This is the sickest shit i have ever seen in my life oh my god. pic.twitter.com/CxriT9ou7t
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) March 27, 2025
That woman is a twisted sadist.
JV Last’s comment on this whole thing speaks for me. Speaking of those dystopian images he writes:
Look at these images. What do you see?
In the background are a few dozen men, crammed into a cell. Their bunks are stacked four-high. Their heads are freshly shaved. They wear identical white shorts. They are all shirtless.
Their poses are similar. Three rows of prisoners stand still in the front as Noem speaks, their hands either at their sides or clasped in front of them. The rest of them are arrayed on the bunks so as to create a visual for Noem’s use. None of these men is speaking. Or moving. Or making any facial expressions. They have clearly been posed by the jailers, forced to hold position so that they can be useful props for the American woman so that she can manufacture propaganda for her regime.
We have seen this kind of thing before. Just not from America.
I want to be deadly serious about this: We are now the bad guys.
As he says, the use of prisoners for propaganda is hardly unprecedented. From ISIS to North Vietnam, it’s a common tactic. Decent liberal societies have standards for the treatment of prisoners and don’t do this. Noem’s little tableau is something we could have expected from the former Phillippines leader Rodrigo Duterte (arrested two weeks ago by the ICC) or Cambodia’s Pol Pot.
Last is actually wrong about one thing. We only need to look back 20 years to the Bush administration’s treatment of suspected terrorists, the pictures of chained, hooded men in orange jumpsuits, to see the recent example of a similar propaganda operation by America, I’m sad to say.
However, having the DHS Secretary stand in front of a prison speaking to the camera and threatening people with the same treatment is way beyond that. We are not in any kind of military action with gang members. There is no war. This is a domestic issue for which they are using wartime propaganda tactics and committing what amounts to war crimes.
Last describes the whole photo-op in chilling detail:
A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona—worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives—sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.
She visits the prison armory and shakes her head approvingly while inspecting the rifles. Then she pauses in front of a cage where human beings have been posed to her liking so that she can speak to the cameras in front of a powerful visual. She is sending a message on behalf of her country.
That message is chilling. As he says, we are the bad guys.