Overview

• On July 23, DHS’s official X account shared John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress” with the caption “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending. American Progress – John Gast.”
• Observers flagged the caption’s exact 14 words and capitalized letters A, H, H and D as allusions to the “14 Words” slogan and “Heil Hitler,” encoding the 1488 neo-Nazi reference.
• Elon Musk’s AI bot Grok judged the alignment of word count, capitalization and numerology as unlikely to be coincidental and urged closer examination.
• The Gast post continues a pattern of DHS sharing Eurocentric, nostalgia-laden imagery and captions critics say echo white supremacist ideology.
• The painting remains live on DHS social feeds and the agency has declined to comment, deepening concerns over the intent behind its official messaging.