[HN Gopher] The team behind a pro-Iran, Lego-themed viral-video ...
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The team behind a pro-Iran, Lego-themed viral-video campaign
https://archive.is/73hcR
Author : tantalor
Score : 84 points
Date : 2026-04-06 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| It was quite obvious, but this is a noteworthy example of just
| how much more effective propaganda will become with AI.
|
| These videos are blowing up on Twitter.
|
| I personally found the one about Pete Hegseth quite well made and
| the song actually catchy.
|
| Edit: Video link courtesy mirashii in this thread -
| https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
| abdusco wrote:
| Care to share the link?
| mirashii wrote:
| https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
| blackcatsec wrote:
| people were worried about deepfakes with AI but instead the
| propaganda is doing pretty well, and arguably better, when it's
| not a deepfake but instead silly, catchy, youthful, and is
| playing up existing beliefs. The invasion is deeply unpopular
| in the US, and these videos only serve to amp that up.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Invasion?
| chaostheory wrote:
| Ground troops are going to be deployed
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That would be a precondition, yes.
| some_random wrote:
| Deepfakes were never necessary, people have been making
| incredible propaganda forever though the same few tactics.
| For instance, presenting footage out of context.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| The deepfakes haven't gotten really good yet. Give it a year.
| simonw wrote:
| That Hegseth one is an extraordinary piece of media. It's dense
| with Hegseth and Epstein lore, the song is catchy, the visuals
| are a significant cut above the normal AI slop aesthetic.
|
| If this is Iranian state backed propaganda (which seems very
| likely) it's light years ahead of those White House videos with
| footage of bombs mixed in with clips from action movies.
| guzfip wrote:
| The White House seems to have made the mistake of hiring HOI4
| modders for their propaganda team.
| input_sh wrote:
| Given the headline, they found out nothing about "the team".
| hk1337 wrote:
| [flagged]
| imdsm wrote:
| I watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged
| people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any
| stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way
| to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will
| serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent
| gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid
| people will need to play differently in order to win.
|
| I can't wait to read wikipedia in 30 years.
| fcarraldo wrote:
| I'm sorry, your takeaway from that film was that Sean Penn
| was the good guy?
| akramachamarei wrote:
| This is a pretty obvious misinterpretation. Protagonist bad
| [?] antagonist good. This isn't even the law of the
| excluded middle because there was only ever a statistical
| relationship between the morality of narrative opponents.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| > In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an
| advantage
|
| Which society is this, Sweden? Xi Jinping is pretty smart and
| hard working, is China being demolished by lazy dumb twats?
| Because it seems to me its US that is overrun bu stupidity
| and sheer lazyness right now, but it seems to be because it
| rewards people like Musk, Trump etc.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Isn't the film fiction? I haven't seen it but I would refrain
| from using a fiction film as something to measure "how
| deranged people are" by.
| ks2048 wrote:
| > I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive
| eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope
| whatever comes next will serve them better.
|
| It seems our society is being destroyed by people who are
| thriving the most.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Today's world is messed up. Look at EU leaders rubbing
| shoulders with Syrian president/ex-terrorist.
| glawre wrote:
| Don't forget Trump rubbing shoulders with al-Sharaa either.
| lostlogin wrote:
| And Putin, and Orban etc.
| the_duke wrote:
| That's in part because many EU countries would like to ship
| the Syrian refugees back to Syria.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Today's?
|
| We were shuffling capital to China after Tiananmen Square.
| People were talking about how we should have left Saddam
| alone because of how "orderly" Iraq was under his boot.
| Europeans were happy to ink the plans for Nordstream 2 after
| Russia sent tanks into Georgia, and Russia received no less
| than a FIFA World Cup and Olympic games after seizing Crimea.
|
| There is incredibly little will to stick to the whole "humans
| have rights and we should have a rules-based international
| order" when the rubber meets the road.
| acessoproibido wrote:
| rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda term
| that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly "rules for
| thee but not for me"
|
| Its a nice thing in theory but in practice power always
| overruled morals and I think the current US admin not only
| freely admits this but also kind of rubs your nose in it.
| In a way its less hypocritical than previously but also
| incredibly sobering for someone who grew up in a seemingly
| more "stable" world
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > rules-based international order is mostly a propaganda
| term that the Us empire invented. It also was mostly
| "rules for thee but not for me"
|
| I think there was an effort to try to stick to it, at
| least early on after WWII when people had seen what the
| old system resulted in.
|
| Then the Berlin blockade, Korea, and Hungarian
| intervention happened and the implication was made that
| the rules were what were to be aspired to, not actually
| followed, and it's been all downhill from there.
|
| Incidentally, most of those aren't on the "Us empire".
| some_random wrote:
| Don't worry, the multipolar world you dream of will be
| here soon, and it will be as brutal and violent as you're
| hoping.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Don't worry, the multipolar world you dream of will be
| here soon, and it will be as brutal and violent as you're
| hoping.
|
| ... I don't hope for that?
| u8080 wrote:
| Indeed, we even had deals with Germany and Belgium who
| bombed hospitals in Yugoslavia in 1999!
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There's an implicit tolerance of authoritarian regimes so long
| as the price is right. This is nothing new.
| raincole wrote:
| Which one? If you mean Iran, "100s of" seems like a weird
| understatement.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| what numbers can you trust? i mean, you can trust whatever
| suits you, but *i* don't trust, really, any of the things i
| hear about the global bad guys, particularly iran when
| america is making war on them or building a case for war.
| akramachamarei wrote:
| How about start with the number that the regime _itself
| admits_ to; namely, thousands of protestors killed.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| The number is well in the thousands/tens of thousands, and we
| have no way of knowing precisely because, well, it's a
| dictatorial regime.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| also because, well, our dictatorial regime.
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| Incorrect, and just yesterday Trump admitted that these
| weren't "protesters", they were heavily armed (by the US)
| insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government. Iran was
| right to fight them.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I appreciate that this statement accurately describes all three
| regimes primarily involved without naming one.
| prh8 wrote:
| [flagged]
| titanomachy wrote:
| You probably have to wait 2 more years to see if they're
| really a dictatorship, for the time being at least they still
| have an electoral mandate.
| dbdr wrote:
| Having an electoral mandate is a necessary condition, not a
| sufficient one. If you don't follow your own laws and your
| own constitution, for instance, you're not a in a
| democracy, even if you have been elected. Precisely because
| you are elected under the assumption that you will follow
| the laws and constitution, not have unlimited power to do
| whatever you like until the next elections.
| platinumrad wrote:
| The Trump regime is still borderline, but I think it's fair
| to call Netanyahu a dictator at this point.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Who exactly are you talking about?
| barbazoo wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-
| blam...
|
| > On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February
| 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary
| school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the building at
| least two times during the morning session. American forces
| killed between 175 and 180 people, most of them girls
| between the ages of seven and 12
| dmos62 wrote:
| It's almost funny how both of these descriptions can apply to
| either country.
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| Except that only the US and Israel are bombing schools.
| platinumrad wrote:
| I agree that HN often turns a blind eye to all of the
| awful things that the US and Israel do, but Iran is
| hitting civilian targets as well.
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| Israel/the US started the war by murdering 160 Iranian
| school girls and has been murdering civilians non-stop
| since (and before) then. How many civilians has Iran
| killed?
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Iran has helped Russia bomb many schools and hospitals.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It's ironic how they've been so instrumental in bombing
| Ukraine's civilian targets (for years) and now they're
| likely to get their civilian infrastructure bombed, by a
| third party. Strange times.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Iran hit a teaching hospital so I guess they technically
| managed to hit a school and a hospital at the same time.
| rolandog wrote:
| Not to mention atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
| 170,000+ deaths.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the japanese killed around 50 times that number of people
| in ww2 (R.J. Rummel, _Statistics of Democide_ , 1997)
| pb7 wrote:
| Well when you put it that way, it's an improvement over the
| previous regime that falsely imprisoned tens of millions of
| citizens and not illegals that are murdering and raping our
| populace.
|
| But you should probably pick up a book and learn the
| difference between a democracy and a dictatorship.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. The GP comment was
| bad*, but responding in kind is the opposite of what we're
| trying for here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (* for reasons--I hasten to add--unrelated to which side of
| the conflict they or anyone else is identifying with)
| platinumrad wrote:
| I agree with you on principle, but you're oversimplifying
| things if you think that opposition to the United States or
| Israel is all about a single person.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| So instead we must side with another regime that slaughtered
| 72'000 innocent civilians of _another_ country, most of whom
| were women and children?
| ted_bunny wrote:
| That 72k is a bare minimum. Those are just the recovered and
| identified bodies.
| praptak wrote:
| A regime driven by a weird religious cult and murdering their
| own citizens is battling a regime which is driven by a weird
| religious cult and is murdering their own citizens.
|
| I think in this situation it is okay to cheer on both sides.
| alberto-m wrote:
| Churchill and Eisenhower beg to disagree. When everyone is bad,
| you focus on restraining the most powerful actor first.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Check out the history behind this and how the US has treated
| Iran because of their Oil for almost a hundred years now. This
| is 100% on the west in my opinion. We've been abusing these
| people for the longest time.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Before the US it was the British with BP.
|
| Before the British with BP it was the British East India
| Company.
|
| Before the British EIC there were various periods of Arab,
| Turk and Mongol control.
|
| Persia has been a political football since Alexander the
| Great. Cursed geography.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| i really can't tell which side you're talking about
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| Trump just yesterday admitted to arming anti-Iranian
| insurrectionists. So Iran did not "murder 100s of their own
| people", they fought off a CIA armed coup.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You mean like siding with the dictatorial regime that provided
| material support to the 9/11 hijackers, 15/19 of whom were
| nationals of that country? And then we wanted to question 3
| menders of the royal family who were implicated they all
| mysteriously fell out of windows, died in a car accident or
| otherwise died?
|
| Another national was a renowned arms dealer linked to both
| Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. And then that arms dealer's
| nephew was chopped up in a foreign embassy and taken away in
| pieces?
|
| They murdered thousands of _our_ citizens let alone _theirs_.
|
| What leg do we have to stand on here exactly?
| bigtex88 wrote:
| Who is siding with Iran?
| some_random wrote:
| Most commenters in this thread.
| some_random wrote:
| Cue dozens of comments doing exactly that...
| regularization wrote:
| > Siding with a dictatorial regime
|
| Right, Iran used to have a parliament with Mossadegh as prime
| minister, what happened there? Oh yaa, Mossadegh wanted Iranian
| oil for Iranians, so the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh, with
| the help of conservative mullahs, and installed a dictatorship.
| Then SAVAK with CIA help spent decades slaughtering the secular
| opposition.
|
| > that's murdered 100s of their own people
|
| There are armed Balochi and Kurdish separatists shooting at the
| Iranian army right now, no doubt with clandestine Israeli and
| US support. Incidentally the Kurds _had_ their own state at the
| end of WWII, until the US and UK made them dissolve into Iran.
|
| Also aside from the bombings, the Basij have been fired on from
| the ground and have fired back. Who is arming the people
| shooting at the Basij is unknown, but some signs point to
| Israel.
|
| I write this less than three months after armed federal
| personnel decided to march into Minneapolis and among other
| things kill a nurse and also a woman.
|
| > and aided terrorist organizations
|
| The Arabs in southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip have lived
| there a long time. Over the past century Zionist Jews from
| around the world have been invading their land, shooting,
| bombing, starving them. If they fight back the epithet
| terrorist is applied to them, and if these brave men fighting
| for their people are assigned the word, it gives it a great
| esteem.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| multiple things can be bad at the same time.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Of course Mossadegh was "not ideal", but the current regime
| are genocidal islamists that over time have taken more and
| more to massacring their own population for ever more
| reasons.
|
| A pinprick and metastasizing cancer are both bad in
| absolute terms, but not remotely comparable.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| What genocide did they commit?
| TheChaplain wrote:
| https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/count
| rie...
| spwa4 wrote:
| That doesn't even include the massacre they did on their
| own population 2 months back. When it comes to genocides,
| Iran's islamists have a LONG list of mass-killings to
| answer for.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| The foreign-armed coup attempt? Is that the hill you
| wanna die on?
| spwa4 wrote:
| No. Iran's islamists have organized plenty "hills",
| including an attack on Brussels airport and metro. Me and
| my wife were within 2 km of the shooting.
|
| In the airport, they found a woman pushing a carriage.
| They shot the baby first and waited, laughing, for the
| woman to collapse onto the floor, dead, still bleeding
| baby in her hands, to shoot her. She survived. THAT is
| who you're dealing with here.
|
| We found out Iran's embassy was involved in organizing
| these attacks. There is nothing you can possibly to do
| convince anything done to these islamists, each and every
| one of them, is immoral in the slightest.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| That is pretty bad, but where's the genocide you
| mentioned?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| And today the occupation IRGC regime (that recently by IRGC
| released numbers massacred 3000 Iranians on the streets in 2
| days) is importing foreign militias to prop up their
| unpopular regime (along with recruiting child soldiers for
| the Basij you mentioned).
|
| "The roaming of the Islamic Republic's proxies in Iran; entry
| of "Zainabiyoun" of Pakistan after "Hashd al-Shaabi" of Iraq
| and "Fatemiyoun" of Afghanistan
|
| Reports of the presence of forces affiliated with the
| Zainabiyoun Division of Pakistan have been published in
| various areas of Sistan and Baluchestan province."
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| There was an interview with a historian and he said an
| interesting thing about the ancient Sparta: "Everything we know
| about Sparta we know from its enemies".
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think it's possible to have a grown-up discussion about the
| production value, cultural relevance, and effectiveness of
| propaganda without "siding" with the videos' sponsors. This
| appears to be an uncomfortable case of bad people speaking at
| least some truth--to the point where it's resonating.
| swat535 wrote:
| > Siding with a dictatorial regime that's murdered 100s of
| their own people and aided terrorist organizations
|
| I'm getting really tired of this. United States and Israel have
| bombed and killed more innocent people than I can count on. The
| biggest terrorist regime is United States right now, bombing
| schools.
|
| Your own president tweets out war crimes, your secretary of
| defense proudly proclaims "no quarters" and "send them back to
| the stone age".
|
| Do me a favor, and please lay off the morality lecture.
|
| How about you talk about the Gaza genocide for once? Or the
| IRAQ war that killed millions of people? Or using nuclear
| weapons on Japan? or the killing and raping of Vietnamese ?
|
| Or the fact that you backed Saddam to use chemical weapons on
| Iranians during the 8 year war?
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| While Iran is bad - US is engaged in war crimes (they even brag
| about it). It's like when Russians defend their war crimes by
| saying that Ukraine is corrupt.
| torlok wrote:
| I will side with any country that's being illegally attacked,
| and whose population is being illegally targeted, thank you
| very much. Sovereignty is fundamental, it's been broken. The
| state of Iran is the result of US and Israeli meddling. There
| was time for criticizing Iran before it was attacked.
| adrian_b wrote:
| When I first heard about the protests in Iran, I assigned
| automatically the blame on the dictatorial regime.
|
| Nevertheless, after the following events and after extra
| information provided by the US government itself, this is no
| longer so clear cut.
|
| The truth is that we do not really know what happened in Iran,
| how many have been killed and whether that was really an
| internal protest against the regime or a coup attempt organized
| by USA.
|
| The timing of the protests is too suspicious. The most
| plausible hypothesis is that US/Israeli agents have initiated
| the protests by influencing a great number of well-intended
| internal opponents of the regime, who probably have suffered
| then most from this action.
|
| If some of the opposition had received US weapons, that can
| explain the paranoia of the dictatorial regime, even if there
| is little doubt that the retaliations against the opposition
| must have affected many who had no ties with USA or Israel.
|
| Until credible information will surface about what really
| happened in Iran at the beginning of the year, we can affirm
| only that it is likely that the dictatorial regime has killed
| or tortured many non-violent opponents, but there is nothing
| certain about this.
|
| On the other hand, the unprovoked crimes committed by USA since
| the beginning of the year against countries like Iran or Cuba
| are certain facts, about which there exists no doubt
| whatsoever, because the top US officials are bragging about
| them.
|
| For all we know, USA might have already killed more Iranian
| civilians than the Iran government, so any claims that the
| attacks done by USA are somehow intended for supporting the
| Iranian people, are completely ridiculous.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Trump said on Sunday that the US at least tried to arm the
| protestors.
|
| > The U.S. sent guns to anti-regime protesters in Iran amid
| the wider war against Tehran, President Donald Trump
| confirmed to Fox News on Sunday.
|
| > Trump made the comment during an interview with Fox News'
| Try Yingst, saying the U.S. delivered the weapons through the
| Kurds.
|
| > "We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the
| Kurds. And I think the Kurds kept them," Trump said.
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/us-iran-trump-israel-
| war-l...
| lostlogin wrote:
| The story seems plausible but the source is as poor as they
| get.
|
| Trump facts change so quickly.
| thendrill wrote:
| Do you mean the US of I?
|
| Remember Snowden? Remmeber Assange? Remember Aaron Swartz?
| Remember the terrorizing of Occupy Wallstreet organizers?
| Remember the funding of terrorists all over Africa? Remember
| Libya? Remember who funded Isis?
|
| Is that regime you are talking about?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You are absolutely correct. However, I fear you're running up
| against the basic human instinct of "my enemy's enemy is my
| friend.".
|
| I also wonder how many actually support them, and how much is
| just a result of opinions boosted by bots?
| dang wrote:
| No doubt, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to
| Hacker News and please especially don't start flamewars.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| chaostheory wrote:
| No one cares about who made these videos in the US. The bigger
| issue is why are we engaging in a ground war in Iran when it
| doesn't really serve US interests? Everyone on both political
| spectrums in the US can see why it benefits Saudi Arabia and
| Israel, but not the US.
|
| We're using precious resources like missiles that we will need in
| the Pacific theater in next 1-2 years
| harrall wrote:
| Because it wasn't planned that far. The administration probably
| thought it would go like Venezuela. A Middle East historian
| would have told you Iran has building for all our war for
| decades because it trusts _none_ of its neighbors.
|
| A second problem is that the US knew for a while that we were
| weak at asymmetric warfare but we didn't fix it. There was a
| war game in 2002 (the Millennium Challenge, which was actually
| set in the Strait of Hormuz) that, though the red team did very
| much cheat, it did hint at a major weakness that wasn't
| resolved.
|
| There are US defense companies today that actually specialize
| in that but they weren't given the same attention (but boy are
| they now).
| chaostheory wrote:
| Which defense companies?
| harrall wrote:
| Anduril is the biggest one. They are based in Costa Mesa,
| CA and are building a bigger R&D facility in "Space Beach"
| (Long Beach, CA) and a manufacturing facility near
| Columbus, Ohio.
|
| Afterwards, you have smaller companies like Shield AI (San
| Diego, CA), Saronic Technologies (Austin, TX) and some
| other smaller ones.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Because this war is driven by Israel, not the US. The
| destruction of Iran, no matter what the costs for the world, is
| seen as an existential matter for the current Israeli
| government.
|
| But, destroying Iran without using nukes is not a Job Israel
| can do by themselves, they need the US. And while the Democrat
| establishment (although not the base) don't see an issue with
| supporting Israel activities in Gaza, the West Bank and
| Lebanon, a war with Iran was not something the Democrats would
| agree with.
|
| So, they had this window of opportunity with Trump, before the
| midterms, and they acted.
|
| We may not agree, but under the point of view of the Likud, it
| makes perfect sense.
| dvh wrote:
| I'm much more impressed by Chinese state-made eagles vs. cats
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dGY0_pgkv8
| spaghetdefects wrote:
| That one is so good.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Is this one group?
|
| Today I saw an analyst from Pakistan and he also had some of
| these "trump-lego-snippets" in the video, was wondering why
| someone would put so much effort in a video against trump, but it
| seems he copied it somewhere (from this group e.g.)
| dbvn wrote:
| Hate to admit it... but the video goes hard
| josefritzishere wrote:
| The production values were great. I can't deny it.
| sschueller wrote:
| I would be interested to know how these are made on a technical
| level. Is it a combination of several tools and are they local or
| some service (I would think LEGO minifigs would trigger some
| copyright issue)? I also assume you need to do certain things to
| keep the consistency and somehow sync the music with the video?
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| Is it even propaganda if you just read aloud your enemy's
| wikipedia? I think Bubba refers to someone else than Clinton and
| Iran's regime is despotic assholes, but apart from that pretty
| accurate depiction.
| ece wrote:
| Puppet regime has competition. Now do Putin.
| titanomachy wrote:
| I watched some of the videos. I think that the New Yorker does
| its readers a disservice by not pointing out that they also
| contain blatant lies, just like the propaganda they're supposedly
| countering. For example the "Victory Chronicles" video really
| misrepresents how much damage Iranian drones were able to do in
| Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
| altmanaltman wrote:
| Its a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for
| protesting. Ofc its all blatant lies, cute legos or not.
| There's literally no good sides to this war (anymore)
| elzbardico wrote:
| Again, are you sure of it?
| aogaili wrote:
| How many did the US kill in the name of their ideology and
| liberation?
|
| Almost all the recent wars in the middle east (and other
| parts of the world) can be traced to either the British
| colonization or the American empire.
|
| Have you noticed that American movies are full of explosions
| and the saviour complex?
|
| But you are too brainwashed and frankly ignorant to
| understand what is happening and you just repeat like an LLM
| what you have been trained on without an actual world model.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Are you sure of it?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Unrelated. I found this China propaganda video depicting its
| interpretation of the Iran war entertaining. It talks about the
| "flowing valley of gold" the Hormuz Strait, the "white eagle
| alliance" the USA, and "white eagle gold tickets" the
| petrodollar.
|
| https://youtu.be/As0rplNJTZI
| elzbardico wrote:
| There's also an Anime style one, more martial and militant in
| style.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/kutub.production/
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