š§µTHREAD: Why Are AI-Generated Black Women Selling War?
Thereās a new kind of military propaganda happeningāand 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.
Letās talk about why thatās not progress. šš¾
Black women carry cultural credibility.
Weāve been truth-tellers, moral anchors, movement leaders.
We signify justice, resistance, clarity.
So now? Weāre being simulated to sell messages we never co-signed.
Problematic as hell.
The AI video I saw showed a young āBlack servicewomanā 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 wasnāt 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 isnāt representationāitās digital blackface with imperial intent.
Itās camouflage.
The message is war.
But the messenger looks like someone youāve learned to trust.
Itās giving Starship Troopers (which dropped during the first quagmires we entered during Iraq) ā
Satire of American militarism, where the propaganda felt so over-the-top it was funnyā¦
Until you realize:
Thatās exactly what this is.
But now itās AI-generated. And not satire.
Media and cultural literacy are survival skills now.
Because the people behind these videos know what Black women signify.
Theyāre not choosing our likeness by accident.
Theyāre 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.
Hang with me on this, but maybe the whole Liberal Theory of Identity Politics is hapless against this kinda shit because the Liberal Theory of Identity Politics basically is dittoing the presumed consensus of an Identity that they are A. Sympathetic to B. Is how they perform notions of solidarity at its maximal.
"Do as the Black Women say to do" and its like, "vote for Biden" as presumed conensus. Its kind of softball self validation of doing what people already are.
@ciggysmokebringer @DeliaChristina @Fishercat Trump is literally blaming āDEIā for every fault in this country. An Airplane crashes, and itās āDEIā fault. He erases history of non-white cultures, and you FUCKING HAVE THE GALL TO BLAME āLIBERAL THEORY OF IDENTITY POLITICS.ā!
There is one party playing identity politics they control all three branches of the government, and they arenāt liberal.
@Extra_Special_Carbon @DeliaChristina @Fishercat
This shit was created for rubes like you, because yall really are that vapid and lead around by your vanity. Go be mad at the creators of the propaganda for targeting you, not me for ruthlessly telling you how it works on you.
@ciggysmokebringer @Extra_Special_Carbon @DeliaChristina Do you have any ideas about how to fight it?
I mean, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the cultural affinity we have for believing Black women is a product of conservative propaganda?? Which seems like a hell of a stretch to me, but I'll roll with that for the length of a conversation.
If I got that right, how do you think we should go about fighting this new load of bullshit?
@Fishercat @Extra_Special_Carbon @DeliaChristina
No, thats a bit mangled - this specifically was created to target Liberals on a cynical premise thats partially true - that using the vouch of Black Women to sign off on political things is how Liberals perform allyship in their own heads and outwardly.
But my cynicism is consequential not intent - i dont think its a conscious malicious thing - its a way to mute critique, a way to manufacture consent for self, a way to do something which is better than nothing. This was a rightful reaction to larger structural racism but runs amok by becoming an autonomic reflex that can be manipulated (or attempted to be like here).
What to do about it...I mean, 'get a new theory of politics' covers a lot, but idk how else to express the tall task
@ciggysmokebringer @Extra_Special_Carbon @DeliaChristina OK. Thank you for taking the time to explain; I think I understand now.
It sounds like you're suggesting we reserve our use of personal autopilots for the logistics of living like "this is my bedtime routine," and engage in critical thinking when forming political opinions that go beyond "I know and trust *this* person."
Am I anywhere close?
@Fishercat @Extra_Special_Carbon @DeliaChristina
Yeah, thats a good way to put it - turn the autopilot off! So much of why Liberal politics doesnt have meaningful hands is because it so associative and associations having so much fucking weight over acting with or alongside
@ciggysmokebringer @DeliaChristina @Fishercat yeah I think everyone, deep down, knows there's men and women of every race in the US army that support, and some who don't support, the strikes against Iran. (I mean point remains about tasteless AI more broadly, but still.)
"we never co-signed" - pretty much everyone knows there's no "we" that cosigned, if it's any comfort.
@DeliaChristina @Fishercat tons of scary food for thought here.
I think that you are right in that this starts with learning what propaganda is, because its (not surprisingly) something we aren't taught. i think just acknowledging how vulnerable we are (all of us) to it is an important start, because our tendency is to arrogantly think that we won't fall for something that others do. it makes sense that we are behind the ball, especially given that the people driving new technologies are often the same people who are coming up with or encouraging nefarious uses for it. like you say, we have to learn to ask the question 'who benefits from this information being out here?'.
@DeliaChristina @Fishercat
I've been seeing Youtube shorts that read Reddit stories that are generated by AI that are pro American military and almost always the story is about a fake POC person surviving adversity and finding their place in the troops.
I am from Finland btw. Propaganda gets all the way here too...which is fucked since Trump supports Russia, and Putin literally wants to annex Finland.
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 toāin 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.
@octothorpe
Anything to control us - create figments of us and have us do their dirty work.
Cowardly and WILD.
The phenomenon is frightening but this is such a great description: ālaundering power through a trusted imageā. š
I donāt know how (donāt have answers), but weāre all going to have to get on top of this & work out ways to deal with it across all levels of our societies.
#propaganda #CognitiveSkills #USPol #USMilitary #generativeAI #BadAI #education #PublicHealth #ReconnectingConsequencesToCauses
@DeliaChristina
Unfortunately satire has a tendency to go over the heads of anti-intelectuals.
(And ST as a satire is problematic, once you take it apart.)
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