Kristi Noem and the Trump administration is once again in the hot seat, slammed by critics for allegedly parroting slogans with chilling echoes of Nazi Germany. The departments of Homeland Security and Labor are under fire after deploying phrases remarkably similar to those once championed by Hitler’s regime.
Why is this a big deal? President Donald Trump and his team have long been accused of using language and tactics reminiscent of authoritarian, even fascist, governments. While the administration has repeatedly brushed off these comparisons, detractors claim that they’re recycling Nazi-era rhetoric.
Adding fuel to the controversy, Slovenia’s Objektiv magazine cranked up the drama earlier this year with a jaw-dropping cover: Trump’s face beneath a streak of black oil dripping under his nose—an image unmistakably conjuring Hitler’s iconic mustache. This visual blast came as Team Trump faced heat over aggressive actions like openly eyeing a potential Greenland buyout, threatening the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, and ramping up ICE enforcement.
In the latest uproar, Rage Against the Machine’s outspoken guitarist Tom Morello took to social media to slam the Department of Homeland Security for showcasing the phrase “One of ours, all of yours” on its press podium. According to Morello, this disturbing slogan rang out back in 1942 after Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi, was assassinated, leading to the infamous Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia—an atrocity where Nazi forces wiped out nearly every male in the village and sent the women to concentration camps.
During a heated January 8 press briefing at the World Trade Center—just a day after ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good in Minneapolis—DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stood in front of the same slogan, intensifying public outrage.
But is the phrase really lifted straight from Nazi history? Benjamin Hett, a Hunter College historian who specializes in Nazi Germany, isn’t convinced. Speaking to Newsweek, Hett expressed doubt, noting he’s never encountered that exact motto linked to the Lidice massacre, though he admits the sentiment matches the brutal strategy Nazis employed after Heydrich’s killing. “They didn’t kill ‘all of yours,’ but their reprisals came close,” Hett explained.
Peter Fritzsche, history professor at the University of Illinois, echoed this uncertainty, clarifying via email that he hasn’t seen the tagline in primary sources but agrees it embodies the Nazis’ merciless hostage policy—a fact Hitler reportedly affirmed repeatedly.
Contemporary accounts reported by The Associated Press detail just how complete the destruction of Lidice was, noting Berlin radio boasted about reducing the town—population 483—to rubble, all because villagers allegedly shielded Heydrich’s killers.
And this isn’t a one-off incident: a second controversial slogan from the Department of Labor has also thrown gasoline on the flames of suspicion, but that’s a scandal for another headline.
