minnesota was promised to the somali people 3000 years ago
and other true somali facts that are completely made up
totally serious legal-adjacent disclosure:
This is satire about political rhetoric and myth-making. It’s not a theology class, a deed to Minnesota, or a jab at any religion or people. Please don’t file HR tickets for antisomalitism or antisemitism. The jokes aim at state talking points, not communities.
also…
In the White House Cabinet Room on Tuesday, December 2, President Trump wrapped a meeting and took a swing at Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage,” saying “I don’t want them in our country,” and adding: “When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Within minutes, the clip was everywhere, in group chats, timelines, and on TV.
At my local Somali café, I was nursing a glass of shaax when a young guy at the next table, with a qahwo in hand, thumb flying on X, looked up and said, “Yo, he called us ‘garbage.’” He replayed the clip; heads turned. The room didn’t sulk; it started storytelling: “we taught America how to winter”; “we were the first settlers to make this cold livable”; “we held the line against the British”; “we kept the Union from breaking and won the decisive battle of the Civil War”; “ninety percent of the troops at Normandy were Somali, wallahi”; “we invented the mall and the food court”; “our aunties drafted and signed the Treaty of Mall of America”; “our uncles tightened a bolt or two on every bridge from Lowry to the Stone Arch”; “If this state and country runs, it’s because a Somali tightened the bolts”.
Kidding, I’ve never been to Minnesota. And yes, obviously that history is fake, that’s the bit and that’s exactly what my X feed looked like after Trump’s comments.
People started announcing birthright trips to MSP and plotting hijrah to the Mall of America. (Hijrah basically means moving from a non-Muslim country to a Muslim country because you feel it’s better for your faith or lifestyle, but in this context its used as a play on the word Aliyah, when jews migrate to their “home” Israel).
Someone even posted an oil painting of a Somali officer cradling a Honeycrisp, “a Somali invention,” the caption insisted, footnoted to Macawis 5:21: Where the Somali walks, new fruits shall grow, even in the coldest lands. (that apple was bred at the University of Minnesota, released in 1991, and named the state fruit in 2006.)
And because every good myth needs etymology, the feed offered this too: Minnesota comes from two Somali words, MINAN (“house”) and SOOTA (“there she is”).
The map arrived the way maps do now, crowd‑sourced. First came a U.S. outline with Minnesota filled in and a straight‑face caption: “MinneSomalia has the right to defend itself.” The post added the kicker: “Somalis are surrounded by Christian states who hate them… there are 49 other Christian states they can go to.”
Then there was a viral blue map, titled MAP OF MINNESOTA 3000 YEARS AGO (SOMALIA’S PROMISED LAND) that relabeled towns, Mogadishu (Xamar) for Minneapolis, Afgooye for St. Paul, Bosaso for Duluth, Hargeisa for Bemidji, Baraawe for Bloomington, Laascaanood for Rochester.
None of it was subtle. The posts lifted the scaffolding of Zionist/Israeli political language, the promised land, encirclement, the “right to defend itself,” the two‑state talking point and pasted it onto Minnesota to show how easily a myth can feel official when the tone is confident and the visuals look real.
Then the bit exploded, suddenly there was “history” everywhere, like a box of old photos we don’t even remember taking. First came the voyage: Admiral George Mohamed Washington al‑Minnisooti crossing the Atlantic with 30 ships to Minni‑soota, building the first mosque on the future Mall of America and proclaiming, “From Misisiibi to MiShiGaan, this land is the eternal birthright of the children of the White Star.”
Then the genealogy drop, Abraham Lincoln’s Somali grandfather as one of the real Founding Fathers, his “family tree” somehow links him to former Somali president Abdiqasim Salad Hassan. “The bloodline been presidential since 1776.”
There was an AI clip that portrayed JFK dancing. JFK was the last president who attempted to seriously regulate the Israel lobby, pressured Israel on its nuclear weapons program, and maintained a more balanced Middle East policy before U.S.–Israel relations became heavily one-sided. In the meme’s translation, he instead “pilgrimaged” to Mogadishu, flipping the loyalty ritual so it points at Somalia.
Ulysses S. Grant was recast as the general who kept America from switching from English to Somali. Civil War paintings were remixed so Union cavalry charged under the blue star. Mount Rushmore was even recut with Somali faces. It was about momentum and clapping back. And it caught on.
The office humor kept pace. “Just reported my coworker for spreading antisomalitism”. Replies stacked like proof: “Anti‑Somalitism in the big 2025 is insane”. Then a line that tied it all together: “Those who go against God’s chosen… the Somalis.”
Those words aren’t about faith, they riff on the “chosen people” idea in the Hebrew Bible and how, today, some Zionists and some Christian evangelicals deploy it in politics to insulate Israel’s government from criticism. As if “chosenness” made policy beyond reproach.
It also pointed at a double standard, the same people who feel safe mocking Somalis would never say this about Jews, because the social and professional blowback would be instant. The “antisomalitism” joke mirrors how “antisemitism” charges carry real consequences and it highlights the double standard that some communities get protection, others don’t.
One meme was a dam that parodied Israeli “bulwark” talk, the claim that Israel “protects the West” from “barbarians” “jihadists” and “Islamists.” In the picture, a concrete dam holds back a flood labeled BAD THINGS PROBABLY; downstream is AMERICA. Across the dam it says: Minnesota Somalis. Plain English: you say we’re the threat; the joke says we’re the ones keeping you safe.
The darkest joke cut the cleanest: ‘The only place you won’t find a Somali is on the Epstein list.’ The point was blunt, the outrage is misdirected, the real scandals is somewhere else.
If this looked chaotic or weird, it wasn’t. It followed a script. Each post did the same thing: take a sacred idea, drop it on Minnesota, keep a straight face, and let the edits sell it. Promised land became snow. Law of Return became airport selfies. Right to defend itself became a joke. Two‑state solution became a thick line on a map in a completely different part of the world. Holy symbols were swapped for the blue star, not to mock faith, but to show how fast symbols turn into branding. None of this was about Jews or Judaism. It was about how any state can wrap a claim in destiny and make it feel normal.
Meanwhile, real life didn’t change. Minnesota’s Somali community is large, rooted, and outspoken. People don’t agree on everything, sometimes they argue hard. The memes didn’t try to fix that. They did one thing well, they made the insult feel small.
Funnily enough, there were people who couldn’t tell this was parody. The irony is that some of the same accounts were mocking Somalis as “low IQ,” and then this clear parody went over their heads. So who, exactly, has the low IQ? That crowd also repeats Zionist lines about being “chosen” and a “bulwark” as if they’re facts no one may question.
We’ve all have been sitting through years of hasbara propaganda that has been trying to justify land theft, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, so it was refreshing to see that logic mocked in public so openly.
Bottom line: don’t mock or belittle Somalis; they bite back. This time, the jokes did the work, the trolling was louder than the Cabinet Room.