Is the Trump administration grooming us the way the Nazi regime once groomed German citizens during its rise to power? That question looms large after the White House and U.S. Department of Labor released a new propaganda-style campaign.
The glossy, retro-styled posters show White men in hard hats, lab coats, and muscle shirts paired with slogans like “America’s Future,” “Your Nation Needs You!” and “Make America Skilled Again.”
At first glance, they might look like harmless throwbacks, tapping into nostalgia for World War II–era recruitment art. But the deliberate choice to seemingly exclude women and people of color — while centering White men as the singular face of America’s future — is anything but harmless.
For people of color and women, this campaign communicates exclusion at a visceral level. And its aesthetic choices mirror Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine, which conditioned citizens to equate whiteness, masculinity, and loyalty with patriotism and progress.
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Trump’s Department of Labor Marketing Campaign with a Purpose
To the casual eye, these posters might read as kitschy Americana — a salute to industrial labor, apprenticeships, and trade schools. But propaganda rarely functions at face value. Aesthetics are always political.
The posters’ deliberate retro style evokes an era when White men were unquestionably at the center of America’s narrative. The square jaws, muscular physiques, and earnest expressions are direct descendants of propaganda from the 1930s and 1940s. Back then, government campaigns portrayed industrial workers as national heroes, linking their sweat to victory in war.
But today’s America is not the America of 1942. In 2025, women make up nearly half the labor force. Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous workers sustain industries from agriculture to health care to infrastructure. Immigrant labor powers construction, logistics, and service economies.
But in the Trump administration’s campaign, there is no denying that White men are visibly centered, while women and people of color are wholly underrepresented. Only one poster includes a woman and a person who may be a person of color — but neither are Black, Asian, etc. and both are literally positioned beneath a White man towering above them.
Nazi Aesthetics in 21st-Century America
The parallels to Nazi Germany are chilling. In the 1930s, Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda churned out endless posters of the “ideal German worker.” These images highlighted strong, blond, blue-eyed men — farmers, blacksmiths, factory laborers — as the backbone of the Reich.
One famous 1933 poster, “Der Deutsche Arbeiter” (“The German Worker”), showed a shirtless Aryan man with a hammer in hand, gazing into the distance with stoic determination. Their campaign was about elevating a racial and gendered ideal — White, male, loyal to the state.
Women appeared only as mothers in Nazi propaganda, cast as “bearers of the race,” not workers or leaders. Jews, Roma, and other minorities were systematically erased from the public image of Germany. Propaganda made exclusion feel natural long before violence made it brutal.
The Trump administration’s campaign operates from the same script. The imagery elevates the White male worker as the emblem of national strength while erasing women and people of color from America’s future.
The continuity with Nazi aesthetics isn’t coincidence. It’s cultural grooming.
Soft Grooming Through Propaganda
Propaganda doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Often, it whispers. It works not by shocking people into belief, but by normalizing exclusion through repetition. Nazi Germany didn’t begin with gas chambers; it began with posters, films, and speeches that reshaped citizens’ understanding of who belonged and who didn’t.
Today, the Department of Labor posters function as soft grooming: conditioning Americans to accept a racialized and gendered hierarchy. They invite viewers to nod along with patriotism while absorbing the idea that white men — and only white men — embody the nation’s destiny.
The slogans themselves, lifted straight from wartime propaganda — “Your Nation Needs You,” “Build America’s Future”— reinforce the message. Wrapped in patriotic urgency, they leave little room for dissent. Who could argue with national pride without being accused of disloyalty? That’s the trap propaganda sets: it makes exclusion feel like duty.
The Reality They Erase
The campaign’s whitened vision of America stands in stark contrast to the real labor force.
Black workers have always powered American industry, from entrepreneurs on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street to Detroit’s auto plants, and today Black women dominate health care and education while Black men make up significant portions of construction and service industries.
Latino workers are overrepresented in construction, agriculture, and essential services, literally building the nation’s infrastructure.
Women comprise nearly 80 percent of health care workers and dominate education and social services, making them essential to both care and innovation economies.
Immigrant labor, meanwhile, sustains entire industries, from meatpacking to trucking to technology.
To erase these workers from a federal campaign is not just inaccurate — it is dangerous. It signals that their contributions are peripheral, their presence expendable, and their futures negotiable.
Why This Moment Matters
This campaign doesn’t exist in isolation; it comes amid a broader cultural rollback. Black women are leaving the workforce in record numbers, facing disproportionate layoffs and stagnant wages.
At the same time, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are being dismantled across government agencies and corporate America, erasing hard-fought progress toward equity. Meanwhile, white nationalist rhetoric is bleeding into mainstream politics, from book bans to attacks on affirmative action.
Against this backdrop is the Trump administration’s deliberate attempt to recenter white men as the face of America through this Department of Labor campaign, echoing authoritarian playbooks that have long used propaganda to pave the way for exclusionary policies.
Calling It What It Is
We’ve seen this before. Nazi Germany’s propaganda elevated the white male worker as the ideal citizen while sidelining everyone else. The Trump administration’s campaign is a 21st-century echo, dressed up in nostalgic Americana but carrying the same exclusionary DNA.
The danger lies not only in the posters themselves, but in the silence that follows them. If unchecked, these images seep into the public imagination, shaping culture, policy, and ultimately law. Propaganda works by making the outrageous seem ordinary.
That’s why it’s critical to call this what it is: racial and gendered grooming, wrapped in patriotic packaging.
The Stakes for America’s Future
The face of America’s future is not only white and male. To pretend otherwise is to erase the very people who keep this country alive, from nurses to builders to teachers to farmworkers that make up a multiracial and multigender society.
History teaches us what happens when governments erase reality and replace it with myth. Nazi propaganda didn’t just misrepresent the German people; it prepared them to accept persecution and genocide.
We are not Germany in 1933. But propaganda always begins subtly, with posters and slogans. That is why this campaign matters. It’s not just about labor. It’s about who belongs, who leads, and who gets written out of America’s story.
And if history is any guide, silence in the face of propaganda is complicity.
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Great article, thank you. i’m going to use this in my material culture seminar.
Keep in mind which department of the U.S. government this campaign is focused on: Labor. The same department that funds union apprenticeship programs. You will soon see a vicious anti-DEI campaign targeting these apprenticeships which are a powerful force in building a middle class life. Expect the consequent exclusion of minority applicants for coveted seats in these already underfunded programs.
Good luck to you. You are an important voice!