The Offline Origins of Iranian ‘Slopaganda’

What an EU Ethics Filing from a 2018 Conference Teaches About Multipolar Narratives and Tehran’s Digital Diplomacy

Dr. Rachel Kantz Feder

ACIS Iran Pulse No. 115 | May 18, 2026

Viral Lego-style videos that collapse the boundaries between entertainment and geopolitics have drawn attention to Tehran’s effectiveness in the information domain and to the challenges posed by new forms of propaganda.1 Analysts refer to this content, rife with emotive imagery and conspiratorial narratives as ‘slopaganda’ or “unwanted, high-volume, often AI-generated content that is spread in order to manipulate beliefs to achieve political ends.”2 Some ascribe Iran’s capabilities in this field to a new generation of IRGC-linked creators skilled in cognitive warfare and armed with familiarity of American pop culture.3
Yet, Iranian narrative strategy is rooted in decades of offline cultural diplomacy, in particular, collaboration between the late IRGC-linked leading media personality Nader Talebzadeh and Russian ultranationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin.4 As commentators and researchers warn of
1 Beckett, Charlie. 2026. “Lego Videos, Iran, Trump and the Age of AI Propaganda Movies.” The Guardian, April 8, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/08/lego-videos-iran-trump-ai-video-meme-propaganda-movie-animation.
2 Klincewicz, Michał, Mark Alfano, and Amir Ebrahimi Fard. “Slopaganda: The Interaction Between Propaganda and Generative AI.” Filosofiska Notiser, vol. 12, no. 1, 2025, pp. 137. https://www.filosofiskanotiser.com/KlincewiczAlfanoFard.pdf; Chayka, Kyle. 2026. “The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign.” The New Yorker, April 2, 2026, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-team-behind-a-pro-iran-lego-themed-viral-video-campaign;
3 Bajoghli, Narges. “In the Room with Iran’s Social Media Savants: The New Generation of IRGC Content Creators Is Younger, Quicker, and Less Afraid of the U.S.” New York Magazine, 7 Apr. 2026. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/iran-revolutionary-guard-social-media-behind-the-scenes.html
4 The issue of Dugin’s reception in Iran is complex and beyond the scope here.
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Dugin’s divisive impact on the American right, the ideological partnerships, transnational networks, media ecosystems, and narratives that he helped cultivate with Talebzadeh and Iranian state-actors since the early 2000’s warrant attention.
To Dugin and his conception of multipolarity (an unapologetically anti-American, antiliberal project), Iran has offered a ready-made synthesis of religious and messianic symbolism, a revolutionary ethos, and anti-imperialist rhetoric aligned with his own traditionalism, anti-globalism, and apocalyptic views. Tehran is a top geopolitical and ideological partner in contesting Western modernity and American power--a conflict he depicts in stark civilizational and eschatological, or end times, terms.
Dugin and Talebzadeh contributed to the infrastructure for transnational media and cultural networks that link Iranian state actors with fringe North Americans and Europeans spanning far-right, radical-left, libertarian, and conspiratorial milieus. Through conferences and cultural exchanges, they cultivated relationships with journalists, politicians, activists, and academics. Exploiting issues such as racial tensions and police brutality in America, these gatherings fostered ideological cross-pollination and convergence by reinforcing distrust in American institutions and governance, all the while incubating narratives prevalent in today’s Iranian ‘slopaganda’ and other messaging.
An EU ethics-filing by German far-right politician Udo Voigt, including an agenda and invitation to the 2018 6th International New Horizon Conference held in Mashhad, captures the workings of their endeavour. This bureaucratic receipt reveals how a conference on Palestine brought together IRGC-affiliated clerics and officials, Dugin, and American alternative media figures of Veterans Today and Unz Review (both seen as conspiratorial pro-Kremlin outlets), as well as radical left and right-wing activists. The conference served as a clearinghouse for anti-American narratives, promoting not only “The New Multipolar World” and classically antisemitic claims of Zionist control over U.S. foreign policy, media, and finance, but also “satanism”5 and allegations of Israeli wrongdoing from the assassination of JFK to the 9/11 terror attack.
5 A previous conference chaired by Talebzadeh also developed themes around satanism. “Iran Hosts Hollywood & Cinema Confab.” Trend.az, Trend News Agency, 7 Feb. 2011, https://www.trend.az/iran/1824513.html. Accessed 10 May 2026.
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A panel on the “Role of Resistance and Awakening Moves” comprised of Dugin, a journalist for
Middle East Eye, and a French academic and Holocaust denier, included discussion of “Anti-
Colonialism Resistance and Freedom Movements,” demonstrating how America’s adversaries
integrate language of anti-imperialism to appeal to disparate ideological currents. Other
conference items prevalent in Iranian ‘slopaganda’6 and other mediums that reach American and
global audiences included: the “Role of Zionism Lobby in Islamophobia,” “Introducing Martyrs
of Resistance Groups and Assassinations of Liberal Figures in the World to Expose American
Human Rights and International Zionism,” Israel as instigator of American wars and “the major
factor” and “cause” of chaos, terrorism, and catastrophes in the region.
6 See recent videos that invoke Israeli control of foreign policy, police brutality, satanism, Muslim and Christian-
Muslim unity, and apocalyptic framing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UUj1FYBS6Y and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQ9T1MosRM.
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Beyond the demonization of America, its foreign policy, and relations with Israel, conference organizers sought to unite participants around conservative values and a Christian-Muslim alliance. In this regard, a notable participant of the Mashad and previous conferences was E. Michael Jones, a far-right Catholic polemicist recently platformed by Candace Owens. Jones has long preached about Jews’ inherent evil and their war against the Catholic Church and Western civilization and is a figure in the American “JQ” or “Jewish Question” movement. Like Dugin, he champions a Christian-Muslim eschatological alliance against Jews, Zionism, and Christian Zionists and has incorporated satanism and corruption in his attacks against American elites--motifs that appear in Iranian ‘slopaganda’ creations.
For example, a video from March 2026 integrates references to Palestine, Iran as leader of global resistance to America, the destruction of “Baal” an ancient deity invoked here to represent moral decay and apostasy, and Jeffrey Epstein. A month earlier, the same symbolic repertoire including burning effigies of Baal with a Star of David were displayed at Iran’s state-organized rallies to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution. This spectacle, heavily promoted by Dugin and Russian and Iranian English-language media, framed the American establishment as an elite satanic cabal, elevating anti-Western sentiment to a spiritual and apocalyptic war. Just prior to the rallies, Dugin published an article titled “Western Modernity as Antichrist: Epstein, Zionism, and Eschatology,” in which he assailed elites and their Satanic practices. In a later essay, he framed Iran and Russia as the civilizational and spiritual bulwark against “the cult of Baal” which he
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likened to “the cult of the United States and Israel.”7 Iranian figures said to be associated with the rallies and their online promotion participated in the 2018 Mashad conference alongside Dugin.
These very ideas and language are entering the American domestic discursive bloodstream not only through viral ‘slopaganda’ but also increasingly through major American internet personalities. ‘Sneako’, a popular podcaster who lamented that Jewish New Yorkers are promoting the antichrist, recently platformed Dugin and Iranian political commentator Mohammad Marandi to discuss Operation Epic Fury and Iran’s leadership of an anti-imperial eschatological conflict against America and Zionists.
Today’s information environment in which foreign state objectives and narratives are platformed and/or echoed by American influencers and podcasters is the intended result of years of Iran’s offline cultural diplomacy, partnership with Dugin, and engagement with American academics, whistleblowers, figures from alternative media, and activists of all stripes. As such, contemporary Iranian ‘slopaganda’ represents more continuity than rupture with earlier forms of narrative strategy. What has changed is the digital medium that repackages tired narratives at scale.
7 “Iran: The Last Stand Against Baal.” Arktos Journal, https://www.arktosjournal.com/p/iran-the-last-stand-against-baal. Accessed 10 May 2026.

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