Iran’s Meme War Against Trump Ushers In a Future of ‘Slopaganda’
Iran’s success in spreading these memes has surprised experts who study foreign influence operations. They say the tactics and technology on display during the war will almost certainly be replicated in other international crises, as well as major political events, including the looming elections in the United States.
“It’s spoken to the sort of Gen Z language of the internet in ways certainly diplomats don’t normally do,” said Bret Schafer, a senior director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international nonprofit that has tracked Iran’s activity.
“They have taken a regime that is, I mean, brutal and pretty awful and didn’t have exactly a great global reputation and turned them into kind of a plucky, fun underdog.”
Dozens of accounts belonging to Iranian government officials and diplomats have peppered their social feeds with a previously uncharacteristic edge, reposting biting videos that mock the United States and Israel.
They portray Mr. Trump as an imperialist out for blood or as an incompetent lackey of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, often stoking antisemitic tropes. They regularly suggest the war was launched to distract from the disclosures in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Collectively, the posts by roughly 150 official Iranian accounts gained about 900 million views over the first 50 days of the war, a thirtyfold increase from the same period before, according to an analysis published on Thursday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
“They’re talking in a way that’s fundamentally changed,” said Moustafa Ayad, another researcher at the institute. “If you go back two months and look at what they were putting out, it’s nothing like this.”
Propaganda is always adapting, reflecting the era in which it is made. Iran’s deft use of technology, experts say, has highlighted a new era of meme warfare that expands the information battlefield by using the algorithmic engines of social media to undermine an adversary’s political support. The new tactic has been called “slopaganda.”
Iran’s effort, the institute’s analysis concluded, “offers a blueprint that authoritarian actors can replicate in the future.”
The Meme War
The number of posts from Iranian Consulate accounts that included memes, jokes or A.I.-generated content skewering the United States or Israel has risen sharply in recent weeks as the online meme war intensified.
Of all memes posted by the Iranians, none have resonated as much as a series of videos featuring Legos. A small team of content creators in Iran has turned the globally recognized toy, which has its own movie franchise, into one of the most potent weapons in the meme arsenal.
In the videos, a character resembling Mr. Trump sweats or cowers. Iranian soldiers and civilians, by contrast, are cast as resolute in the face of the combined military might of the United States and Israel.
The people behind them call themselves Explosive Media — or, as they put it in their biography on TikTok, simply the “Iranian Lego team.” They have used artificial intelligence tools to generate short videos with the toy figurines manipulated to resemble Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Satan, an Iranian epithet for the United States for decades now.
They have posted mostly on YouTube, but they also have accounts on Instagram, X, Telegram and, since last week, Facebook. They have inspired a virtual army of imitators.
The group was founded during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last year. They call the series of videos “Victory Chronicles,” which in Persian shares a name with the Revayat-e Fath Institute, a cultural center in Tehran sponsored by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
That has led some news accounts to link them to the government, but a representative, reached through Facebook, said the team, with fewer than 10 members, operated independently. They have sold the broadcasting rights in Iran, including to state news agencies, the representative said.
A spokesman for Iran’s mission at the United Nations declined to comment about the country’s messaging online.
Explosive Media
A.I.-generated videos from Explosive Media, an Iranian group, depict world leaders as Lego characters.
In the United States, the videos have tapped into opposition from the war’s critics on the left, but also on the right.
Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University who has long studied digital influence operations, attributed the widespread popularity of the Lego videos to the creators’ “incredible cultural fluency.”
They use rap songs. They refer to familiar tropes, like Mr. Trump’s love of Diet Coke or criticism of Mr. Hegseth’s drinking habits.
The videos are highly relevant, addressing current events such as Mr. Vance’s postponed trip to Pakistan for peace talks. Today’s advanced technology allows for longer, scripted animations that present the harsh realities of war in a way that may not immediately deter viewers on social media platforms. These videos tap into the aesthetics of identity culture that resonate with internet users. The Lego Group and the White House have not commented on the use of Lego products in propaganda or the response to Iran’s propaganda. The Trump administration has a history of turning political issues into memes, using various media sources to spread their message. Iran has also joined the meme war, creating animations, including Lego videos, as part of their propaganda efforts. Despite social media policies against deceptive content, the spread of Iranian memes has not been restricted. X, owned by Elon Musk, has been a major platform for Iranian propaganda. Explosive Media’s accounts were taken down for violating rules against deceptive practices related to foreign influence campaigns. The popularity of Lego videos has inspired responses, such as filmmaker Charlie Curran’s video depicting the rescue of an American pilot in Iran. Curran utilized A.I. technology to create the video, which has garnered significant views and shares across various platforms. Curran believes that creating such videos is not difficult and anticipates more similar content in the future. text to make it more concise:
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