The White House has launched a controversial online propaganda campaign, using fast-paced, aggressive hype videos that blend real combat footage with fictional movies and video games. These videos, shared on X in recent days, seem to target a niche audience: young rightwing American men who spend significant time online.

Blending Fiction and Reality

Among the videos released is one titled “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY,” which mixes footage from action movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, and Iron Man with real combat footage of U.S. strikes on Iranian military targets. The video features fast-paced electronic dance music and includes quotes from movie stars such as Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson.

Another video, captioned “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue,” opens with a Call of Duty-style call-in for an air-strike and then transitions to footage of U.S. bombs destroying Iranian targets. The video includes a heads-up display announcing points scored after each destruction, reminiscent of video game mechanics.

Appealing to a Specific Demographic

The White House appears to be aware of the popularity of such hype videos among the online right and far right. These videos often embrace a retro-futurist aesthetic, drawing on the nostalgia of 1980s and 1990s music and movies, while projecting a vision of a near-future America with a strong industrial base and fewer immigrants.

Some of these videos also use memes or animation. In 2023, a staffer from the Ron DeSantis campaign was fired for producing an unauthorized pro-DeSantis campaign video set to the Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill, which included symbols associated with neo-Nazis.

Propaganda and Rhetoric

The White House’s aggressively macho propaganda aligns with the rhetoric of Pete Hegseth, the U.S. secretary of defense, who has frequently criticized political correctness and boasted of U.S. military prowess. Hegseth, a conservative media personality and a former national guard veteran, has also lobbied for pardons for soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes.

Hegseth is known for sporting Christian nationalist tattoos, including a Jerusalem cross and the Latin phrase “Deus Vult,” which translates to “God wills it.” The strategy behind the propaganda campaign seems to focus on appealing to a small but influential segment of the MAGA base, rather than persuading the broader public of the necessity of the Iran war.

According to a recent NPR/PBS/Marist survey, Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of the strikes on Iran, with just 36% of the public approving of Trump’s handling of the war. The White House’s messaging has been confusing and tautological, and the administration seems more concerned with pacifying a small sliver of its base than convincing the American people of the war’s necessity.

On X, commenters have responded to the White House war propaganda videos by mocking their ham-fisted and bloodthirsty aesthetics. Some have referred to the war with Iran as “Operation Epstein Distraction” and criticized the administration for betraying the MAGA movement’s promise to put “America first.”

A former Heritage Foundation staffer commented on one of the videos, saying, “The hype edits are stupid. We want mass deportations, the legislative agenda you campaigned on, and no more wars.”

The White House’s strategy appears to be aimed at a very online, very male, and often younger segment of the MAGA “new right” that is skeptical about foreign interventionism and cynical about past Middle East misadventures. However, the effectiveness of this strategy remains uncertain, as the target audience seems less than impressed.