War and Memes... How Propaganda Went Viral - critical summary review

In March of two thousand and twenty-six, the official White House account posted a video that was viewed more than fifty-eight million times. It was not a press briefing. It was not a presidential address. It was a clip that opened with a scene from the game Call of Duty... then cut to real footage of American fighter jets launching from aircraft carriers, missiles streaking across the sky, and targets exploding in slow motion... all set to a heavy hip-hop beat and a deep voice repeating "we are winning this fight." In the corner of the screen, the game's own kill score appeared, as though every real explosion earned points on a digital leaderboard.

Welcome to two thousand and twenty-six... the year war left the battlefield and fully entered the social media feed.

Since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran in late February, the world has been watching two conflicts unfold at the same time. One is fought with missiles, drones, and naval blockades. The other... with memes, artificial intelligence videos, and viral posts. And this second conflict, which many people treat as entertainment, may be shaping global public opinion just as much as the first.

The American meme machine

The Trump administration turned wartime communication into a kind of social media spectacle. Beyond the Call of Duty-style video, the White House posted another fourteen-second clip that alternated real military explosions with SpongeBob SquarePants saying "wanna see me do it again?"... that video alone surpassed nine million views on X and TikTok. There were also posts using Grand Theft Auto scenes with the game's classic line... before cutting to real footage of strikes on Iran. In another video, clips from Top Gun, superhero movies, and even anime were spliced together with bombing runs, ending with the Mortal Kombat audio... "flawless victory."

The strategy has a clear target audience. Kristopher Purcell, who worked in White House communications during the run-up to the Iraq War in two thousand and three, said he believes these videos are aimed at young men... the demographic where Trump performed strongly in the two thousand and twenty-four election. It is an attempt to sell the war to a generation that grew up playing first-person shooter games. Purcell called it the "gamification" of conflict... that is, turning real war into an experience that feels like a game.

A White House staffer, speaking anonymously, told the outlet Politico a line that became nearly as viral as the videos themselves... "we are in here grinding on the memes, bro."

The response came from Iran. And it came with Lego.

On the other side, the Iranian government and groups aligned with it responded with a different but equally calculated strategy. A company called Explosive Media, made up of fewer than ten people, began producing animated videos in the style of Lego bricks that accumulated hundreds of millions of views over the course of the war. The videos show miniature versions of Trump, Netanyahu, and Iranian leaders in combat scenarios... complete with English-language rap soundtracks whose lyrics directly taunt the American president. One of the most popular videos shows a Lego Trump sinking into a pile of documents while the acronym TACO appears on screen... a term coined by the Iranians for "Trump Always Chickens Out."

The founder of Explosive Media, who appears only in silhouette during interviews, told the BBC that the Iranian government is a "client" of the company. He said he uses the Lego style because it is "a universal language"... something anyone in the world recognizes, regardless of what language they speak.

Propaganda experts point out that the deep familiarity with American culture evident in these memes is no accident. Iran has maintained institutional programs for decades aimed at understanding American audiences. Mahsa Alimardani, director at the human rights organization WITNESS, explained that "this meme war comes from institutions that know very well what the American public is familiar with and which pop culture references can draw them in." Nancy Snow, an academic who has written more than a dozen books on propaganda, summed it up this way... "they are using pop culture against the number one country of pop culture."

When Jesus entered the fight

In April, the meme war took a turn no one expected. Trump posted on Truth Social an image generated by artificial intelligence that depicted him dressed as Jesus... wearing a white tunic and a red mantle, one hand raised and radiating light, the other touching a man's forehead as if healing him. In the background, eagles flew alongside military jets and soldiers ascended toward a celestial glow. The image had no caption.

The backlash was immediate and came from within Trump's own base. Conservative commentator Megan Basham called the image "outrageous blasphemy." Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of the president's most fervent allies, said she was denouncing the post and "praying against it." House Speaker Mike Johnson, one of Trump's strongest supporters in Congress, said he personally asked the president to remove the image. Trump deleted the photo the next day and said people were "confused"... that the image depicted him as a doctor, not as Christ. Vice President JD Vance called it "a joke" and said Trump took it down because "he recognized that a lot of people didn't get the humor."

Two days later, Trump posted another image showing Jesus embracing him from behind, with the American flag in the background.

Iran's response was swift. The Iranian embassy in Tajikistan posted on X an AI-generated video that used the same original scene of Trump as Jesus... but in this version, Christ descended from the sky and punched the president in the face, sending him screaming into a pit of fire. The video surpassed seven million views in less than twenty-four hours.

The Ukrainian precedent

None of this came out of nowhere. If the Iran war is the moment memes became official weaponry, the conflict in Ukraine was the laboratory where the idea was born. When Russia invaded in February of two thousand and twenty-two, videos with the Ukraine hashtag on TikTok accumulated nearly thirty-seven billion views in just three months. President Zelensky did something no wartime leader had done before... he recorded selfie-style videos on the dark streets of Kyiv, proving he had not fled. He built a personal brand of closeness and informality that contrasted sharply with Putin's institutional distance.

The Ukrainian government created United24 Media, a wartime marketing operation that used humor, memes, and user-generated content to keep the conflict on the global public's radar. Valentyn Paniuta, who led the operation, described the situation this way... "Ukraine was facing powerful Russian propaganda in multiple countries but had no international media presence. We had to build one immediately, and our only weapon was viral content on social media." The logic was pragmatic... since financial and military support came from Western democracies, it was essential to win the sympathy of ordinary people in those countries.

At the same time, fake combat videos made with games like Arma 3 circulated as if they were real. The legend of the "Ghost of Kyiv," a supposed pilot who had allegedly shot down several Russian aircraft, spread widely before being acknowledged as most likely fictional. Propaganda worked on both sides... and inaugurated an era in which distinguishing information from entertainment became nearly impossible.

The age of "slopaganda"

Analysts already have a name for what we are living through... "slopaganda." The term combines "slop," the word for low-quality content generated by artificial intelligence, with "propaganda." Information warfare specialists say this is the new reality of modern conflicts. Generative artificial intelligence has driven the cost of producing propaganda down to nearly zero. What once required teams of translators, editors, and camera operators can now be done by a handful of people with access to AI tools.

The greatest risk does not lie in any single piece of disinformation. It lies in the ability to flood the information environment with so many distorted versions of reality that the very idea of shared truth dissolves. Researchers at the Centre for Cyberdiplomacy described the Iran conflict scenario as "the most extensive demonstration to date of what AI-enabled slopaganda can do at operational scale in a real conflict." Production is so fast that propaganda videos about the ceasefire were published before the official announcements.

There is also what experts call "context collapse." A meme created as a provocation or a joke escapes the environment where it was made and begins circulating in other contexts... where it can be interpreted as serious information. The result is doubly corrosive... it undermines trust not only in what is false but also in what is true.

What to do with this information

The emerging picture has implications for anyone who consumes information online... which is to say, virtually everyone.

First scenario... if this trend solidifies, and all signs suggest it will, we will need to develop a kind of "meme literacy." Just as we learned to distrust emails asking for banking details, we will need to learn to look at a viral war video and ask... who made this, why, and what do they want me to feel when I watch it?

Second scenario... for those who invest, run businesses, or make decisions based on international news, slopaganda adds a layer of noise that makes it harder to separate what is actually happening from what is fabricated narrative. Oil prices, trade routes, diplomatic tensions... all of these are affected by public perceptions that can now be shaped by a Lego video with seven million views. Diversifying information sources is no longer optional... it is a necessity.

Third scenario... as citizens, we need to recognize that we are all inside the game, whether we want to be or not. Every time we share a war meme without verifying its origin, we become part of the propaganda distribution chain. This does not mean we should stop consuming content... it means consuming with greater attention, cross-referencing sources, and resisting the urge to react emotionally before thinking critically.

Finally, it is worth remembering that behind every viral meme about this war, there are thousands of real people suffering real consequences. American Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who was wounded in combat, responded to the White House videos with a direct statement... "war is not a video game." The gamification and memefication of conflict may be effective... but the cost of turning death into entertainment is something we are only beginning to understand.