiction of eulogizing a Christian nationalist with reference to the pagan afterlife.

For scholars of the Vikings, Patel’s reference to Valhalla looked like something far more sinister. To understand why, we need to know both what Valhalla meant to the Vikings, and what it means in political discourse today.

The Norse peoples had a developed concept of the afterlife. The desirable destination for Norse warriors was Valhalla, the hall of the slain, where Odin watched over his band of chosen warriors as they prepared for Ragnarök, the world-destroying battle against the giants. Only those who died a heroic death in combat were brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

Those who died by sickness, old age or accident – or who had committed murder and other dishonourable crimes – seem to have been excluded from this martial afterlife. Some believed that you could cheat the Norse gods by arranging to be buried with deliberately worn and damaged weapons as if you had seen heavy combat. There’s a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is that in the 1930s the concept of Valhalla, along with the image of the heroic Viking and many of the symbols of Norse mythology, had a profound appeal to Nazi thought leaders. They looked to Norse mythology as a survival of a wider “Germanic” culture that had been erased by Judeo-Christian dominance.

The Nordic “race” was held up as the Aryan ideal. Norse cultural remnants were used to add legitimacy to the idea of a glorious German past. Heinrich Himmler in particular repurposed Norse symbols for use by the SS.

Today, many white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to brand themselves using a widening range of symbols taken from Norse mythology. One aspect of Norse culture that has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades is the specific co-opting of Valhalla by those who are prepared to kill, and die, in the cause of “protecting” an endangered white supremacy.

Valhalla in terrorist manifestos

The most chilling example of the co-option of the phrase “see you in Valhalla” is found in the manifestos published by far-right terrorists in the wake of their atrocities.

In 2019, Brenton Tarrant carried out mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. He published a rambling manifesto in which he attempted to justify his actions, and touted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory which holds that Jewish elites are deliberately engineering the replacement of white populations through immigration.

This has since become a far-right talking point and was pushed by Charlie Kirk on his show. Tarrant signed off his diatribe against multiculturalism and “white genocide” by saying “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”

Tarrant in turn influenced other far-right terrorists. One such terrorist, Peyton Gendron, was convicted of the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022 in which ten black Americans were murdered. Gendron plagiarised much of his 180-page manifesto, and similarly ends his screed with the statement: “I hope to see you in Valhalla.”

By invoking Valhalla, these terrorists are attempting to cast themselves as warriors in the Viking tradition. There is, of course, nothing remotely heroic about gunning down unarmed civilians.

But the point is that this reference doesn’t require any understanding of the Norse tradition. In this context it comes directly from the Nazi’s fetishisation of violent death to secure the racial purity of Germany.

From terrorists to the FBI

Rather than borrowing from extremist discourse, Patel may have been influenced by the use of “til Valhalla” by the US marines to honour fallen comrades – including those who died by suicide. This is a use which has been traced back to the influence of Norwegian Nato forces in Afghanistan, who may have used “til Valhalla” as a kind of battle cry. Of course, the optics of using a military honorific to commemorate the assassination of a civilian is problematic in itself.

Patel’s “see you in Valhalla” was much closer in its wording to the sign off used by far-right terrorists – but even this phrasing was unlikely to have been lifted directly from extremists. It is more likely an example of a phenomenon often observed in the study of the far-right online ecosystem, which is the seepage of extreme right discourse into more mainstream spaces.

Neo-Nazi groups use memes, s--posting and humour as a deliberate strategy to seed increasingly extreme ideas into groups amenable to their message.

It isn’t hard to find references to Valhalla commercialized, repackaged as inspirational Viking quotes for MAGA consumption, referencing cancel culture, or even using Norse video games as a gateway to white supremacy. In this way, the more mainstream right often ends up sharing and amplifying extremist messaging.

Patel’s reference to Valhalla was at the very least a huge misstep by a government official trying to appeal to the MAGA base and elevate Kirk’s tragic killing into a heroic warrior’s death.

While he may not have made his reference to Valhalla in knowledge of its association with far-right terrorism, it nevertheless served as a signal to white supremacists. As reported elsewhere, there was a lot of engagement from the extreme right on social media, but their posts tended to ridicule Patel.

His words prompted memes on social media playing on the apparent absurdity of someone of Patel’s ethnicity cosplaying as a Viking. And among this racially tinged mockery, there was also some revelling in the fact that a stock phrase of violent white supremacy had found its way into the mouth of the director of the FBI.

Tom Birkett, Professor of Old English and Old Norse, University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If past is prologue, these efforts may backfire.

In 2018, I published my book “Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.”

A devout evangelical Christian, Comstock hoped to use the powers of the government to impose moral standards on American expression in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To that end, he and like-minded donors established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which successfully lobbied for the creation of the first federal anti-obscenity laws with enforcement provisions.

Later appointed inspector for the Post Office Department, Comstock fought to abolish whatever he deemed blasphemous and sinful: birth control, abortion aids and information about sexual health, along with certain art, books and newspapers. Federal and state laws gave him the power to order law enforcement to seize these materials and have prosecutors bring criminal indictments.

I analyzed thousands of these censorship cases to assess their legal and cultural outcomes.

I found that, over time, Comstock’s censorship regime did lead to a rise in self-censorship, confiscations and prosecutions. However, it also inspired greater support for free speech and due process.

More popular – and more profitable

One effect of Comstock’s censorship campaigns: The materials and speech he disfavored often made headlines, putting them on the public’s radar as a kind of “forbidden fruit.”

For example, prosecutions targeting artwork featuring nude subjects led to both sensational media coverage and a boom in the popularity of nudes on everything from soap advertisements and cigar boxes to photographs and sculptures.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs of racy forms of entertainment – promoters of belly dancing, publishers of erotic postcards and producers of “living pictures,” which were exhibitions of seminude actors posing as classical statuary – all benefited from Comstock’s complaints. If Comstock wanted it shut down, the public often assumed that it was fun and trendy.

In 1891, Comstock became irate when a young female author proposed paying him to attack her book and “seize a few copies” to “get the newspapers to notice it.” And in October 1906, Comstock threatened to shut down an exhibition of models performing athletic exercises wearing form-fitting union suits. Twenty thousand people showed up to Madison Square Garden for the exhibition – far more than the venue could hold at the time.

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to get comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air have similarly backfired.

Kimmel had generated controversy for comments he made on his late-night talk show in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., initially acquiesced to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and announced the show’s “indefinite” suspension. But many viewers, angered over the company’s capitulation, canceled their subscriptions of Disney streaming services. This led to a 3.3% drop in Disney’s share price, which spurred legal actions by shareholders of the publicly traded company.

ABC soon lifted the suspension. Kimmel returned, drawing 6.26 million live viewers – more than four times his normal audience – while over 26 million viewers watched Kimmel’s return monologue on social media. Since then, all network affiliates have resumed airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

‘Comstockery’ and hypocrisy

In the U.S., disfavored political speech and obscenity are different in important ways. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides broad protections for political expression, whereas speech deemed to be obscene is illegal.

Despite this fundamental difference, social and cultural forces can make it difficult to clearly discern protected and unprotected speech.

In Comstock’s case, the public was happy to see truly explicit pornography removed from circulation. But their own definition of what was “obscene” – and, therefore, criminally liable – was much narrower.

In 1905, Comstock attempted to shut down a theatrical performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” because the plot included prostitution. The aging censor was widely ridiculed and became a “laughing stock,” according to The New York Times. Shaw went on to coin the term “Comstockery,” which caught on as a shorthand for overreaching censoriousness.

In a similar manner, when Attorney General Pam Bondi recently threatened Americans that the Department of Justice “will absolutely … go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” swift backlash ensued.

Numerous Supreme Court rulings have held that hate speech is constitutionally protected. However, those in power can threaten opponents with punishment even when their speech clearly does not fall within one of the rare exceptions to the First Amendment protection for political speech.

Doing so carries risks.

The old saying “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” also applies to censors: The public holds them to higher standards, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.

For critics of the Trump administration, it was jarring to see officials outraged about “hate speech,” only to hear the president announce, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

In Comstock’s case, defendants and their attorneys routinely noted that Comstock had seen more illicit materials than any man in the U.S. Criticizing Comstock in 1882, Unitarian minister Octavius Brooks Frothingham quoted Shakespeare: “Who is so virtuous as to be allowed to forbid the distribution of cakes and ale?”

In other words, if you’re going to try to enforce moral standards, you better make sure you’re beyond reproach.

Free speech makes for strange bedfellows

Comstock’s censorship campaign, though self-defeating in the long run, nonetheless caused enormous suffering, just as many people today are suffering from calls to fire and harass those whose viewpoints are legal, but disliked by the Trump administration.

Comstock prosecuted women’s rights advocate Ida Craddock for circulating literature that advocated for female sexual pleasure. After Craddock was convicted in 1902, she died by suicide. She left behind a “letter to the public,” in which she accused Comstock of violating her rights to freedom of religion and speech.

During Craddock’s trial, the jury hadn’t been permitted to see her writings; they were deemed “too harmful.” Incensed by these violations of the First and Fourth amendments, defense attorneys rallied together and were joined by a new coalition in the support of Americans’ constitutional rights. Lincoln Steffens of the nascent Free Speech League wrote, in response to Craddock’s suicide, that “those who believe in the general principle of free speech must make their point by supporting it for some extreme cause. Advocating free speech only for a popular or uncontroversial position would not convey the breadth of the principle.”

Then, as now, the cause of free expression can bring together disparate political factions.

In the wake of the Kimmel saga, many conservative Republicans came out to support the same civil liberties also advocated by liberal Hollywood actors. Two-thirds of Americans in a September 2025 YouGov poll said that it was “unacceptable for government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with.”

My conclusion from studying the 43-year career of America’s most prolific censor?

Government officials may think a campaign of suppression and fear will silence their opponents, but these threats could end up being the biggest impediment to their effort to remake American culture.

Amy Werbel, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The cancellation is a harbinger of what could happen under a fundamental restructuring of U.S. media that will take place if the proposed Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved by the Trump administration.

The deal, first revealed on September 11, 2025, would erase one of the five remaining movie studios and concentrate oversight of two of the country’s most prominent newsrooms – CNN and CBS, both targets of the Trump administration’s ire – under one owner with strong ties to Donald Trump.

Based on research from the Global Media & Internet Concentration Project, our analysis shows that Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery would gain control of more than a quarter of the US$223 billion U.S. media market, along with influence over film, television, streaming and the cloud infrastructure upon which digital media increasingly depends.

The combined entity would acquire nearly half of the cable television market, including HBO and CNN. The merger would nearly double Paramount’s share of the video streaming market, uniting HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery.

By combining two major Hollywood film studios, it would also capture nearly one-third of the film production market.

This is exactly the type of merger that U.S. antitrust agencies have historically scrutinized because of concerns that excessive market concentration gives too much power to a few companies.

In media markets, such concerns are pronounced: Concentration threatens media diversity and increases the risk of media bias and ideological manipulation.

A mega-conglomerate like Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control a vast share of U.S. viewership. Subject to pressure from or, worse, alignment with the Trump administration, the merged company could promote and protect the administration’s interests.

Cloud control

By combining media production and valuable brands such as Harry Potter, DC Comics and Barbie, the merged giant would gain great negotiating power with competing streaming companies, advertisers and distributors. The merged companies could also secure more lucrative streaming deals, better licensing windows and higher per subscriber and ad rates with cable providers.

The 2023 Hollywood writers and actors strikes opposed the exploitative impact of streaming and AI on creative workers’ compensation. The new media giant would wield significant bargaining power over those media workers.

The merger’s potential detrimental impact extends beyond film and television industries.

Paramount is helmed by David Ellison, and the merger is backed by his father, Larry Ellison. Ellison senior owns the world’s fifth-largest cloud provider, Oracle.

Cloud providers are the critical infrastructure for streaming platforms, ferrying digital content from streamers to viewers. As streaming becomes the dominant mode of media consumption, the Ellison family’s control over this infrastructure could give Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery another lever of power over its competitors.

Diversity denied

With potential size and reach to rival Disney and Comcast’s NBC Universal, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery could become another massive media outlet with right-wing ties.

The proposed deal follows the Trump administration’s $1.1 billion cuts in public media funding. These cuts – affecting PBS, NPR and more than 1,500 affiliated local news stations across the country, all accused by Trump of “partisan bias” – effectively accelerate the ongoing demise of local, independent news.

Concurrently, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. has settled its dynastic succession, ensuring Fox remains a core channel for the American right.

If the merger is approved, Fox Corporation, the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting and Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery would control one-third of all U.S. media.

This consolidation would further cement the partisan media model driving deepening political polarization in the U.S., as public and local news media lose funding. The deal also would undermine already declining media independence, fundamental to holding the powerful – whether corporations or politicians – to account.

Wielding regulation

The Trump administration has not shied away from using antitrust law and communications regulation to exercise political control over media.

Before initiating its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount was acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Ahead of the government’s merger review, amid regulatory signals it could affect the review process, Paramount-owned CBS paid $16.5 million dollars to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit Trump filed based on allegations of “deceptive” editing of an interview with his political opponent Kamala Harris. Editing of interviews is a standard editorial practice.

Shortly after, the merger was approved by the FCC with strict political conditions: hiring an ombudsman to oversee CBS’s reporting and eliminating all of the network’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

David Ellison accepted these conditions, promising to eliminate all of Paramount’s U.S.-based DEI programs. For the ombudsman role, he hired Kenneth Weinstein, former CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute and ambassador to Japan under the first Trump administration.

Since then, the Paramount CEO also has pursued Bari Weiss, a prominent conservative voice, to guide “the editorial direction” of the CBS news division. Ellison’s moves signal that editorial independence at CBS, and soon perhaps CNN, may be subject to ideological oversight.

Meanwhile, Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, has ties to Donald Trump going back to the first Trump administration. The New York Times in an April 2025 profile said that Ellison “may be closer to Mr. Trump than any mogul this side of” Elon Musk.

The senior Ellison has been playing a key role in negotiations over the future ownership of TikTok. His ties to Trump run deep enough to likely make him one of the main beneficiaries of the TikTok deal currently in negotiation between the United States and China.

Trump has shown an appetite for coercing media companies. For instance, ABC settled a Trump lawsuit in late 2024 with a $15 million donation to the as-yet-unbuilt Trump Library.

By placing two major news outlets in the hands of a family with ties to Trump, the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger would facilitate such control.

What Orbán did – but faster

This is the “Hungarian model” on speed.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, spent a decade asserting increasing control over that nation’s media.

The Trump administration is poised to accomplish the same in less than a year – and at greater scale.

In addition to helping allies buy a growing share of U.S. media, in his first eight months Trump also has managed to score conciliatory overtures from the nation’s tech billionaires, who fired fact-checkers at major social media platforms, curbed moderation of hateful content and asserted rigid editorial control over the op-ed pages at The Washington Post, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers.

If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is approved and Larry Ellison joins Andreessen Horowitz as part of the impending TikTok deal, a movie studio, CBS, CNN, Fox, 185 Sinclair-owned TV stations and a major social media platform will have owners with strong ties to Trump.

We believe the promised benefits of a Paramount-Warner Bros. Disovery merger, including lower streaming prices, pale next to the damage it would do to media diversity and pluralism.

By acquiring greater control over film production, TV and streaming, the merger would dramatically reconfigure the very media institutions that shape U.S. culture and politics.

The Trump administration’s review of this merger may further cement the administration’s political control over the U.S. media.

Pawel Popiel, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Washington State University; Dwayne Winseck, Professor of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University; Hendrik Theine, Postdoctoral fellow, Johannes Kepler University Linz, University of Pennsylvania, and Sydney Forde, Postdoctoral Fellow in Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.