With viral ‘Lego’ videos, Iran stakes claim as a propaganda power player

As part of an overwhelming flow of polished propaganda, Lego-style videos are pouring out of Iran, saturating social media feeds throughout the United States and worldwide with anti-war, pro-Iran messages that cast President Donald Trump as a war criminal who has dragged America into a conflict it can't win, on Israel's behalf. The wave of videos began in late March, when the Iranian Explosive Media production house first added rap music to a short video crammed with messages and symbolism. Called “L.O.S.E.R.,” it proved to be the vanguard of a series that Explosive Media says in total, on all platforms, has racked up 900 million views. The immediate global reaction shocked, as much as anyone, the 10 or so Iranian content creators of Explosive Media, all ages 18 to 25 and committed to Iran's revolutionary ideals. “We didn't expect this kind of feedback from outside the country,” says a video producer at Explosive Media contacted in Iran, who asked not to be further identified. “Americans and Europeans from all over ... are reaching out to us, saying they used to think wrong, [that] their view on everything has changed.” “This is the first time I have seen Iran be able to communicate with a global audience, and particularly an American audience,” says Narges Bajoghli, an Iran expert and cultural anthropologist at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. The videos are not official output of the Islamic Republic, but usually from production houses with some IRGC connection. The viral spread of the current crop of Lego-style videos has official Iranian outlets, such as the Islamic Republic News Agency, praising “victory in the soft war.” Michal Klincewicz, an assistant professor at the department of computational cognitive science at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, calls the White House's AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video one of the “first examples of political slopaganda” — a blend of the terms “AI slop” and “propaganda.” “The White House efforts with slopaganda have become pretty much behind the curve, compared to what has been achieved by other governments,” says Dr. Klincewicz. Emerson Brooking, director of strategy at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, says U.S. government war videos, which focus on U.S. military might, prove little beyond the fact that the country is “good at bombing things.” “Propaganda still has to be in service of a broader strategy,” he says. Explosive Media also counted on the simplicity of Lego characters to “create contrast,” after testing several options, says the video producer in Iran: “Serious subjects presented through a simple, almost playful medium become more accessible — and sometimes more impactful. It lowers resistance and invites curiosity.”