DANGEROIUS SPEECHDangerous Speech in Disguise: The White House’s New “Aliens” Website Is Not a Joke
The official White House website has launched a new page titled, “Aliens,” which looks like a video game, with stars twinkling in a dark sky behind spooky neon green text. The page, echoing the rhetoric and the great replacement conspiracy theory, pushes inflammatory buttons familiar to experts on rhetoric, rhetoric which increases the risk of intergroup atrocities by instilling deep fear of members of another group. Such rhetoric, that one of us has named “dangerous speech” for its capacity to inspire violence, can demonize any human group.
The official White House website has launched a new page titled, “Aliens,” which looks like a video game, with stars twinkling in a dark sky behind spooky neon green text that reads, “THEY WALK AMONG US.” The design of the website is made to draw attention, and it will: nothing generates interest like space invaders, and fear has unique power to drive human behavior.
“We’re releasing a lot of information having to do with extraterrestrial things,” President Donald Trump said in a Cabinet meeting on May 28, the day the new site went live. “And people are totally fascinated by it … it’s literally trending number one.” Earlier in the month, the Pentagon began releasing files on U.F.O.s at the site, war.gov/UFO. But the aliens on the new official White House website aren’t extraterrestrial, despite the space theme. They are people: foreign nationals or those mistakenly assumed to be. And the timing of the president’s comments and the new site appear to be a bait and switch, luring in the public with the promise of extraterrestrials only to deliver law enforcement propaganda. Regardless of the kitschy premise, the site is neither a game nor a joke.
Echoing white supremacist rhetoric and the great replacement theory, which claims nonwhite foreigners are displacing and destroying white majorities, the site refers to dangerous invaders who arrived in the United States “under the cover of darkness” and infiltrated American society thanks to a conspiracy by “presidents, congressmen, and senior officials.” In 1950s typeface, and under a fake “declassification” label, the site says these “aliens” have “embedded themselves directly into our society.” Only one man, it declares, had the courage to reveal the secret, and now only he has the solution.
“President Trump told the truth. The cover-up is over. Secure the border. Deport them all.”
Contrary to the White House’s claim, it’s no secret that millions of undocumented people—“aliens” in the old English lexicon of U.S. legalese— live in the United States. It’s equally obvious that the White House aims to round up millions and expel them, since Trump and his advisers have long proclaimed that as a top priority. During his 2024 campaign, Trump promised “the largest deportation program in American history.” The people he is targeting, he relentlessly and falsely demonizes, calling them “vicious, violent criminals” and “stone-cold killers” who will “walk into your kitchen and cut your throat” and “not even think about it the next morning.”
