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War propaganda is not a modern invention. It is not even a 20th-century one. It is, unfortunately, the oldest strategic communications discipline in recorded history, and its evolution from carved stone to AI-generated animation offers lessons for PR and communications practitioners.

Long before the term “public relations” was coined, rulers managed their reputations with extraordinary sophistication. The Behistun Inscription, carved into a cliff face in Persia around 515 BCE, records Darius I’s rise to the throne in terms that leave no doubt: his reign was divinely ordained, his enemies were rebels and liars, and the gods of Persia smiled on his dominion. It was a triumphal narrative etched in stone, literally immovable.

Julius Caesar took a different approach. Writing his “Commentaries on the Gallic Wars” for public consumption in Rome, he was meticulous in portraying his enemies as savage, their numbers as formidable, and his victories as extraordinary. By depicting the enemy as fierce, he cast himself as heroic. By calling them barbaric and describing their human sacrifices, he denied them sympathy from a Roman audience that might otherwise have asked uncomfortable questions about the justice of conquest. Caesar understood, 2,000 years before Edward Bernays (a propagandist who coined “public relations”), that you don’t just communicate facts, you frame them.

The Bayeux Tapestry, stitched in the years after the Norman Conquest of 1066, is one of history’s most accomplished acts of strategic storytelling. It is pure propaganda! Commissioned almost certainly by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, its 70 metres of embroidered scenes present a single, unambiguous narrative: Harold Godwinson broke an oath; William of Normandy was the rightful king of England; and the conquest was an act of divine justice. A comet in the sky, Halley’s Comet, visible that year, is woven into the tapestry as a portent of Harold’s doom.

What is remarkable is not the content but the medium. In a largely illiterate age, the tapestry used vivid visual storytelling to convey complex political legitimacy to audiences who would never read a Latin chronicle. It told a story through images, movement, and symbolism: the medieval equivalent of an explainer video. The tapestry was such a potent communications tool that Napoleon later displayed it in Paris to drum up public support for his planned invasion of England, and Adolf Hitler had it studied after occupying France in 1940.

The First World War transformed propaganda from an art into a science. For the first time, governments established dedicated agencies, such as Britain’s Ministry of Information and America’s Committee on Public Information, to manage public opinion systematically. Posters, postcards, newspapers, and early film became coordinated instruments of influence. Within three days of the declaration of war in August 1914, publishers had war-themed postcards on sale.

The techniques were straightforward: dehumanise the enemy, appeal to duty and patriotism, and suppress contrary information. Britain cut Germany’s undersea communication cables at the start of the war to gain a monopoly on news reaching American press outlets, a move that would today be called narrative control. Atrocity propaganda — stories, some true, some fabricated, of German brutality — was systematically circulated to maintain public support for the war and to bring neutral nations to the Allied cause.

By the Second World War, both the art and the ethics of propaganda had grown more complex. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, called radio the “eighth great power” and distributed millions of subsidised radio sets across Germany so that the state’s messages could reach every home. He understood that pure propaganda was brittle. By 1942, he had shifted the output ratio to 80% entertainment and only 20% explicit propaganda, recognising that audiences who were enjoying themselves were more receptive to embedded messaging. It was, in essence, content marketing.

Britain’s response was subtler. Aware that the Ministry of Information’s predecessor had been disbanded after the First World War because its propaganda had become too easily associated with lies, Churchill’s wartime communicators committed, in principle, to telling “the truth, nothing but the truth, and as near as possible the whole truth.” They used satire, humour, and irony to undermine German morale rather than simply asserting British virtue. The BBC’s foreign-language broadcasts to occupied Europe became a trusted source of information precisely because they were demonstrably more accurate than Goebbels’ output. That credibility became one of Britain’s most powerful strategic assets.

Fast-forward to 2026, and the US-Israel conflict with Iran has produced something genuinely new in the history of war communications: the “slopaganda” campaign. The term, a portmanteau of “AI slop” and “propaganda”, was coined by philosophers Michał Klincewicz, Mark Alfano and Amir Ebrahimi Fard to describe AI-generated content that serves propagandistic purposes at unprecedented speed and scale.

The group behind Iran’s most viral content is Explosive Media (Akhbar Enfejari), a team of fewer than ten individuals producing Lego Movie-style AI-animated videos that have garnered millions of views across social media platforms. Their videos depict Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as Lego figures caught up in absurdist scenarios involving the Epstein files, rap music, and imagery from American popular culture. One video shows Trump spiralling through a storm of “Epstein file” documents as a rap lyric proclaims, “the secrets leaking.” Another invokes George Floyd with the message that Iran “stands here for everyone your system ever wronged.”

The use of Lego is deliberate. As the group’s spokesperson explained, Lego is a “universal language” that is instantly recognisable, associated with childhood and playfulness, yet capable of conveying a dark and urgent message. Their videos are routinely shared by Iranian and Russian state media accounts on X, reaching millions of followers. When YouTube banned the Explosive Media channel in April 2026, Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced the ban as “suppressing the truth.” The account had already migrated to X, Instagram, TikTok, and Telegram.

Analysts note that Iran’s success in this meme war stems from a deep, deliberate study of American culture. “They’re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,” observed propaganda scholar Nancy Snow. The Israeli response — including an AI-generated video of Prime Minister Netanyahu appearing to speak Farsi, urging Iranians to overthrow their government was aimed at a different audience and failed to achieve the same viral resonance. And the less said about President Trump’s AI post depicting himself as the Messiah, the better. It caused outrage even among his own supporters. The majority of disinformation circulating globally during the conflict has been found to serve Iran’s narrative.

What distinguishes slopaganda from its predecessors is not its intent but its mechanics. It can be produced cheaply, quickly, and at scale. It can be personalised in ways a poster or a radio broadcast never could. And it exploits the algorithmic structures of social media platforms to spread organically, without the broadcast infrastructure that states previously required to reach mass audiences.

The arc from Darius I’s cliff inscription to Iran’s Lego animations is not simply a history of war. It is a compressed masterclass in the principles of communication. Here is what it teaches us for everyday, non-war and non-propaganda, professional practice.

1. Narrative beats information. Caesar did not send Rome a spreadsheet of his military achievements. He told stories. Every effective communicator throughout history has understood that facts alone rarely move people; it is the frame, the story, and the emotional resonance that determine whether a message lands. In your next campaign, ask not just “what do we want people to know?” but “what story do we want people to tell each other?”

2. Know your audience’s cultural vocabulary. Iran’s Lego videos work because their creators have studied what resonates with American audiences: Lego, rap music, and familiar political scandals. The British propaganda victories of the Second World War worked because communicators understood what ordinary Germans feared and wanted. Audience insight is not merely a research exercise to be completed before a campaign; it is the foundation on which every creative decision should rest.

3. Credibility is your most valuable and most fragile asset. The BBC’s wartime broadcasts outlasted Goebbels’ propaganda machine not because they were better produced, but because they were more trusted. Organisations and professionals who overpromise, exaggerate, or mislead their audiences spend years rebuilding the credibility they have destroyed. The Ministry of Information’s commitment to truth was as much a strategic choice as an ethical one.

4. Humour and irony reach places that earnestness cannot. One of the most striking lessons from both World War Two and the current conflict is that mockery can be more effective than assertion. Satire cuts through defences that straight messaging cannot. In corporate communications, crisis management, and brand building, the willingness to deploy lightness, even self-deprecation, can be a sign of strength rather than weakness.

5. Platform and medium shape the message. The Bayeux Tapestry worked because it communicated visually to a largely illiterate audience. Goebbels understood radio before almost anyone else grasped its political potential. Iran’s Explosive Media team understood TikTok and X. Every communicator needs to ask not only what they are saying, but also where and in what form, because the medium is not just the vehicle; it is part of the meaning.

War propaganda has always been the sharp end of the communications profession, with high stakes, high speed, and consequences that are literally a matter of life and death. The practitioners who have shaped history’s most consequential information campaigns share a set of instincts that remain entirely relevant in a boardroom, a press office, or a digital strategy session. The tools have changed beyond recognition, but the principles have not.

[Image of Lego minifigure heads by Nik on Unsplash]