How Iran turned Lego videos and social media memes into weapons of war

Description

In previous wars, propaganda came dressed in the seriousness of the state. Governments issued posters, commissioned films, broadcast speeches and delivered tightly controlled narratives through newspapers, radio and television. It was formal, centralised and unmistakably political. You knew when you were looking at propaganda because it looked like propaganda. But in the Iran war, some of the most widely shared wartime messaging has looked very different. One of the conflict’s more surreal online trends has been the circulation of AI-generated Lego-style videos depicting US president Donald Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Western leaders as cartoonish caricatures, often set to dramatic music, overlaid with triumphant slogans, and framed within overtly pro-Iran narratives. The New Yorker recently profiled one of the networks behind this phenomenon, describing a pro-Iran media ecosystem producing highly shareable videos designed less like political messaging and more like social media entertainment.