A year ago, the Labor Department’s social media messaging focused heavily on portraying a diverse assortment of employees and laborers, both in gender and race.
But the agency has made a dramatic shift during the Trump administration, launching a social media campaign with illustrations that appear to be AI-generated and that almost exclusively feature White men — part of an effort to promote the hiring of American citizens over foreign workers.
Art experts and historians say the images mimic the styles of artist Norman Rockwell or historical government propaganda, including posters from New Deal-era America and fascist Europe. The campaign has drawn scrutiny, with critics saying it is not realistically portraying the diversity of the country’s workforce and is sending messages that feel exclusionary, given that White men make up a minority of the workforce.
A vast majority of the two dozen poster-style images posted in recent months feature White men; most are blond, and a significant number are blue-eyed. They have sharp jawlines, broad shoulders and blue-collar uniforms, and they are placed against backgrounds that show construction equipment and factory stacks. Only one of the posts features a non-White man, who is flanked by a White woman and a White man.
Renee Hobbs, a University of Rhode Island professor who teaches media literacy, said the Labor Department’s social media campaign checks all the boxes of what she teaches as the four features of propaganda: It activates strong emotions, simplifies information and ideas, attacks opponents, and appeals to people’s deepest hopes, fears and dreams.
“It was so surprising to see these images in part because we’re so used to seeing multicultural representation in everything,” she said, “so this definitely sends a message.”
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Labor Department spokeswoman Courtney Parella did not directly respond to questions about the campaign, including whether many of the images were AI-generated.
“The Washington Post is manufacturing outrage that doesn’t exist,” she said in a statement. “Twisting social media posts celebrating American workers and the American Dream into a race story is absurd.”
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Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors greater restrictions on immigration, praised the campaign. He said it was attempting to improve the H-1B visa program and projecting a sense of patriotism in its messaging.
“The point of this is to recapture a sense of social and national solidarity that’s been lost over the past generation,” Krikorian said.
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