How Iran’s viral Lego-themed AI videos are adding a new dimension to the narrative on the war

📱 Within days of the first strikes on Tehran, Lego-themed AI videos began dominating our social media feeds. Peculiar, funny, and on point, we initially didn’t pay them — nor their origins — much attention. As the war raged on, however, they became difficult to ignore. The videos captured every new development in the conflict with impressive speed and cutting sarcasm. Today, they’ve emerged as a primary propaganda tool in the US-Israeli war on Iran, marking a turning point for political communications in the age of AI.

Propaganda in the age of AI

Satirical depictions of US and Israeli leadership and military operations dominate the videos. Many of the clips feature a Lego-esque Donald Trump being outmaneuvered by Iranian drones or facing upsets at home and on the battlefield — a depiction that generally frames the US as being in a state of chaos, often with Trump literally on fire.

Pro-Iran digital activists are the architects behind this new flavor of political content. A network of young tech-savvy Iranian creators that primarily post under the account “Explosive News” is using generative AI tools to produce what is often referred to as “ Slopaganda,” a portmanteau of the words slop and propaganda. The videos are being produced at a pace previously inconceivable for digital animators. The sole purpose? Trolling the US administration.

Slop in the shadows

So, who is Explosive News? While the exact identity of the animators remains anonymous — and their affiliation to the government of Iran unclear — they’re now telling media outlets across the globe that they’re independent, but that the government could be one of their clients. In interviews, Explosive News creators appear as dark shadowy figures on video speaking in Farsi. When questioned about the factual accuracy of their content, one animator who referred to himself as “Mr. Explosive” told the BBC that “only 13% of what [Trump] says is based on facts.” Their message being: if the current US administration has a questionable relationship with the truth, why shouldn’t they?

Are they onto a new way of communicating that resonates more with Western audiences in the Trump era? Some of the group’s videos focus on the human cost of the conflict through stylized depictions of urban destruction, which some observers note could garner sympathy and highlight the real consequences of US strikes more effectively than actual footage of the destruction. Whitney Phillips, media ethics professor at the University of Oregon, told NPR, “Trolling has existed in grassroots online spaces for more than 15 years,” but with the rise of Trump, she believes, it has moved to the center of global politics. “This is the language in which Trump speaks — and this is the language in which world leaders are now speaking to him.”

Head-to-head and meme-to-meme

The Trump administration is well-versed in meme-based communication. AI images and videos interwoven with video-game footage are often posted on Trump’s official social media accounts. According to The New Yorker, Trump is allegedly shown a daily two-minute video montage of successful strikes on Iran to keep him up to date on the war. It goes on to say that “the Lego videos have succeeded, in part, because they meet the political discourse on the level to which it has already sunk.”

… But this is all relatively new for Iran. “The new generation of IRGC content creators is younger, quicker, and less afraid of the US,” Narges Bajoghli, Iranian cultural anthropologist, said in an article in New York Magazine. “The gravity of the Iran-Iraq War generation didn’t disappear — you can still find it in official commemorations and on Iranian state television, but it’s no longer the dominant language of how Iran is communicating outward. Something else has taken its place, something that the fathers would probably find frivolous and that is reaching [mns] of people who would never have clicked on anything the Islamic Republic produced before.”

This viral phenomenon is unsettling for some in corporate America. YouTube recently suspended Explosive News for posting “violent content,” but the videos are still going viral with mns of views on Telegram, Instagram, and X. “I watch Americans with no knowledge of and no interest in Iran forward videos made in Tehran to their followers. In comment sections across platforms, people write, ‘Iran is fighting for all of us,’” said Bajoghli. “These videos meet them exactly where they already are, whether that’s someone in Ohio who’s angry about the Epstein files, or someone in Amman who has been watching Gaza for more than two years,” she added.

Slopaganda marks the arrival of a new, decentralized dimension of international diplomacy. The emergence of these AI-generated political videos — and their success at bypassing traditional diplomatic channels and press releases — is giving us a glimpse into a future where non-state actors are becoming more capable of influencing public opinion in real time through viral, AI-assisted storytelling instead of official statements and press conferences.

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