14 comments

  • hk1337 1 hour ago
    Siding with a dictatorial regime that’s murdered 100s of their own people and aided terrorist organizations because you both hate the same person is absurd.
    • regularization 29 minutes ago
      > 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.

    • prh8 58 minutes ago
      What about the dictatorial regime that's bombing schools, falsely imprisoned tens of thousands, murdered far more than 100s, openly admitting to international war crimes?
      • dmos62 50 minutes ago
        It's almost funny how both of these descriptions can apply to either country.
        • spaghetdefects 39 minutes ago
          Except that only the US and Israel are bombing schools.
          • victorbjorklund 2 minutes ago
            Iran hit a teaching hospital so I guess they technically managed to hit a school and a hospital at the same time.
          • platinumrad 31 minutes ago
            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.
          • victorbjorklund 4 minutes ago
            Iran has helped Russia bomb many schools and hospitals.
      • titanomachy 54 minutes ago
        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 32 minutes ago
          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 28 minutes ago
          The Trump regime is still borderline, but I think it's fair to call Netanyahu a dictator at this point.
      • rolandog 36 minutes ago
        Not to mention atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 170,000+ deaths.
      • edgyquant 52 minutes ago
        Who exactly are you talking about?
        • barbazoo 47 minutes ago
          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

      • pb7 32 minutes ago
        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.

    • torlok 1 minute ago
      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, and the US has been meddling in Iran for decades now.
    • imdsm 1 hour ago
      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 1 hour ago
        I'm sorry, your takeaway from that film was that Sean Penn was the good guy?
        • akramachamarei 34 minutes ago
          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.
      • lynndotpy 43 minutes ago
        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.
      • delis-thumbs-7e 47 minutes ago
        > 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.

    • barbazoo 49 minutes ago
      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 42 minutes ago
        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.

    • victorbjorklund 5 minutes ago
      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.
    • platinumrad 56 minutes ago
      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.
    • alberto-m 51 minutes ago
      Churchill and Eisenhower beg to disagree. When everyone is bad, you focus on restraining the most powerful actor first.
    • ryandrake 22 minutes ago
      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.
    • Mikhail_Edoshin 29 minutes ago
      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".
    • raincole 1 hour ago
      Which one? If you mean Iran, "100s of" seems like a weird understatement.
      • pasquinelli 40 minutes ago
        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 31 minutes ago
          How about start with the number that the regime itself admits to; namely, thousands of protestors killed.
    • some_random 31 minutes ago
      Cue dozens of comments doing exactly that...
    • swat535 7 minutes ago
      > 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?

    • bigtex88 33 minutes ago
      Who is siding with Iran?
      • some_random 30 minutes ago
        Most commenters in this thread.
    • throwuxiytayq 1 hour ago
      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 40 minutes ago
        also because, well, our dictatorial regime.
      • spaghetdefects 39 minutes ago
        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.
    • cryptoegorophy 1 hour ago
      Today’s world is messed up. Look at EU leaders rubbing shoulders with Syrian president/ex-terrorist.
      • the_duke 1 hour ago
        That's in part because many EU countries would like to ship the Syrian refugees back to Syria.
      • lenerdenator 1 hour ago
        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 56 minutes ago
          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 43 minutes ago
            > 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".

        • u8080 52 minutes ago
          Indeed, we even had deals with Germany and Belgium who bombed hospitals in Yugoslavia in 1999!
      • glawre 1 hour ago
        Don't forget Trump rubbing shoulders with al-Sharaa either.
    • pasquinelli 44 minutes ago
      i really can't tell which side you're talking about
    • praptak 53 minutes ago
      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.

    • josefritzishere 1 hour ago
      I appreciate that this statement accurately describes all three regimes primarily involved without naming one.
    • lenerdenator 1 hour ago
      There's an implicit tolerance of authoritarian regimes so long as the price is right. This is nothing new.
    • jmyeet 33 minutes ago
      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?

    • spaghetdefects 41 minutes ago
      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.
    • jdthedisciple 53 minutes ago
      So instead we must side with another regime that slaughtered 72'000 innocent civilians of another country, most of whom were women and children?
  • dvh 1 hour ago
    I'm much more impressed by Chinese state-made eagles vs. cats video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dGY0_pgkv8
  • input_sh 1 hour ago
    Given the headline, they found out nothing about "the team".
  • delis-thumbs-7e 30 minutes ago
    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.
  • sschueller 46 minutes ago
    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?
  • ece 2 minutes ago
    Puppet regime has competition.
  • tantalor 2 hours ago
  • KellyCriterion 1 hour ago
    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 1 hour ago
    Hate to admit it... but the video goes hard
  • virgildotcodes 2 hours ago
    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

    • blackcatsec 1 hour ago
      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.
      • some_random 28 minutes ago
        Deepfakes were never necessary, people have been making incredible propaganda forever though the same few tactics. For instance, presenting footage out of context.
      • baggy_trough 1 hour ago
        Invasion?
    • abdusco 1 hour ago
      Care to share the link?
    • simonw 1 hour ago
      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 55 minutes ago
        The White House seems to have made the mistake of hiring HOI4 modders for their propaganda team.
  • josefritzishere 1 hour ago
    The production values were great. I can't deny it.
  • chaostheory 1 hour ago
    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 43 minutes ago
      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).

  • dfir-lab 32 minutes ago
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  • devcraft_ai 1 hour ago
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