Which way, western man?

That was the title of a racist tract published in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a former leftist Christian pastor turned one of the most influential neo-Nazi ideologues in American history. The book helped radicalize an entire generation of white supremacists in the US, with its vicious antisemitism, opposition to all forms of immigration and open praise for Hitler. The purpose of the book, wrote Simpson, was “to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the white man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all”.

In recent decades, Which way, western man? has become a popular meme – but only on the far-right fringes of the internet.

Until, that is, the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Last August, the X account of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted an ICE recruitment poster featuring an Uncle Sam figure holding a “law and order” sign while standing by a crossroads post featuring arrows reading “invasion” and “cultural decline”. The DHS caption? “Which way, American man?”

Shocking? Yes. Coincidence? Nope. Earlier this month, the official White House Twitter account posted a cartoon of Greenlandic huskies with Danish flags on their sleds facing a choice between the White House on one side and China’s Great Wall and Russia’s Red Square on the other. The White House’s caption? “Which way, Greenland man?”