Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

How Iran Won the Meme Wars

While Donald Trump panders to MAGA, Iranian satire is reaching a global audience.

A screenshot from an Iranian video mocking Pete Hegseth.

On Sunday, as tens of millions of Orthodox Christians around the world observed Easter, the most important holy day on their calendar, Donald Trump launched a series of bizarre, religiously themed attacks. The first was a lengthy Truth Social post assailing Pope Leo, who has become a prominent opponent of Trump’s policies. Trump ranted that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and suggested that “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left.” This was followed by another Truth Social post featuring a bizarre AI-generated image that seems to show Trump as Jesus Christ, wearing a robe and healing a sick man, while angelic figures hover in the background. Former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, not too long ago an ardent Trump supporter, denounced this post as “more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.” Even those who aren’t Christian can agree that the image is shockingly disrespectful of Christianity.

Trump’s posts were part of a larger conflict he’s been having with the Catholic Church, due to criticisms major church leaders, including the pope, have made about his immigration policy and the Iran war. One thing that likely triggered Trump was a Sunday night 60 Minutes segment featuring three American Catholic cardinals, Joseph Tobin, Robert McElroy, and Blase Cupich, who have all been sharply critical of Trump. (At one recent vigil mass for peace, McElroy said, “We are in the midst of an immoral war.”)

During the 60 Minutes segment, Capich strongly condemned social media posts from the White House that celebrated alleged US victories by mixing together war footage with scenes from triumphalist Hollywood films such as Top Gun: Maverick and Braveheart. He lamented that splicing “movie cuts with actual bombing and targeting of people for the purposes of entertainment is sickening.”

The fact that social media posts by Trump and his administration are alienating religious leaders and former political allies is symptomatic of a larger political trend. Trump rose to the presidency in part through his mastery of social-media trolling. But these days, his unparalleled ability to get people to pay attention to his boorishness is hurting him politically as the world grapples with the mass death and economic upheaval caused by his militarism.

Both Trump and the Iran war are intensely unpopular, with approval for both hovering below 40 percent in Nate Silver’s aggregation of the polls. Even troops don’t want the stench of the war on them; there are signs that the Pentagon is facing a growing retention problem, with soldiers taking early retirement rather than risk fighting in an unpopular conflict. One prominent war supporter, Max Abrahms, an international relations scholar at Northeastern University, has lamented that public opinion is undercutting the war effort.

Social-media posts likening the current conflict to........

© The Nation