The Department of Homeland Security was forced to remove MGMT’s Little Dark Age hit from an ICE recruitment drive on social media after the band issued a takedown request.
MGMT accused the department of using their 2017 track song to accompany a “propaganda video” in a statement.
The video shared by DHS on October 23 showed federal agents arresting protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon.
It was captioned: “End of the Dark Age, beginning of the Golden Age.”
“MGMT is aware of “Little Dark Age” being featured in a propaganda video by the Department of Homeland Security and has issued a takedown request for the unauthorized use of their music,” the band said in a brief statement on Instagram.
DHS deleted the video entirely from its X account but it remained on Instagram without MGMT’s track. The video and the song remained on the DHS Bluesky account as of Saturday night.
MGMT, formed in 2002 by Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser, revealed that the single, from an album of the same name, was written after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
“Apparently we were more inspired to write pop music after evil took over the world,” VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone in 2018.
The band’s outraged fans commented on Homeland Security’s Instagram post before the song was removed.
“MGMT would never support this,” wrote one fan. “Please do not use their music to push your disturbing and hateful narrative.”
“The irony is that little dark age is about how s*** like this is bad,” said another.
“Little Dark Age is literally about the dark days of Trumps first presidency lol the irony,” someone else posted.
Far-right groups have commandeered the song in recent years. It was “by far the most popular Sound among extremist creators on TikTok,” after it became part of a viral trend on the social media platform in 2021, according to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in the U.K.
Other artists have slapped DHS with copyright takedown requests for using their music on social media content to promote the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda.
DHS had to take down a social media post earlier this month for using The Cure’s Friday I’m in Love.
In the summer, the department also had to remove a post after using Jay Z’s Public Service Announcement to promote ICE recruitment.
Bezos’s Washington Post jumps to the defense of Trump’s new ballroom
Trump hits Canada with bigger tariffs over ‘fraudulent’ Reagan ad
Hunter Biden believes Donald Trump is hiding something in the Epstein files
Trump slams Canadian anti-tariff ad that invoked Ronald Reagan as ‘possibly AI’
Virginia man killed fleeing ICE as he ran out onto busy highway
