Hardware company Home Depot put the kibosh on Republicans’ using the company’s brand to promote a new facility to hold imprisoned immigrants.
With their attempts to market an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades as “Alligator Alcatraz,” Republicans have shown they’re invested in grooming Americans to accept — or even to playfully partake in — the cruelty of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown.
Florida Republicans were attempting something similar with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement of a new facility they are trying to market as “Deportation Depot.” And Home Depot evidently isn’t too keen on the use of a riff on its well-known logo on merchandise.
“We don’t allow any organization to use our branding or logo for their commercial purposes, and we did not approve this use. We have reached out to the RPOF to try to resolve this issue,” a spokesperson for the company told WPLG Local 10 News in Florida, referring to the Republican Party of Florida. The merchandise was no longer available on the party’s website as of Monday.
Florida Republicans told The Washington Post that their “limited-run products here were not affiliated with The Home Depot,” and that the “designs … are parodic, artistic, and non-commercial speech protected by RPOF’s First Amendment right to engage in political speech.”
Home Depot’s objection wasn’t so much a forceful statement in defense of immigrants as it was a dispute over its trademark. But it’s also true that Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has become widely unpopular, according to recent polling data. And Home Depot joins a growing list of brands and artists that don’t seem to want their names associated with this effort. At least, not in the grotesque ways MAGA world has sought to conscript them. Much has been written about the Trump administration’s efforts to market its anti-immigrant crusade online with pop culture-infused propaganda, including white supremacist memes being promoted by the Department of Homeland Security. That public relations campaign seems to be making a number of creatives and companies unhappy. Just last week, a DHS recruitment video for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers was hit with a copyright notice for featuring a song by rapper Jay-Z; the posts on Facebook and Instagram have had their audio disabled. Prior to that, travel company Jet2 and British singer Jess Glynne denounced DHS for using a meme that included the brand to promote immigrant deportations. Several other music and visual artists (or their estates) — including the estates of Tom Petty and Woody Guthrie, the estate of painter Thomas Kinkade, and contemporary artist Morgan Weistling — have objected to their works being co-opted to promote the administration’s immigration enforcement, as ABC News reported. Reactions like these suggest that conservatives’ efforts to indoctrinate the public to accept an anti-immigrant crackdown that’s been cited by judges for its racism and inhumanity are facing headwinds. And those may worsen as the crackdown ramps up.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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