A Native American chief rides on his horse onto a barren landscape, bathed in moonlight. The animated video rapidly shuttles between a range of people who’ve been victims of the United States government, from Black Americans in chains to survivors of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison complex
Then it pans to Iranian soldiers sticking large banners on missiles, as the tempo of the background music picks up. “For the stolen Blacks,” says the first one. “For the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” comes up next
“In memory of victims of Iran Air flight 655,” says another, referring to the passenger aircraft brought down by US missiles in 1988, killing all 290 people on board. “In memory of Rachel Corrie’s freedom struggle” follows, referring to the American activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. Victims of US war and abuses in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iraq – and the “children of Epstein island” – all get similar messages, plastered on missiles that then fire off. The video ends with giant statues of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsing, and a line in bold, white and all caps: ‘ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL.
The March 29 video is one of many released by Explosive Media, among several Iran-based groups that have used the Lego figures and blocks that households around the world are familiar with to script a viral social media trend, bolstering Tehran’s narrative amid the war against the US and Israel
The video depicting the multiple victims of US aggression and domestic crimes has been viewed almost 150,000 times on X. Explosive Media’s YouTube account has more recently been deleted by the Google-owned video-sharing platform.
But the Tehran-based group, which uses bespoke lyrics and rap beats to mock Trump – often using the US president’s own words to accuse him of hypocrisy and of pandering to Israel’s interests rather than America’s – isn’t giving up
An Explosive Media representative, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera that their YouTube channel was shut down on the grounds of promoting violence – and that they are convinced that Lego-like brick animations are not at all violent
There was frustration, but no surprise – this story is not new,” he said. “We know well how the West wraps truth in silence and tries to mute every voice that speaks it.
Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, who researches media analytics, said Iran’s efforts to win the narrative war were a critical part of its strategy, because it knows that it can’t win militarily.
Their best bet of success is to have public opinion on their side, pressuring the United States to stop,” he told Al Jazeera. “And the communications game in this day and age is one in which this kind of troll propaganda, this kind of ‘owning smack-talk type’ propaganda wins.
He said that the carefully chosen themes in the Lego-style videos would have resonated even more with Western audiences if they weren’t coming out of Iran – a country they’ve been told, over decades, to distrust.
Zaka argued that in many ways the undiplomatic tone and ruthless messaging in the Iranian videos mirrored Donald Trump’s own communication style.
Ultimately, the Iranian Lego videos are very good,” Jones said. “They’re actually well thought out. There’s a lot of details in them. There’s actually a narrative. Whereas US propaganda is just, you know, explosions with Hollywood films cut through them.