In the nine years that Gilah Mashaal has owned Needle & Skein, a yarn store in the suburbs of Minneapolis, she has tried to maintain a rule that “nobody talks politics” in the shop. But amid the weeks-long occupation of the Twin Cities by federal immigration paramilitaries, Mashaal and one of her employees decided to turn one of their weekly knit-alongs into a “protest stitch-along”.
They didn’t want to return to the “pussy hats” that symbolized women’s resistance to Donald Trump in 2016, so Paul, their employee, did some research and came back with a proposal: a red knit hat inspired by the topplue or nisselue (woolen caps), worn by Norwegians during the second world war to signify their resistance to the Nazi occupation.
“I said: ‘Well gee whiz, that’s extremely fitting for this moment,’” said Mashaal. “Me being a Jewish small business owner, that resonates with me on so many levels.”
Mashaal and her team quickly put together a pattern for a red knit cap with a ribbed brim, pointy top and jaunty tassel. They published the “Melt the ICE hat” pattern on Ravelry, the social network for knitters and crocheters, and made it available for download for $5, with proceeds going to the St Louis Park Emergency Program (Step), a group that is helping people affected by ICE raids to pay their rent and bills.
“We thought we’d have a group of 10 people come and knit, and it turned out to be over 100,” Mashaal said. “Then it started spreading and it’s just been crazy.” Nearly 70,000 copies of the pattern had been sold by Wednesday, less than two weeks after it was first published online. It has been adapted for crochet and other weights of yarn, and has become ubiquitous on knitting social media. Local yarn shops across the country are offering specials on red yarn and hosting knit-alongs of their own.
Mashaal is now planning to disburse the funds raised, which exceed $250,000, to other immigrant aid groups in addition to Step.
“Red is the color of resistance,” Mashaal said. “Here’s our chance to take the red back. Red doesn’t belong to Maga.”
Hand-knit red caps are just one example of the explosion of creative expression inspired by the Trump administration’s deadly crackdown on immigrant communities across the US. Online communities for hobbyists, artists, crafters and collectors have seen an extraordinary outpouring of anti-ICE messages, especially after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Scrolling through normally apolitical message boards and social media feeds, it can feel as if the entire internet is united around a single message: “Fuck ICE.”
That is the statement spelled out – one letter per nail – in ornate silver calligraphy on a shimmery holographic base in one popular post on r/RedditLaqueristas, a forum for sharing pictures of nail art.
“I’ve done more subtle political messages in the past (blue on election night for example), but it just feels like we’re past the point of subtle,” said the owner of the nails, a 37-year-old fintech worker from Florida who asked not to be identified by name. “Living in a deeply red state it always felt like subtle was safe, but I’m pretty exhausted with safe at this point.” (The polish she used is called “Melt ICE” and was created by the indie nail polish brand Pahlish to raise funds for the family of Good.)
Nail artists have been particularly inspired by a viral photograph of a woman with hot pink extensions and a spider tattoo palming the face of far-right influencer Jake Lang during his recent, stymied attempt to hold a pro-ICE rally in Minneapolis. The image has been memorialized on a hand-painted nail extension by artist Heather Buzzell, while others have attempted to match the color, dubbed “resistance pink” by the community.
Anti-ICE fervor is spilling out in the most unlikely online spaces. On r/americangirl, which primarily features photographs of the dolls in particular outfits or locations, the most popular post over the past month is a snapshot of one of the original dolls holding a sign that reads: “Kirsten Larson says FUCK ICE!” The exclamation point features a little star in the style of the American Girl logo. Even the NSFW side of the internet is getting in on the resistance; explicit photos with anti-ICE captions soared to the top of some X-rated subreddits over the weekend.
Handicrafts and the fiber arts have long been mainstays of resistance. In both the US and India, opposition to British imperial rule was expressed through “homespun” movements; American colonists in the late 18th century and followers of Gandhi in the 20th produced their own cloth as an act of defiance to the British textile industry. The tricoteuses of the French Revolution were notorious for knitting during trials and executions; Michelle Obama’s portrait by Amy Sherald paid subtle tribute to the African American tradition of quilting, an artform that preserved Black history and culture through generations of enslavement and Jim Crow.
Anti-ICE sentiment appears to be especially strong among fiber artists, who often joke online about “rage knitting” or “rage quilting”, as if the process of plunging a needle into fabric can relieve the feelings of anger and helplessness. Knitters and crocheters have also published patterns to duplicate the blue bunny-eared hat worn by Liam Ramos, a five-year-old preschool student and asylum seeker detained by ICE in Minnesota and sent to an immigrant detention center in Texas, and to honor the inflatable frog protesters of Portland, Oregon.
Fiber artist Sarah Gonsalves’s embroidery kits usually feature cheeky slogans and exuberant colors, but on 10 January, she posted an unusually stark piece comprising black lettering on a plain white canvas: the final exchange between Good and the ICE agent who shot and killed her, splattered with flecks of red. “It looks different than my normal aesthetic because I made it out of sadness and anger,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how many people have said how it instantly made them cry.”
Melissa Laranjeira, an “xennial” quilter from northern Virginia, also used black letters on a white backdrop to channel her outrage in a haunting quilt that reads: “WE KNOW WHAT WE SAW.”
“Seeing blatant acts of violence and then being told they were something else entirely feels like an attempt to gaslight the American people,” she said. The quilt is “a statement about refusing to unsee what happened in plain sight”.
While piecing a quilt, painting your nails or knitting a hat might not strike direct blows against the Trump administration, there is a reason such traditions have endured throughout history.
The adoption of red hats as a symbol of resistance to the Nazi occupation followed a period of brutal repression in the autumn of 1941, according to Mats Tangestuen, a historian and director of Norway’s Resistance Museum. There’s a strong connection because Minnesota is the US state with the largest population of descendants of Norwegian immigrants, he added. Wearing red knit hats was “a way to keep morale up at a time when many still believed that Nazi Germany would win the war”, Tangestuen said. “Such acts of resistance … sent a signal to other Norwegians who might have been considering switching sides.”
The Nazis outlawed red knit hats in February 1942, but Norwegians continued making and wearing them, and two samples are featured in the museum’s collection of “the most important aspects of the Norwegian resistance”, chosen by 25 members of the resistance, Tangestuen said.
“It is no coincidence that two red knitted caps occupy a central place alongside submachine guns, hand grenades and radio transmitters.”
