Here’s an uncomfortable question: how many of your favorite movies, tv shows, video games, art, or content creators are actually propaganda?
When we think of propaganda, a lot of us picture anti-communist posters, big fascist rallies, or Uncle Sam saying he wants “you” for the military. Don’t get us wrong, that is all propaganda too, but in many ways that’s basic, level 1 type stuff. The really good stuff is a lot more subtle and you won’t even realize it’s propaganda because you’ll be laughing, smiling, and having a good time while you’re watching. It’s hidden inside the entertainment that we’re told is “apolitical” - popular movies, TV, comic books, art galleries, literary journals, video games, memes, and everything in between.
That’s because when you’re entertained, your guard is down. You’re not watching out for government narratives being implanted or ulterior motives because the assumption is that all these things are just for fun. But there’s always a message, even if it’s not explicitly told to us. The Kenyan filmmaker Judy Kibinge has said, “you are what you watch” because the media we consume shapes how we view the world, what we consider normal, and who we view as the “enemy.” When we look at the things happening around the world, the media has already shaped how we feel about it.
And in the United States, most of the media we consume is produced by a small handful of corporations, and it’s only getting smaller. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta control Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook - three social media networks with billions of active users a day. TikTok’s US servers and data is now owned by Oracle, a company co-founded by Larry Ellison — one of Trump's and the Israeli military’s biggest donors, with deep ties to the CIA.[1] The same Ellison family are also behind the $81 billion deal to merge Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, bringing together major movie studios, news stations, children’s media, and more under a single roof.
This has global implications because entertainment is one of the United States’s greatest exports. American movies, TV shows, music, and games aren't just watched in the US. They're consumed globally, by billions of people, shaping how people everywhere understand the world, who the heroes are, who the villains are, and what kinds of resistance are acceptable.
For a very long time, the US government has known the power of entertainment and taken full advantage of it. TikTok, the movies, and TV will still be entertaining even after these mergers. It’ll still be fun to watch a new film or scroll your ‘For You’ Page, but that’s exactly the point. Because the truth is: the best propaganda isn't the stuff that makes you angry or scared. The best propaganda is the stuff that makes you laugh, smile, and feel good.
So let’s break down the ways that the US government has influenced our entertainment, why they’ve invested billions to do it, what that means for our culture, and what we can actually do about it.
The Birth of the Military-Entertainment Complex
In the United States, we don’t have “state-run” media in the traditional sense where the government directly controls what can be broadcast, but that doesn’t mean the US government isn’t involved.
Film was invented in the late 1800s and quickly grew from a fun novelty to a mass entertainment medium. Unlike printed media, film allowed people to experience what they were watching in a much more visceral way. Moving pictures were much more effective at getting emotional responses out of people and feel like they were experiencing a scene first-hand. And unlike large political rallies, a film could be played and reproduced over and over again with little additional cost. The US government saw the potential early on.
