Mocking Empire from Minnesota: On Somali TikTok, Belonging, and the Parody of Power by Mohamoud and Haque

Before I laugh at the TikToks that make empires look ridiculous, I wake up to the messages that remind me how dangerous it is to live in their shadow. Most mornings, before my alarm even goes off, I wake to the sound of my phone lighting up with messages. Group chats, relatives, friends and colleagues sending warnings about reported ICE sightings near apartment complexes, grocery stores, and schools. I read the updates the same way we all do: what can I do with this information besides tell people to avoid those areas? I think it’s a strange thing to start the day already preparing for danger and many of us are carrying that anxiety daily. 

I carry that tension with me long after I leave the house. On my commute to the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. Scanning crowds, gripping my bag a little tighter, keeping my passport where I can reach it without thinking, is now my reality. I avoid stopping anywhere in the city, especially if I’m alone. My mom and her friends call throughout the week asking what they should do if someone approaches them and I try to offer guidance, but the truth is that the fear sits with me too. I don’t know what to do if I am approached by an ICE officer and even after answering questions and providing documentation, what if that’s not enough? What if I’m taken and my family, friends, and colleagues are left wondering why I’m no longer responding to those group chats. It shapes how I move through my own city. Living in a constant state of alertness is not new for many Somali Minnesotans, but it feels different now. It feels heavier.

Although these fears are my own, they are not mine alone. I write this essay together with a white colleague, a fellow educator who has also spent years teaching Somali literature and listening to Somali students describe how these policies shape their lives. One way in which young Somali Minnesotans have responded is by creating politically sharp parody to confront the double-bind of being both Black and Muslim in the U.S., while also mocking the racist logics of settler colonialism that seek to determine who belongs, who owns land, and who gets to narrate history. In one TikTok video, a young Somali man in colonial garb, powdered wig and all, solemnly reads from the Declaration of Independence, with a Minnesotan accent, declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Somalis are entitled to Minnesota, from Lake Superior to the prairies.” In another, a group of Somali teens stand beside a frozen lake in Saint Paul, holding mock archaeological relics: “We found proof of Somali presence here from 3,000 years ago. Our ancestors planted sambusas by this very tree.” The satire echoes the way Israeli state narratives justify occupation and displacement by invoking Biblical claims to assert an ancient divine right to the land. 

The trend has been dubbed #Minnesomali, a portmanteau of Minnesota and Somali, but also a term that mimics settler claims of indigeneity and authority. These TikToks, initially created by Somali American youth in Minneapolis, have gone viral, and are now crossing borders to engage Somali diasporas in Canada, the U.K., Kenya, and beyond, as well as non-Somali Muslims and even non-Muslim viewers captivated by the creativity and satire. What they’re doing is remarkable: TikTok creators are parodying two national myths at once: America’s Manifest Destiny and Israel’s claim to land as a divine inheritance, and in doing so are drawing sharp parallels between settler colonial ideologies and the justifications for land theft, occupation, and genocide.

#Minnesomalia is a response to Donald Trump’s disdain for Somali Americans, and Somalis more broadly, which has been part of his political repertoire since his first campaign. In 2016, while speaking near the Minneapolis–Saint Paul airport, Trump described Somali immigrants as a national security threat, accusing them of bringing “problems,” “crime,” and “terrorism” to Minnesota. “You’ve suffered enough,” he told the crowd, as if Somali presence were a burden from which the state needed to be liberated. These racist dog whistles became a central part of his anti-immigrant platform, culminating in his infamous 2018 comment about “shithole countries,” a phrase he used to disparage African and Caribbean nations, including Somalia.  At a cabinet meeting held on December 2, 2025, Donald Trump made new inflammatory remarks about Somali immigrants, stating: “I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” and warning that the United States would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.” In the same remarks, he once again targeted Representative Ilhan Omar by name, and accused Somalis of ingratitude and suggesting their cultural incompatibility with American values.

In response, Minnesota’s Democratic Farm and Labor party leadership has offered a united front of defiance. Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and Representative Ilhan Omar have all issued statements praising the state’s Somali community for its contributions and resilience. “Our Somali neighbors,” Frey wrote recently, “are an essential part of the fabric of this city.” Across social media, Minnesotans have joined in: a groundswell of solidarity from citizens defending and celebrating their neighbors, friends, and colleagues. These defenses are heartfelt, necessary, and politically urgent.

And yet, there is also something troubling about the terms on which these defenses are made. To counter racism, Somali Minnesotans are often humanized through appeals to contribution, patriotism, and statistical belonging: that more than 90% are U.S. citizens; that they arrived as refugees fleeing a civil war shaped by U.S. Cold War policies and military involvement; that they are nurses, entrepreneurs, students, taxpayers. The hope is that data can redeem humanity; that belonging can be proven with numbers. It is necessary work. It is also, in its repetition, profoundly dispiriting. These rhetorical strategies rarely target the logic of racism itself. Instead, they operate within its framework: proving worth in response to its suspicion, affirming humanity in response to its denial.  It is exhausting to continually have to prove your worth.  Your humanness. 

At the same time, this radically different response is unfolding online.

One meme depicts the Statue of Liberty draped in alindi (a traditional Somali textile), titled Hooyo of Liberty, a play on the Somali word for “mother.” Another shows Somali men in colonial-era coats and powdered wigs standing alongside George Washington, the Somali flag billowing behind them. @guledmuse, one of the originators of the #Minnesomali parody, posted a video proclaiming, “Our ancestors signed the Treaty of Duluth,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to Minnesota’s history and one of its coldest cities. @somalithemes shares skits of Somalis “discovering” ancient Minnesota ruins, complete with camel bones and sambusa wrappers. @faaraxism parodies Zionist talking points with lines like, “A land without people (except deer), for a people without land.” @QAALI films herself riding a horse, joking that she is taking her Somali horse on a birthright trip to Minnesota, co-opting the idea of organized “birthright” journeys.

These TikToks do more than respond to racism. They flip the script. They mock the performative seriousness of settler colonial history: the earnest voiceovers, the national anthems, the museum exhibits of broken pots and foundational documents. They make U.S. and Israeli historical mythologies look absurd, flimsy, theatrical. And in doing so, they do something that statistics and sentimental appeals cannot: they shrink empire. They deflate it. They make it look stupid.

This is not new. The use of parody and absurdist humor as a tool of resistance has deep roots in revolutionary literature and political struggle. From the carnivalesque satire of Soviet dissidents to anti-colonial theater in Africa and the Middle East, humor has often been the sharpest blade against authoritarianism. As Mikhail Bakhtin famously argued, parody is a way of “turning the world upside down,” undermining official discourse by making it grotesque, laughable, and uncanny.

In Somali culture, too, humor holds a complex and revered place. Somali poetry, both in oral and written traditions, often blends satire, wordplay, and political critique. As linguist Said Sheikh Samatar noted, Somali oral poets have long used humor to challenge authority, invert gender roles, and subvert clan power. Among Somali immigrants, this tradition has evolved to meet new realities: diaspora comedy, in stand-up and on social media, plays with identity, visibility, and belonging, often mocking the way Somalis are depicted in Hollywood (as pirates or terrorists) and flipping those depictions into comic relief or absurdist satire. Think Black Hawk Down or Captain Phillips, in which Somalis are reduced to savage archetypes, compared to TikToks juxtaposing photos of Abrahman Lincoln with Somali men, claiming not only a resemblance, but Lincoln’s Somali ancestry.

These comedic performances on TikTok are not just digital ephemera. They are conceptual interventions. As feminist theorist Sara Ahmed reminds us, laughter can be a killjoy, interrupting the mood of power and forcing its logics into view. These creators are not asking for inclusion; they are mocking the terms of exclusion. They are not merely defending themselves; they are revealing the grotesque absurdity of the narratives used to keep them out.

In doing so, they reclaim the right to define identity on their own terms. To parody the very logic that attempts to exclude them. To mock “patriotism” as a mask for violence, and settler narratives as cosplay. To show that the real “takers” in history were not refugees or migrants, but colonizers who extracted labor, land, and life from Indigenous peoples in Minnesota, including the Dakota, the Ojibwe, the Ho-Chunk, and from Palestinians through the Nakba, decades of military occupation and settlement, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza

The colonial garb, the fake scrolls, the “ancient” Somali maps of Minnesota: these are props in a powerful performance. A performance that says: We know your story better than you do. We don’t buy your piety. We see your hypocrisy. And we’re laughing at you. If empire insists on treating our existence as a threat, the least we can do is treat empire like the punchline.

Iman Mohamoud is the Outreach Director for the Twin Cities Black Europe Film Festival. She has taught high school in Minneapolis and is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Education Policy and Leadership program, where she also teaches courses. Her work bridges education, community engagement, and cultural programming initiatives.

Danielle Haque is a professor of English at Minnesota State University, Mankato and author of Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature. Her writing on Arab American studies, race, religion, migration, and literature appears in journals, edited collections, reference works, and scholarly volumes across multiple fields.

20 August 2026