How does the military entertainment complex transform wars of aggression and annihilation into entertainment and entertainment: films, series, video games and other forms of popular media? How does he use it to promote wars, mobilize support, and normalize genocide, erasure, and destruction?
Over the past quarter century, the United States has used what is called “military entertainment,” that is, entertainment products, films, series, and video games, revolving around wars, histories, and war tournaments, so that the “media” production processes and their media are integrated with war, to hide the facts of death and destruction. But the Israeli genocide in Gaza has made this kind of propaganda impossible to sustain, as Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are now discovering with the latest war.
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Robin Andersen, professor of media and communication studies at Fordham University, recalls what President George H.W. Bush said on the eve of the end of the Desert Storm war on March 10, 1991: “I swear to God, we have eliminated the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”
With these words, Bush Sr. affirmed at the time that after the defeat of Vietnam and the orientation of American public opinion against wars and foreign military interventions, the First Gulf War revived the war mentality again and confirmed the primacy of the American army locally and globally, and once again dominated the world.
Propaganda industry in Hollywood studios
In turn, Trump and his entourage have reached unprecedented levels of excessive boasting, and this is clearly evident in the statements of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News Channel journalist, who talks about bombing Iran as if he were in a boxing ring, saying: “We are punching them while they are falling on the ground, and this is exactly the ideal situation.”
Turning this illegal war into a sporting event is part of turning American aggression into a mere entertainment game, which has been well entrenched in the United States’ wars in the Middle East since the beginning of this century.
Through propaganda images and videos shot on the TikTok platform, Trump and his war machine are striving to convince Americans that bombing Iran is fun and exciting.
“Turning aggression into a mere entertainment game…a toxic pleasure of destruction that takes away the realities of human suffering.”
Real footage of falling bombs is interwoven with text and images taken from television shows and movies, some of which are the product of the Pentagon’s control of Hollywood. Take, for example, the montage that includes a series of video clips from the films “Iron Man” and “Breaking Bad,” which highlights words such as “power,” “honor,” and “freedom,” along with real footage of bombings, bombings, and explosions, then the words “I am the danger,” “Here he comes,” and other explosions. The montage ends with a roar and a rumble of “overwhelming victory,” and an image of the White House.
This blend of fact and fiction, war and entertainment, invites viewers to sense the power of superweapons and experience them through the eyes of famous TV heroes and the movie superhero who is always on the right side of ultra-violence. The realities of human suffering, death and destruction are extracted through what becomes merely the toxic pleasure of destruction.
Throughout the twenty-first century, this fusion of media and war has been known as militainment.
From “Nintendo” to “Call of Duty”
The video game used in Trump’s wars finds its roots in the war of Bush Sr., who presided over the first Gulf War, or “Desert Storm”, which was initially called the “Nintendo War”, and then turned into an actual war video game bearing the same name “Nintendo”.
When the so-called smart bombs fell on Baghdad, they were equipped with remote surveillance cameras to celebrate “precise” strikes that never missed their targets. It was claimed that the new high-tech weapons resulted in limited “collateral damage”. The Pentagon provided television images of the bombing to broadcast networks. Viewing audiences viewed the war from the perspective of weapons, embedding the conflict within the audiovisual experience of militarization.
Bush Sr.’s declaration of victory would not have been possible without those picturesque images that entertained the American masses and gave them a sense of power and pride, but they certainly did not inform them of the scope of the destruction and loss of life. Thanks to media coverage that combined public relations with entertainment and war propaganda, the media ensured continued popular support for “Desert Storm.”
“In war video games…no one actually dies!”
It was all part of an emerging network known as the “military-industrial media complex,” which was then busy creating illusions and fantasies of war. War video games used the same computer technologies that power real weapons systems, and several war video game series, such as America’s Army and Call of Duty, have made millions of dollars by standardizing war economies and technologies. These video games have erased the realities and realities of death and destruction; After all, no one dies in a video game!
Tom Cruise in Baghdad
American television news was fully integrated into Bush Jr.’s war on terror, as the partnership between war and entertainment took another major leap forward, and “military entertainment” dominated news coverage. Reports and news anchors accompanying US forces told the story of the invasion of Iraq from the perspective of real soldiers, just like on a reality show.
One of the most famous scenes is when an American Marine carried an infant Iraqi child in his arms on the battlefield, highlighting images of heroism and humanity in war. With the War on Terror, American propaganda was designed on the battlefield, inspired by successful movie plots that incorporated Bush’s 21st century wars into entertainment genres.
Saving Private Ryan, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg (1998), was transformed on screen into Saving Private Lynch in Iraq. Bush Jr., who never served in the army, was able to direct a fighter plane to the US aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln”, off the coast of San Diego, in a scene specifically designed to emulate Tom Cruise in the legendary movie “Top Gun.” After that, Bush went to the “Green Zone” in Baghdad, and distributed pieces of a “fake” turkey to the soldiers on the occasion of Thanksgiving, thus making Bush a model for a doll representing the appearance of the president.
The film industry has intensified its cooperation with the military, and a wave of big-screen blockbusters has emerged featuring metal superheroes wielding Pentagon-made (toy) weapons. It was the perfect blend of sound and visuals for expensive weapons.
Eventually, Act of Valor, starring active-duty Navy Seals in a film that was originally a US Army recruitment promotion, was released and seen in movie theaters across the country.
Dazzling entertainment images dominated the global scene, obliterating the human reality of its victims on the ground. But the war on terrorism turned into costly eternal wars, claiming the lives of millions of people in the Middle East. With no significant victories, the false pretensions of fantasy wars faded.
Trump and Hegseth’s cultural and behavioral forms, symbols, and stereotypes are trying hard to revive a media environment that promotes war through military entertainment, this time infused with unprecedented levels of toxic militarism that elevates selfish power. But the illusions of the entertaining war fantasy media vanished completely when the entire world watched America’s most important ally, the settler state of Israel, commit the crime of genocide against the people of Palestine. The dominant American media tried to cover up Israel’s massacre in Gaza in a blatant news bias towards Israel, but most of the world’s people did not believe it.
Masks fall and fantasy breaks
During the two and a half years of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the world witnessed visual horrors on the ground, documented by the sacrifices of Palestinian journalists who reported on global internet platforms. Citizens of the world felt 2,000-pound bombs destroying entire residential buildings, tearing apart the bodies of children and extended families, and erasing entire Palestinian lineages.
The world has heard the testimonies of doctors who were caring for or trying to care for child victims, who were injured by Israeli sniper bullets in the head and chest. It has also seen pictures of hungry civilians who were killed while searching for food, and the world was disgusted and strongly condemned this. They called on their governments to stop supporting genocide, and in the United States, they called on Biden and then Trump to stop sending lethal weapons to Israel.
“There is little difference between fact and fiction for a psychopath high on his destructive power.”
It is no longer possible to turn genocide into entertainment, and the official media did not even try. Rather, it contented itself with repeating elements of Israeli discourse, belittling the massacre, stripping the victims of their humanity, and justifying every destruction of civilian infrastructure as a strategic necessity to eliminate a hidden “army” that is supposed to penetrate every school, hospital, aid distribution center, refugee camp, and water well.
About four-fifths of Americans opposed the bombing of Iran from the beginning, and although major media outlets made strenuous efforts to promote the US-Israel war, a Quinnipiac University poll published on March 5 showed that 53 percent of Americans opposed it, and this percentage is steadily increasing. Trump’s war remains very low in popularity, both historically and globally. American public opinion strongly opposes expanding its scope, as 74 percent of them oppose sending American ground forces to Iran.
Fortified awareness
Robin Andersen says, We have returned to the starting point, as the new “Gaza annihilation syndrome” has made American and international public opinion immune to considering war as entertainment and entertainment, especially the recent brutal and unjustified war of Trump, Hegseth, and Netanyahu.
Trump is currently using the word “excursion” to describe his illegal bombing and killing of civilians in Iran and the sacrifice of American soldiers, as if it were a quick, relaxing vacation. For a psychopath, high on his own destructive power, and in an atmosphere that veteran journalist Chris Hedges describes as “a lawless world led by idiots,” there seems little difference between fact and fiction.
“The Gaza annihilation syndrome has made world public opinion immune to considering the war as entertainment and entertainment.”
Trump spews fantasies and war fantasies in which he appears to believe, falsely asserting that “we have already won,” even as he begs the allies to send their warships to open the Strait of Hormuz, a gambit that has failed miserably. Trump is floundering in search of a way out that he cannot take for fear of humiliation, refusing to acknowledge the reality of defeat. At this moment, his propaganda slogan, “I am the danger,” rings true on the world stage.
This topic remains a fertile research field for media and communication studies, its political, ideological and anthropological implications and its role in promoting wars over a century and more. Professor Robin Andersen has devoted several studies and books to this field, one of which is a book entitled: “A Century of Media A Century of War.” Her recently published book, After the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, is entitled: The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Perhaps we will resume this discussion by presenting the latest book soon, God willing.
