Explosive News posted its first Lego-style video during the US and Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities last June. When the war began in February, a representative said, “Our teams were ready, plans were in place, the engines were started, and on the second day the Lego-style video was moving again.” They began churning out new clips, writing scripts, and using AI and digital editing tools to generate corresponding visuals. “If you work full-time, you can create a two-minute video in about 24 hours,” the person in charge said.
American viewers are accustomed to MagaStyle trolls might expect Lego’s video to be driven by a certain clickbait nihilism: brain rot, Tehran-style nihilism. But representatives from Explosive News spoke about their efforts with lofty seriousness. “Every scene, every frame, every hidden detail, every idea in our work feels like my own child,” he said. He cited a Persian proverb (“What comes from the heart stays in the heart”) and said the team hopes their video can inspire viewers to “give a glimpse into a different kind of spirit: one that’s more poetic, more human, and maybe a little gentler.” These may not be the first words that come to mind when you see clips of Lego playing cards with their plastic butts frequently on fire. But Explosive News sees itself as fighting a “war between truth and falsehood.” A spokesperson wrote, “Simple wisdom from the Quran: ‘The noblest is the righteous.'”
No matter how pure the team’s intentions, Lego Video was successful, in part, because it responded to political discourse on an already submerged level. The Trump administration is waging its own meme-based battle on its official social media accounts, using ASMR videos of deportations, white supremacist jokes, and supercuts of bombings laced with video game footage. To get updates on the war, President Trump is reportedly shown daily two-minute video montages of successful attacks on Iran, a kind of private military TikTok feed for a commander-in-chief with the attention span of a toddler. Even though Trump himself posts primarily on Truth Social, he is a creature obsessed with the internet’s image. It stands to reason that Explosive News’ vengeful and mocking clip would actually get him, or at least garner public attention for speaking in similarly flamboyantly bellicose terms. Maga. With the help of AI, teams can achieve amazing production values. As a representative stated, “I believe that the dominant Israeli-American media coverage, through the power of the media, often presents acts of violence, injustice, invasion, and even violence in a sophisticated and glamorous way.” He added, “Honestly, I get a little sad when the truth isn’t flashy.”
Last year, three media scholars published a paper titled “Slopaganda.” This is the new 21st century slang to describe the intersection of generative AI and propaganda. The authors argue that this burgeoning format is uniquely toxic, both because it is produced so quickly and cheaply, and because it instantly “introduces massive amounts of personalization, creating customized messages and narratives.” Slopagand soon became the new Esperanto in international conflicts. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired an AI animation that used martial arts metaphors to explain the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, depicting Iranians as anthropomorphic cats and President Trump as an eagle-headed grandmaster unleashing expensive golden bombs. The Iranian embassy’s X account in The Hague posted an AI animation depicting President Trump’s inner monologue as an “Inside Head”-esque devil’s nest, and the Iranian embassy’s account in South Africa posted a lame video quoting a famous Iranian embassy account. COVID– TikTok of the era. Footage of a man riding a longboard to Fleetwood Mac to celebrate Iran’s bombing of Tel Aviv. But the Explosive News video may be the world’s most powerful example of propaganda to date. One toy battleship explodes at a time, changing people’s minds and at least generating a lot of clicks.
Last weekend, YouTube and Instagram suddenly suspended Explosive News’ accounts. Instagram did not respond to a request for comment, but a YouTube spokesperson said the channel had been removed for “violating its spam, deceptive, and fraud policies.” (An Explosive News representative blamed the ban on “false flag” media conduct by “Zionist actors.”) But the video remains accessible on X and other platforms, and the takedown appears to have done little to slow its reach. A representative said the team was initially surprised by its international notoriety as it aimed its content squarely at an Iranian audience, but as it “gained a better understanding of their preferences” it began producing videos for a wider audience. Last week, their Telegram channel started posting in English instead of Farsi, and the group’s name expanded from Explosive News to Explosive Media. On Tuesday of this week, they posted a teaser for a new video on X featuring a bomb falling on top of a burning bald eagle and Lego Moses watching over a fire in a pyramid with Trump’s face carved into it. In the current geopolitical climate, perhaps Slopaganda is just one path to global media stardom. “We are dreaming bigger,” the representative said. “New format, cinematic feel, maybe even a longer piece. Who knows?” ♦
