🧵THREAD: Why Are AI-Generated Black Women Selling War?
There’s a new kind of military propaganda happening—and it has a face.
Not a general. Not a flag.
A Black woman.
Digitally generated. Dressed in fatigues. Smiling, jubilant as she praises a U.S. airstrike against Iran.
Let’s talk about why that’s not progress. 👇🏾
Black women carry cultural credibility.
We’ve been truth-tellers, moral anchors, movement leaders.
We signify justice, resistance, clarity.
So now? We’re being simulated to sell messages we never co-signed.
Problematic as hell.
The AI video I saw showed a young “Black servicewoman” in combat greens surrounded by other service personnel in a 'desert' holding her phone like it was recording her, celebrating a successful bombing on Iran.
I think the caption was something like a Matthew 5:9 scripture quote, "Blessed are the peacemakers." (a pun on the type of missile, I guess.)
But she wasn’t real.
No real woman said those words. (And how effing dare they tap into the whole church thing.)
Someone generated her to perform consent.
To make empire sound like empowerment.
This isn’t representation—it’s digital blackface with imperial intent.
It’s camouflage.
The message is war.
But the messenger looks like someone you’ve learned to trust.
It’s giving Starship Troopers (which dropped during the first quagmires we entered during Iraq) —
Satire of American militarism, where the propaganda felt so over-the-top it was funny…
Until you realize:
That’s exactly what this is.
But now it’s AI-generated. And not satire.
Media and cultural literacy are survival skills now.
Because the people behind these videos know what Black women signify.
They’re not choosing our likeness by accident.
They’re laundering power through a trusted image.
Who's going to tell you the truth? A blonde in a MAGA hat or AG Leticia James?
AI lets them do this without permission. And it's alarming how good these videos are, if you're not paying attention!
What a bang for their buck:
No real spokesperson.
No accountability.
Just a synthetic Black woman with perfect skin and polished tone, and *almost* the right syntax, pushing war on your feed.
It's ... wild.
Using Black women as moral mascots.
A fascist deepfake in a twist-out.
That's some wild shit.
I don't know.
First, I think folks need to know these videos exist.
Then I think folks need to understand what propaganda is and how this type of content goes beyond being a mere ad for the US military and into something else.
Questions need to be asked when folks see these videos:
What is this video saying?
Why this image? Who's benefitting from it? What's missing from this video?
Why 'her' and why now? What's going to be the anticipated outcome?
And then the Call to Action:
Do NOT fall for this crap trying to get our young Black and Brown folks killed in a cause that's corrupt and foul.
We may have served before but this ain't that.
Am reminded of Skepchick's recent video essay taking apart the propaganda that is Alt National Park Service. (Disclaimer: Have not watched, for unrelated reasons.)
Am also thinking of thread today discussing how NGOs and non-profits twist words of activist practice to silo dissent into inertia, presented as popular calls to action.
We collectively lack the skills to critique texts, whether social media accounts or calls to action or works of video.
We collectively lack the skills to engage with a text as a manufactured thing, that one might take a set of tools to—in order to tear it down and examine its components to see how they work together.
We further collectively lack the skills to create and disseminate the tools necessary for collective learning of the skills necessary to tear texts down.
Thus, those of us with the skills and tools play a game of Whac-a-Mole with those texts we come upon, without ever broadening collective skills to do that work.
Am working with a mentee: a college student who is struggling with doing research essays.
Will walk them through a text, posing the very sort of questions offered above:
What is this text saying? Why this sentence, this clause? Who's benefiting from it? What's missing from this section? Why this vignette and why here? What outcome is the text seeking?
Have learned that this is unhelpful for my mentee, who when they aren't at a loss for how to begin to answer those questions, responds with the lament "I don't know how to come up with those sorts of questions!"
Said mentee, an eloquent communicator who excels at making an argument when given guardrails to do so, looks at a text where they aren't told what to think about it, and is only able to question their own ability, because they lack the skilled use of tools to critique a text.
Myself am at a loss. Modeling asking of questions isn't how to crack this nut. Admonitions not to fall for it ain't enough.
Diligence Jones
Fishercat
sport of sacred spherical cows