If you’ve opened one or the other in the last few weeks, it’s almost impossible not to have come across them. They are made with rhythm, fast image switching, intense rap music. And they come from .
This is the social media response to the war in Iran. Using against it, the Iranians behind the channel “Explosive News” (Akhbar Enfejari) create videos with the use of artificial intelligence, which the regime broadcasts through its official pages. Their intention, in addition to conveying messages in an easily digestible way and explaining the war to the average American from their point of view, is to prove that, contrary to what the West believes, Iran is not a completely isolated and isolated country.
The creators show a frightening understanding of the American psyche, of and how we consume digital content. In other words, they are fighting the West with its own weapons and… toys.
Legos in this case, invented by Ole Kirk Christiansen and today, are turned into propaganda weapons. And indeed, a propagandist who “speaks” fluent English, uses AI rap soundtracks that remind many of those of Tupac Shakur, connecting their own struggle with American protest culture.
And the truth is, they do it a lot better than Trump. We all remember that AI video released by the Republican side that showed the US president and Netanyahu vacationing on the “Gaza Riviera,” an effort so unsavory that it ended up being, as young people would say, cringe.
Iranians, however, have studied American life and politics in depth. They know where to hit and how to appeal to an audience that only believes what they see in Instagram videos. They talk about the Epstein Files (“Your state is run by pedophiles” is one of the recurring lines and that Trump has been on Epstein’s island over 40 times) as the real reason for the war, linking Trump and Netanyahu to the darkest scandals of the American elite.
They show a Lego Trump digging through Epstein files to find incriminating evidence, then launching a missile at a girls’ school in Iran just to create a distraction. And people respond with thousands of “likes”.
“As an American, I would never expect to be against Americans in a war,” writes one commenter on one of the videos. “The most authoritative news comes from Iranian Legos. Priceless,” says another. “I no longer call this propaganda,” comes the next comment.
From the Epstein files to Floyd and the ‘No Kings’
The beginning of the Explosive News story in no way foreshadowed this development. Last year, the channel featured mostly commentary with a young Iranian influencer in front of neon backgrounds, giving advice on Iran’s water crisis or talking about ethics.
These videos barely got a few hundred views. But in February, as the conflict with the US escalated, they left traditional speech behind and adopted Lego video communication. Suddenly, world leaders became yellow wiggly heads and rockets became plastic bricks. The result was millions of views and an appeal that transcended the borders of the Middle East, reaching as far as “No Kings” protesters in America, who adopted the videos for their own anti-Trump rhetoric.
If you sit down to describe what these videos show, you understand why they have gone viral. In one of them, we see Lego-Iranians celebrating as rockets fly towards Tel Aviv, while the song “LOSER” plays in the background. In another video, there is a Lego grave that reads “RIP Donald John Trump.”
In the latest video, which is perhaps the most direct as it is clearly aimed at Trump voters, the lyrics repeat that the US Government ordered Americans to die for Israel and change the MAGA slogan to “Make Israel Great Again”. “The state takes money from you to give to Israel. They lied to you.”
Yesterday, they also released a video about Lebanon after Israel’s extensive attacks on the country. In one, on a lego-rocket they are about to launch, they write “For our Lebanese brothers”.
Creators even use rumors about Trump’s health, showing a bruise blooming on the Lego-President’s plastic hand, or play with the theory that Netanyahu has died and been replaced by a deepfake. Even George Floyd is referenced with a Lego policeman stomping a man to the pavement without him being able to breathe.
The rockets in the videos are message carriers. On them are written dedications to all who have been victims of “American aggression”, from Native Americans to Vietnamese villagers and “stolen blacks”. The slogan “ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL” appears in capital letters. This is an attempt to build a global alliance of the “oppressed” under the umbrella of Iranian propaganda.
“Can you prove you’re not related to Jennifer Lawrence?”
The New Yorker magazine and Kyle Chayka looked into the matter, and their correspondence with Explosive News representatives is revealing. They claim to be an independent student group, with no ties to the government or the military. “Can you prove that you have nothing to do with Jennifer Lawrence?”, was their response when the magazine asked them to prove that they have no connection to the regime.
However, their videos are republished by Tasnim News (affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards) and are watermarked “Revayat-e Fath” (a state media organization). They claim that this name is just the title of their videos (“Chronicles of Victory”) and that their work is “full of emotion”, as if they were their children. They speak of a “battle between truth and falsehood” and use passages from the Koran to justify their work, saying that “the noblest are those who remain righteous.”
The most interesting thing is the speed with which they work. They can produce a two-minute video in about 24 hours. They’ve set up an entire production engine that uses Generative AI for the scripts and visuals, making “slopaganda” (the jargon coined to describe AI propaganda) the new international tool of conflict. As they themselves say, “if the truth isn’t flashy, it’s kind of lonely.” It’s not enough to be right, you also have to have the best graphics. You need to be able to capture the attention of an audience that has the attention span of a toddler, and as it turns out, Legos are the perfect way to do that.
Even Trump himself seems to have fallen into the trap of this type of communication. Reports say they show him a daily two-minute montage of successful strikes in Iran, like a private military TikTok feed, to keep him informed. The Iranians know this and make sure their own videos are so provocative that they have a chance of reaching his eyes. Explosive News representatives argue that the Western media presents violence in a “polished and attractive way” and that they simply respond in kind.
Slopaganda is not limited to Iran. China is using AI to explain its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with humanoid warrior cats, while the Iranian embassy in The Hague is releasing videos showing Trump’s inner world as a warehouse of demons, influenced by the movie “Inside Out.” Even the embassy in South Africa used the viral longboard video and Fleetwood Mac song to celebrate the Tel Aviv bombing.
The West’s answer to videos
Despite YouTube and Instagram shutting down Explosive News’ accounts for “deceptive practices,” the group is undeterred. They renamed themselves “Explosive Media”, started posting in English and on Telegram, and are already preparing a new format, more cinematic, with bombs falling on flaming bald eagles and a Lego Moses looking at a pyramid with Trump’s face on it. Their goal is global “celebrity” through the media and, it seems, they have achieved it.
The creators behind Explosive News claim that their intentions are pure, that they want to give a “more poetic, more human and maybe a little kinder” look at war. Their knowledge of the American political scene is so deep that they manage to incorporate every little detail of everyday life in the US, from scandals to celebrities.
Slopaganda is a language understood by everyone from Tehran to New York that manages to make war look like a game. But behind the bricks and the AI-generated little people, the reality remains the same, that thousands are losing their lives. And the flashier the propaganda becomes, the easier it is to forget the human tragedy behind the graphics.
Source: The New Yorker, Guardian
