“To break your enemy's will to resist — to project images of your strength so overwhelming that the enemy hastens to surrender or to compromise. That's a very old element in communication in wartime.”
Nick Call
3:15Modern war propaganda has gone memetic: the Trump White House is posting Nintendo-game edits and SpongeBob clips to sell military strikes on Iran, while suspected Iranian-linked X accounts are racking up millions of views with AI-generated deepfakes tying Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. USC propaganda historian Nick Col argues this shift is deliberate — Trump's meme-war content targets young male supporters rather than persuading a broad public, while Iran's most effective counter-propaganda succeeds precisely because it doesn't look like propaganda, exploiting pre-existing American distrust around Epstein rather than making an overtly pro-Iran case. Washington Post tech writer Will Remus warns that this kind of content works not by changing minds but by hardening existing divisions — and with the Trump administration unable to articulate a clear public rationale for the Iran conflict, that wedge only cuts deeper. If you want to understand how information warfare actually functions in a live conflict — and why the memes you're dismissing as dumb may be doing exactly what they're designed to do — this episode is worth your time.
The episode opens by showcasing modern war propaganda from both the White House and Iran, utilizing pop culture references like Nintendo and Lego, and teases a discussion on the historical context and evolution of wartime messaging.
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