Since the war with Iran began, the White House has been releasing videos showing US troops targeting Iran with bombs, interspersed with clips from video games, sports trailers and Hollywood movies. The White House says the videos aim to highlight the success of the US military.
Some of the captions read: “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY.” Others list the goals of “Operation Epic Fury,” including: “Destroy Iran’s missile range,” “Destroy their navy,” and “Ensure THEY NEVER GET A NUCLEAR WEAPON.” And ending with the words, “It’s locked in.”
Propaganda has always been part of war. But it hasn’t always been this bad.
To better understand how propaganda was used in the past – and how the White House uses it now – we spoke to them Nick Cullprofessor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who specializes in the history of propaganda.
Below is part of Cull’s conversation with Today, It’s Explained co-host Noel King, edited for length and clarity. You can hear the entire episode wherever you find podcasts – including Apple Podcasts, Pandoraand Spotify.
During war, what is the purpose of propaganda?
The first is to gather your own people. The second is to convince partners that you are doing the right thing: making friends, making partners more helpful, and maybe even creating a few new partners. And the third is to discourage your enemy.
Some people would call it psychological warfare: breaking your enemy’s will to resist, protecting images of your power that are so overwhelming that the enemy is quick to surrender or agree. And that is also a very old aspect of wartime communication.
What are some early examples of wartime propaganda in the United States?
President Wilson in World War I spoke of the war to end all wars, the war to make the world safe for democracy. He had his 14 points on how the diplomatic area would be reformed. On the eve of World War II, President Roosevelt spoke of the four freedoms and laid out a comprehensive vision of a new international order. President HW Bush spoke about the war to protect the new order on the eve of the war with Iraq.
There’s always been a kind of chaos, a kind of violent message around American wars, and sometimes this happens in popular culture. One example would be the song “Barbara Ann,” which was made famous by the Beach Boys. It was recorded in a parody version by a group called Vince Vance & the Valiants in 1980 and they did a version called Bomb Iran. It had lines like…
“I went to the mosque, I will throw stones, Tell the Ayatollah,” I will put you in a box.
President Trump brought the song back last year and used it as the soundtrack to a White House video celebrating the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Is the propaganda different this time?
What we see from the Trump White House are videos that include images from video games and clips from Hollywood movies and with great declarations of kaboom. There is even one and SpongeBob.
And all this includes the idea that the war can be presented through memes and clips from games. It is a meme-ification of war, a gamification of war, an appeal to images like war that is strangely removed from the environment.
Who are these videos and why would the White House not target a large part of the people?
I see these videos as being made by young people, for young people. They are full of references to youth culture, including sports culture, including war-oriented video games and references that other people wouldn’t find.
They express a visual and cultural language specific to a generation. It has a propaganda purpose, but not a purpose that targets a broad segment of the American public. And I think the president has no interest in people who were not planning to vote for him.
Who benefits the most from these videos?
China, because it makes the Chinese look like adults in the diplomatic room by doing nothing. China will be very attractive to the countries of the Global South, even to the former allies of the United States in Europe who are surprised by this kind of unpredictable message and the unpredictable behavior that goes with it.
