Those Fascist Social Media Posts by DHS Have a Copyright Problem
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has spent recent months posting unhinged propaganda from ICE videos featuring Bible quotes to historic paintings about Manifest Destiny. Some of the images and videos posted to social media appear to use intellectual property for which DHS didn’t obtain the rights, including audio from the 2022 film The Batman. And now at least one rights holder is speaking up about it.
The estate of the late painter Thomas Kinkade, who died in 2012, has posted a statement to its website about the use of “Morning Pledge ,” a painting the official DHS account posted earlier this month with the caption “Protect the Homeland.”
“On July 1st, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a photo on their social media accounts accompanied by a Thomas Kinkade Studios painting. The use of his artwork was unauthorized, and we have requested that DHS remove the post, and we are consulting with our counsel on our options,” the foundation wrote.
The statement continued to say that the Kinkade Family Foundation strongly condemns the sentiment of the post as well as “the deplorable actions that DHS continues to carry out.” The sentiment, of course, is that America must return to a mythologized past that’s more white. At least that’s how commenters on X clearly saw it.
