Op-Ed 

After Controversial Egypt Match, Many Fans From the Global South Are Done With the World Cup


Feelings of injustice around the international tournament are a symptom of geopolitics in 2026.

By Ashish Malhotra , 

Truthout

Published

July 13, 2026

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Mostafa Zico of Egypt celebrates after scoring the second goal during the 2026 World Cup match between Argentina and Egypt at Atlanta Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 7, 2026.Ayman Aref / NurPhoto via Getty Images


It’s hard to say for sure because of the wizardry involved. But Egyptian forward Haissem Hassan took what looked like eight touches of the ball on every part of his left foot imaginable, dancing in between and around two Argentine defenders, before ever putting it on his right. One touch on that right foot, followed by a final move from his left, and the Egyptian forward had done most of the legwork for what will go down as one of the most memorable moments of the 2026 World Cup.

The crowd where I was, outside a jam-packed cafe in New York’s Little Egypt, was by this point in the midst of a crescendo that peaked a few seconds later: three dribbles and a pass from Egyptian icon Mohamed Salah, followed by a glorious goal by Mostafa Zico.

Utter joy broke out in the cafe. Egypt was beating Lionel Messi’s Argentina 2-0, and everyone at the cafe knew we would remember where we were when we saw Zico’s shot hit the back of the net.

And we still will — but not for the reasons we thought. A video review ruled out the goal because of a foul committed in its buildup. And though Zico did later score a goal that wasn’t disallowed, Argentina quickly scored three and won the match.

In the space of about half an hour, the cafe went from feeling like a party to a funeral. A dramatic loss in the dying minutes of a game would be devastating for any fan base. But when it happens in the context of dubious refereeing decisions, in a tournament run by a famously corrupt organization, the despair can take on an extra edge.

Allegations of Rigging

The words “rigged” and “corruption” filled Little Egypt’s Steinway Street after the match and were all over social media feeds as well. “It needs to be a fair game, and today I don’t think it was a fair game. It’s really a shame on FIFA … something doesn’t feel right,” said Mohamed Bakar, who drove from Pennsylvania to New York just to watch the game among Egypt’s fans on Steinway.

Members of the Egyptian team did not hold back either.

“The referee was not fair. The injustice was clear. There’s been an unfairness right from the start of the match. A 2-0 lead is not enough to beat Argentina. It’s clear that the tournament has been fixed,” said an emotional Zico in a post-match interview.

Coach Hossam Hassan felt similarly. “The result was influenced by internal factors on the pitch and external factors off it,” he said. “Perhaps they wanted to keep the world champion in the competition. Perhaps they wanted Messi to stay in the running.”

To be clear, there is no evidence that definitively supports those claims. But the people making the allegations point to a pattern of decisions that seem to have favored the defending champions, and in the case of this match, come at Egypt’s expense. The focal point of the controversy was the foul committed ahead of Zico’s goal that happened about 20 seconds earlier, and roughly 100 yards away — factors that usually mean they are no longer relevant. And many point out that when similar incidents seemed to occur before Argentina’s goals — both during the Egypt match, and earlier in the tournament — the same decision was not made.


FIFA has repeatedly gotten into bed with authoritarian leaders while prioritizing commercial aspirations over human rights.

As Stefan Szymanski, my co-host on “The Soccernomics Podcast” said in our most recent episode, there is a bias that exists because of the fact that Messi is the best player in the world, and perhaps in the history of the sport. “It will always be the case that the best players will get asymmetric treatment,” Szymanski said. “They’re going to get better treated than the rest because they’re the moneymakers…. Even just the selection of the referee is something that a player like Messi can influence, and this is kind of well-known as a fact.”

The bias Szymanski is talking about isn’t necessarily conscious. One cannot just look at these incidents and definitively conclude the World Cup is rigged, and yet so many people do. What’s interesting is to consider why.

FIFA’s Shady Past Makes People Believe the Worst

In a series for Zeteo called “The Dark Side of the World Cup,” my colleagues and I detail FIFA’s history of corruption, criminality, and corporate greed. The organization has repeatedly gotten into bed with authoritarian leaders while prioritizing commercial aspirations over human rights. The most high-profile example was the U.S. Department of Justice–led investigation about a decade ago that resulted in nine FIFA executives being indicted for racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies — and the eventual resignation of former FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Fans of the sport know this, and are constantly in a struggle with the Zurich-based behemoth over who really owns the game.

The result? A breeding ground for conspiracy based on the belief, held widely among fans of the sport, that FIFA is willing to do anything in the name of money.

In the lead-up to the World Cup, current FIFA President Gianni Infantino cozied up to Donald Trump while the U.S. president bombed seven countries after retaking office and allowed his secret police force to round up immigrants and kill U.S. citizens at home. Though all of this flies in the face of FIFA’s human rights policy, Infantino seemed happy to selectively ignore it all to ensure the smooth operation of a tournament that’s expected to generate almost $9 billion for the organization.

In the opening weeks of the tournament, the biggest controversy was the treatment of the Iranian team, which was forced by U.S. visa restrictions to travel back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. between its games. This travel killed the Iranian players’ preparation and recovery time, and when a goal that would have sent them to the next round of the World Cup was ruled out — the same day that the World Cup’s host country was bombing their own — many Iranians felt the decision was another injustice.


As this tournament reaches its apex, controversies that feed into that idea that the World Cup is not fair seem to be everywhere you look.

But as this tournament reaches its apex, controversies that feed into that idea that the World Cup is not fair seem to be everywhere you look. The fallout from Egypt’s exit from the tournament wrestled the headlines from another story that hadn’t exactly improved the optics: Trump’s meddling in the suspension of U.S. star Flo Balogun for the host nation’s match with Belgium.

Balogun wasn’t supposed to play in the match, after picking up a red card against Bosnia-Herzegovina. But after Trump put in a call to Infantino, suddenly he was able to play.

Like some of the theories doing the rounds about Egypt’s loss, we can’t say definitively that Trump’s call was the decisive factor in the decision. And Infantino insists it was made independently and autonomously by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee. But in the context of FIFA’s dodgy past, people find it easy to believe the worst.

The rhetoric from the U.S. hasn’t helped with the optics.

While Trump openly advertised that he requested that FIFA review the decision, Andrew Giuliani — the head of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup 2026 — somehow thought invoking Trump’s record on electoral integrity was the right way to defend him, saying: “We believe in a level playing field … I can tell you President Trump takes it extremely seriously, whether it’s on the pitch or whether it’s in the ballot box.”

Feelings of Injustice From the Global South

I am among the people angered about what happened in the Egypt match, and many others who also have ties to the Global South have felt the same way. And just as is true for all sports fans who pay attention to broader geopolitics, the emotions we feel about sports are often about something bigger than whatever’s happening on the field of play.

And whether it’s Egypt, Iran, or Ghana in its match against England, there is a deep sense for many who support these teams that it’s smaller, poorer, less powerful countries that are disproportionately on the receiving end of injustice in sport — up to and including refereeing decisions.

People from these parts of the world are already on the receiving end of so many of the world’s inequalities. Whether it’s Western militarism — from the ongoing genocide in Gaza to the U.S.’s illegal war in Iran — or the effects of colonialism, which continue to shape inequity and political stability around the globe, people feel these injustices in their bodies every day.

Sports are supposed to be an escape from all of that — a place in which countries that have been on the receiving end of imperial brutality have a rare chance to compete with each other and with world powers on a level playing field, and dream they can actually pull off what is often deemed to be impossible. And when they do so well and get so close, to have it then taken away because of a questionable refereeing decision on the field is a gut punch. And when even sport proves to be unfair, what do we have left?

Sports are supposed to be a place in which countries that have been on the receiving end of imperial brutality have a rare chance to compete with each other and with world powers on a level playing field.

Last month, Stefan Szymanski and I co-wrote a piece in The Economist that this may just be the last World Cup, arguing that football’s world order could break down as a result of FIFA enabling American bellicosity.

But could widespread feelings that the tournament is rigged be the breakage point instead? If many in the Global South now refuse to watch what remains of the World Cup because they no longer see it as a fair competition, where does that leave the tournament? And will those fans return for 2030?

Chances are that for many, the answer is yes. Because what history has shown us is that no matter what they’re served by FIFA and the authoritarian nations that host World Cups, most people keep coming back. We love the game too much. Perhaps our mistake was to ever believe the illusion that sport could be an escape from the cruel world it inhabits.

Putting the World at the Heart of the World Cup

When North African teams win World Cup matches, Astoria’s Steinway Street is a party. But in the hour after Tuesday’s match, most people were in a state of shock. Slowly but surely though, they began to gather — chanting, singing, letting off fireworks. They were still proud of their team.

While Bakar stood in the middle of the street waving an Egyptian flag, many around him waved Palestinian flags as well.

In Gaza, watch parties for Egypt games during this World Cup became a source of joy for Palestinians who have endured a genocide over the past two and a half years. Egyptian Coach Hassan’s use of his platform at the World Cup to speak out about their plight only increased the connection to the team.

“If there is anyone in the world who does not feel for the Palestinian people, then they are not human — whether they are Arab, European, or American,” he said ahead of the match with Argentina.

For many in Gaza, Hassan’s words and actions were particularly powerful because of where they were happening.

“When Hossam Hassan raised the [Palestinian] flag in the very land that funded the genocide and was a strong ally for the genociders and the children killers — this moment stands like a reminder that Palestine [is] in the heart, Palestine will not be forgotten, that Palestine is always seen,” says Hend Salama Abo Helow, a writer based in Gaza whose work has appeared in Truthout and other outlets. “It was so uplifting. Such a satisfying moment to see Palestine resurface again, and Gaza resurface again [on the world stage].”

The controversy over the refereeing seems to have struck a chord with Palestinians, many of whom even believe the refereeing decisions were a form of retribution for the Egyptian team’s pro-Palestine advocacy.

The joy Palestinians have derived from the Egyptian team has even been marred by Israeli violence: Before the match, Mohamed al-Wahidi, an aid worker who had been key in organizing those watch parties in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli airstrike — another reminder that even as the World Cup brings people together in many ways, violent powers continue to prevail.

And in that context, the controversy over the refereeing seems to have struck a chord with Palestinians, many of whom even believe the refereeing decisions were a form of retribution for the Egyptian team’s pro-Palestine advocacy.

“Every Gazan felt the injustice imposed on the Egyptian team. They were punished for being brave enough to stand on the right side of history,” Abo Helow told me. “Regardless of the final score, Egypt’s team won something far greater in the eyes of Palestinians: the test of humanity.”

That solidarity was returned by Egyptian fans in New York, for whom the best antidote to a post-match malaise seemed to be singing and dancing to the popular song, “Ana Dammi Falasteeni” (My Blood Is Palestinian).

Somehow, in the wake of a devastating loss, they still found a way to come together. I will always remember that moment, as well as the celebrations after Zico’s disallowed goal.

It was a beautiful moment. It was an iconic goal. And whether it shows up on the scoresheet or not, nobody can ever take away the fact that those of us in New York’s Little Egypt all experienced it together.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Ashish Malhotra

Ashish Malhotra is the host of “The Soccernomics Podcast,” and the series creator of “The Dark Side of The World Cup” for Zeteo. He was previously a producer for Al Jazeera English programs such as “The Stream,” “UpFront,” and “The Take,” and has written for The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and others.

 

The Deeper Meaning Behind Trump’s Raid in Ohio

Reports say over one hundred FBI agents descended on Ohio voter registration organizers in early June. The number is the tell.

By Scot Nakagawa

July 7, 2026

Source: Convergence

Image via Convergence Magazine

Reports say over one hundred FBI agents descended on Ohio voter registration organizers in early June. The number is the tell.

On Thursday, June 11, FBI agents searched the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and fanned out across the state—to the homes of its leaders, its staff, and people who had done nothing more than basic canvassing. The agents carried subpoenas. They seized laptops and phones. They knocked on doors in front of children and asked everyday Ohioans whether they were committing voter fraud. A Collaborative board member put the count at more than one hundred agents.

I want to be precise about what happened here, because precision is the most damning account. The loose version of this story—they’re trying to steal the election—is both too big and too small. Too big, because there’s no evidence of a mechanism to cancel a vote that hasn’t happened yet. Too small, because it lets you treat this as a single outrage rather than what it is: a repeatable procedure, run before, run elsewhere, and run again.

This is a procedure, not an incident

Read it next to the rest of the year. In February, the Bureau raided a Georgia election hub tied to the 2020 conspiracies. Agents have opened inquiries into voting protocols in Wisconsin, subpoenaed voting records in Arizona, and sought reviews of voting machines in Puerto Rico. Prosecutors in California have gestured at the Los Angeles mayor’s race after the president suggested, with nothing behind it, that the result was rigged.

Ohio is not a departure from that sequence. It’s the next entry. And the targeting is legible: the Collaborative works in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—the liberal anchors of a state that has otherwise trended toward authoritarian candidates, and the metros where the voters are youngest and Blackest and most underrepresented on the rolls. You don’t need a leaked memo to read that map. The map reads itself.

How you manufacture fraud from compliance

Here’s the part that requires honesty, because the regime is counting on us to be sloppy with it.

Any operation that registers voters at scale, using paid or volunteer canvassers, will generate bad forms. This isn’t a secret and not a scandal; it’s arithmetic. When you pay people per form collected—and county officials have noted that these groups do—a fraction of any large workforce will cut corners, and a few will fabricate outright. The Collaborative isn’t immune to this. In 2017, one of its paid canvassers pleaded guilty in a registration-fraud scheme. That happened. Pretending it didn’t only hands the other side the argument.

None of it—none of it—explains a hundred-plus federal agents conducting predawn visits to canvassers’ homes across an entire state, seizing devices, and interrogating volunteers on their porches in front of their kids.

Minor, self-flagged, routine paperwork errors don’t summon that machinery.

But hold the next fact next to it: In most states, including Ohio, a registration group cannot simply throw out the suspicious forms it collects. It is required to submit them, and to flag the questionable ones for election officials to catch. That’s the law working exactly as designed—the bad forms get turned in, marked, and screened out before a single fraudulent ballot is ever cast. Which is precisely why the experts keep telling you that voter fraud is vanishingly rare and that altering an actual outcome would take a massive, coordinated effort that has never once materialized.

So when federal agents seize the records of a group that did what the law requires, they’re not discovering fraud. They’re collecting the paper trail of compliance and preparing to recast it as guilt.

I strongly believe they are not investigating fraud. They’re, in a manner of speaking, manufacturing it—out of the very compliance the law demands.

The disproportion is the whole story

This is the line I’d ask you to hold onto, because it survives every counterargument the other side has.

Concede the bad forms. Concede the 2017 plea. Concede that a paid-canvass operation is an imperfect thing run by imperfect people. None of it—none of it—explains a hundred-plus federal agents conducting predawn visits to canvassers’ homes across an entire state, seizing devices, and interrogating volunteers on their porches in front of their kids.

Minor, self-flagged, routine paperwork errors don’t summon that machinery. The gap between the conduct and the response isn’t a detail of the story. It is the story. When the punishment is wildly out of scale with the offense, the scale is telling you the offense was never the point.

Here are some examples of instances when disproportionate crackdowns made the case that they were politically motivated:

The Fugitive Slave Act renditions (1850s)

The clearest early case. To return Anthony Burns, one escaped man, to slavery in 1854, the federal government locked down Boston, deployed troops and marshals, and spent a sum often put in the tens of thousands—a lot of money back then—to march a single person back into bondage past crowds of thousands. No one needed an army to recover one enslaved laborer. The army was the message—to abolitionists, to the enslaved, and to a North being told that the slavocracy could command federal force on free soil. The scale announced that the point was the legitimacy of the system, not the recapture.

The Black Codes and convict leasing (Reconstruction onward)

This is the anchor case, and the purest version of the logic. The “offenses” were vanishingly small by design: vagrancy, loitering, not carrying proof of a labor contract. The response was forced labor, the chain gang, a carceral apparatus that re-subordinated an entire emancipated population. The triviality of the trigger and the enormity of the response, taken together, tell you the offense was a pretext for restoring control over Black labor. When the “crime” can be anything, the crime was never the point.

Haymarket (1886)

Four anarchists hanged for a bombing none was shown to have committed. The evidence connected them not to the act but to their speech and their organizing for the eight-hour day. Executing the orators to punish a thrown bomb is a disproportion that points straight past the defendants to the labor movement the state actually wanted broken.

[T]he likeliest payoff—to pre-build the evidentiary theater for contesting results they don’t like.

The Palmer Raids (1919–1920)

Thousands arrested in coordinated nationwide sweeps, often without warrants or charges; hundreds of immigrants deported over the nominal offense of foreign radicalism. The dragnet was so indiscriminate that the mismatch between the procedure and any individual wrongdoing was itself the tell: the target was the immigrant left and the labor movement, with the goal of chilling everyone adjacent to them. Note how cleanly the voter fraud welded to the ‘noncitizens’ frame rhymes with this.

Japanese American incarceration (1942)

A hundred and twenty thousand people imprisoned on the “offense” of ancestry, dressed as military necessity. Here the offense was essentially nonexistent, and this was known to the government. This is the limiting case of the principle: when the response is total and the offense is null, the response is the whole truth. Race was the point.

Fred Hampton (1969) and the MOVE bombing (1985)

The two that rhyme most directly with Cleveland, because both were pre-dawn or all-out raids on a home. Hampton was killed in his bed in a raid built out of COINTELPRO’s war on Black political organizing—the nominal pretext nowhere near the scale of the operation. In 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a row house over charges that began as parole violations and weapons counts, killing eleven people including five children, and burning down sixty-one homes. You don’t bomb a city block to serve a warrant. The destruction of the block was the point—the destruction of a Black radical commune and a warning to anyone like them.

Back to Ohio: The immigration seam

There’s a second frame being stitched to the first, and it’s the one I’d watch most closely. Last fall, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state referred more than a thousand apparent noncitizen registrations to the Justice Department, along with a claim that 167 noncitizens had cast ballots across four federal elections since 2018. It’s not yet confirmed that Thursday’s search grew from those referrals. But note the choreography: as agents moved on the Collaborative, the US Attorney for the district was in Washington at a press conference announcing immigration cases.

That’s the fusion to watch—voter fraud welded to noncitizens. It’s a more durable narrative than fabricated forms, because it runs on the engine the regime already has at full throttle. If you want to know what story they’re building, watch which two fears they’re trying to braid together.

What it’s actually for, and what we do

Strip away the maximalism, and the function becomes clear enough. This action is built to intimidate the people who register voters, to chill registration in the precincts where it matters most, to manufacture a fraud narrative with the borrowed authority of a federal seal, and—the likeliest payoff—to pre-build the evidentiary theater for contesting results they don’t like. That last one isn’t speculation. It’s the 2020 playbook, started early. The investigations are the props; the contestation is the show. Could it escalate toward something worse, toward pretexts for delaying or voiding a count? It’s a tail risk worth naming. It’s not the base case, and we lose credibility if we lead with it.

Register more voters, in the same precincts, more visibly, this month. The chilling effect only works if we cooperate with it.

So we don’t take the bait. We don’t amplify the fraud frame by panicking inside it. We name the procedure for what it is—intimidation dressed as enforcement—and we make the disproportion impossible to look away from. We get lawyers to the canvassers and we don’t let a single volunteer stand on a porch alone. And we register more voters, not fewer, because the entire point of the exercise is to make us flinch.

A hundred agents isn’t a sign of strength. It’s the number you reach for when the case is thin and the clock is short. They’re telling on themselves. Our job is to make sure everyone can read it.

So here’s the work 

General resolve is not a plan. If you run a voter registration program, or you support one, here is what “not flinching” actually requires you to do, starting this week.

Get legal in place before the knock, not after.

Every organization that registers voters needs counsel on retainer or a committed pro bono firm now, plus a one-page rapid-response protocol that everyone—staff and volunteers—has read. Put a 24-hour legal hotline number on a card and in every canvasser’s phone. The single most important sentence in this whole piece, operationally, is this one: no one talks to a federal agent without a lawyer present, ever, full stop—not to “clear things up,” not to “just answer a few questions,” not to seem cooperative. That isn’t obstruction; it’s the most basic exercise of a right, and agents are trained to exploit the instinct to be helpful. Train people to say one line: “I won’t be answering questions; I want to speak to my lawyer”—and to repeat it.

Know exactly what happens when agents arrive.

Designate, in advance, who is the on-site point person at the office and who is the backup. That person’s job: ask whether agents have a warrant, ask to see it, read what it actually authorizes—the address, the items, the scope—and confirm whether it’s signed by a judge. A subpoena is a demand for documents on a timeline and gives you the chance to respond through a lawyer; a search warrant lets them search now. You do not have to consent to anything beyond what a warrant specifies, and you should say clearly, out loud, “I do not consent to any search beyond this warrant.” Don’t physically interfere, don’t lie, don’t destroy anything—but don’t volunteer access, passwords, or statements either. Film the encounter if you safely can.

Practice good data hygiene as a standing discipline

Collect only the voter data you actually need and retain it only as long as you must. Encrypt devices and drives, use strong passcodes rather than biometrics (fingerprints, retina scans, facial recognition, etc.) where you can, keep secure backups offsite so a seizure doesn’t erase your operation, and move sensitive internal coordination onto encrypted messaging. The goal is simple: a seized laptop should yield as little as possible, and losing it should not stop your work.

Build the buddy system into the schedule, not the afterthought.

No canvasser works a door alone in a targeted area. Pair people, check in on a preset cadence, and stand up an accompaniment roster so that anyone who is visited at home—especially in front of their kids—has a trained person and a lawyer’s number within reach within the same hour. Burnout, fear, and isolation are the actual weapons here; the schedule is where you defeat them.

Stand up mutual aid across organizations before anyone is hit.

The regime’s method is to isolate one exposed group and turn a coalition into a series of private, frightened calculations. Refuse the isolation in advance: agree now, in writing, that when one organization is raided, the others show up: with statements, with legal support, with money, with bodies at the press conference. Pool a rapid-response legal defense fund across the field so no single group faces the cost alone. Solidarity that has to be invented after the fact of being targeted arrives too late.

Discipline the message—yours and your members’.

Brief your people on how to talk about a raid before one happens. Lead with the disproportion (a hundred agents, porches, children) and the lawful compliance that’s being recast as guilt. Do not repeat the fraud allegation to “debunk” it; repeating it spreads it. Don’t lead with the most catastrophic interpretation; name the documented function—intimidation dressed as enforcement—and let the facts carry it. Designate trained spokespeople so the story doesn’t get told by whoever is most rattled.

And do the thing they are trying to stop.

Register more voters, in the same precincts, more visibly, this month. The chilling effect only works if we cooperate with it. The most powerful answer to a hundred agents is a registration drive that is larger the week after than it was the week before, run by people who know their rights and know they aren’t standing on that porch alone.

If you take nothing else: get the lawyers lined up, build the buddy system, network the mutual aid before the next raid, and keep registering. That is what it looks like to make the disproportion backfire instead of work.

Scot Nakagawa is a co-founder and co-director of the 22nd Century Initiative, a national strategy and action hub in the fight to defeat white nationalism and authoritarianism. Scot is also the founder of The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook, an online newsletter to the frontline of the growing movement to win a truly people-centered, pluralistic, multiracial and feminist democracy in the U.S.

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This article was originally published by Convergence; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

Trump flunky to axe career veterans over 'deep state' conspiracies

Sarah K. Burris

July 03, 2026 

ALTERNET

Reports have surfaced over the past several weeks about intelligence experts being fired from their posts working with the Director of National Intelligence. Now, it turns out he's firing people outside of his purview as well.

MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard told the network that initially, the firings were focused on political appointees, but now the analysts themselves believe these new firings are the big next step in cleaning house.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte was the initial nominee, but Trump withdrew his name from consideration. The second nominee he stopped from testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump said he wanted Pulte to clean house first.

Pulte "could expect to serve in this capacity for several months while another individual whom [Trump] has put forward as a nominee for the full-time position goes through a confirmation process," said Hillyard.

When Trump said he would nominate Pulte, there was a huge backlash from lawmakers, including Republicans, saying that they would fight the nomination. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act gives a 210-day limit to acting officials in Senate-confirmed positions.

Among the first acts Pulte took before his first day was to demand a list of people to be fired.

"Those individuals are the ones [who] are being terminated," said Hillyard. "These are not just political appointees, but these are career officials."

Senators have expressed hefty concern over the past several weeks, fearful that Pulte will weaken national security because he has little understanding of the agency or intelligence in general.

"I am told by an intelligence official who is remaining anonymous out of fear of reprisal," that these firings will continue. "I am told that there are individuals who they claim are, 'Part of the deep state, withholding information related to intelligence that has been requested by leadership at the DNI'," Hillyard reported.

Hillyard, working with MS NOW's David Rhode, said that it's important to understand the context and that intelligence officials within the office have never heard of anything like this happening with the DNI or any of the 15 other agencies, including the CIA. Career officials simply don't withhold requested information.

"I'm told by one official that the terminations are happening out of a belief by leadership at the DNI, including from Bill Pulte, that those [who] are being removed are individuals who they suspect of being a part of the so-called 'deep state' and are not providing the full picture of intelligence assessments under their purview. And so there's going to be a lot of questions here," Hillyard continued.

He reinforced that the matter was not normal, and it comes at a time when DNI officials are concerned about foreign governments meddling in the 2026 midterm elections.

The number of dismissed career officials and DNI experts is expected to be in the dozens, Hillyard closed.

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

The Military-Entertainment Complex, Exposed

By Tanya Singh

July 3, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Introduction

In March 2022, cinema-goers across India watched in tense silence as a young Hindu woman sobbed hysterically on screen, recounting graphic atrocities committed by her Muslim neighbours. Outside the theaters, emotions erupted into nationalist chants. Later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly praised the film as a courageous act of “truth-telling.” Several Indian states, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even declared it tax-free to make ticketing cheaper, and, in turn, boost viewership numbers 1.

The scene—from the Hindi-language film The Kashmir Files—portrays the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus in the early 1990s, an event deeply shaped by state repression. However, the film presents the violence through a lens where Muslims as a group appear complicit. Through factually bereft emotive storytelling and selective historical framing, the film served to amplify Hindu nationalist sentiments, preying upon already frayed communal ties, and rallying support both domestically and abroad. The Kashmir Files is one example of a strategic political tool that has been employed subtly and not-so subtly, in the almost 12 years since the BJP came to power 2.

Across the world, cinema has been deployed to bolster nationalism, justify violence, and erase resistance, both contemporaneously and over the 20th century. Ministries of ‘information’, state-run studios, military-funded films and cultural boards became the architects of narrative control — determining not just what people saw, but what they could imagine.

This report explores the global intersections of film, power, and propaganda — from Hollywood and the Pentagon, to Europe’s fascist past; from cinematic statecraft, and to the evolving fronts of media warfare playing out across India and Israel. By tracing the transnational flow of money and ideology through film, we reveal how cinema continues to operate as one of the most potent tools in the arsenal of ideological warfare.

How do films turn into state-sponsored propaganda?

Glorifying regimes and reshaping collective memory

European authoritarian regimes—from Nazi Germany to Franco’s Spain—perfected the use of film as a tool of ideological control. In the 1930s and 40s, fascist leaders viewed cinema as a strategic tool of mass persuasion. In fact, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels (the chief propagandist of the Nazi Party) placed cinema at the heart of Nazi cultural policy. Hitler wrote in detail about the psychological power of the image in Mein Kampf 3:

“The picture, in all its forms, including the film, has better prospects. In a much shorter time, at one stroke I might say, people will understand a pictorial presentation of something which would take them a long and laborious effort of reading to understand”.

Goebbels declared that film should be “an instrument of cultural policy,” and with state backing, directors like Leni Riefenstahl were commissioned to produce glorified spectacles like Triumph of the Will (1935) 4, a cinematic monument to the 1934 Nuremberg Rally that visually deified Hitler 5. Even non-political genres were infused with Nazi ideology: romantic comedies and musicals subtly reinforced Aryan ideals, gender roles, and loyalty to the Reich 6. In this way, film across Europe was weaponized to manufacture national identity and promote mythology.

In fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini launched Italy’s film studio, Cinecittà Studios, in 1937, towards the production of films with Fascist messages. In fact, on the day of its opening, April 21st, Mussolini tried to play on the idea that it was the same day as the founding of ancient Rome 7. He also revitalised the Venice Film Festival to cultivate a national film industry that echoed Rome’s imperial past. Films such as Scipione l’Africano (1937) dramatized ancient Roman conquests, juxtaposing them with Mussolini’s African ambitions 8. Similarly, Spain’s Francisco Franco, under a pseudonym, wrote the screenplay for Raza (1942), a family epic that glorified military virtue, traditional values, and the regime’s divine mission. Raza became Spain’s foundational cinematic myth under Francoism 9.

Parallel to these overtly authoritarian projects, Europe’s colonial powers developed cinematic traditions that sought to justify imperial domination. Films made during the 1930s–50s sought to defend the legitimacy of the empire under the guise of civilising missions. In Britain, Sanders of the River (1935) 10 depicted an English colonial administrator as a wise protector of African ‘tribes’. The film’s African-American lead, Paul Robeson, later disavowed his participation, calling the final product a betrayal of his values and a tool of colonial propaganda.

In apartheid South Africa (1948–1994), the government weaponized film to whitewash racial oppression. Through the South African Information Service, the regime flooded screens with idyllic travelogues and ‘educational’ films like These Are the South Africans (1950s), which peddled the myth of ‘separate development’ as harmonious coexistence. These productions meticulously erased the brutality of apartheid, presenting white rule as benevolent and inevitable, in line with the larger ideals of the ‘civilizing mission’.

In the 1970s the ‘Muldergate’ scandal exposed a covert global propaganda machine where millions were funnelled to pro-apartheid media abroad, including fabricated news outlets and film projects designed to sway foreign audiences 11. Also known as the Information Scandal, Muldergate Scandal involved the apartheid government’s secret misuse of the defence budget funds to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and internationally, through a series of strategic investments and acquisitions in publishing, media relations, amongst others.

At the centre of the scandal was Dr. Connie Mulder, a prominent government minister and leader of the National Party. Alongside Prime Minister John Vorster and intelligence officials, Mulder oversaw a covert propaganda campaign aimed at promoting apartheid. Millions of rand in state funds were secretly funneled into pro-government newspapers, media projects, and even attempts to influence foreign governments. The goal was to counter growing global criticism of apartheid and bolster domestic support for the regime. Here, cinema served dual fronts—domestic indoctrination and international reputation laundering, revealing apartheid’s desperation to control the narrative as resistance grew.

In the 21st century, Europe’s cinema has seen a new wave of nationalist revisionism, especially in countries where far-right politics have resurged. The 2004 German film Downfall sparked debate for “humanising” Adolf Hitler 12, prompting concerns about inadvertent sympathy generation. More recently, films like Styx (2018) and Undine (2020) have been criticised for their national allegories and perceived ambivalence on migration and identity.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government has launched a well-funded cinematic campaign to glorify national heroes and historic victories 13. Films like Arpad the Conqueror (2022), produced with government grants, depict Magyar conquests — late 9th-10th century invasions and migrations by the Hungarians into Central Europe, leading to the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary — as divine destiny, while reinforcing a civilizational narrative against migrants. In another example, Hungary’s Those Who Remained (2019) 14, an Oscar-nominated film, tells the story of Holocaust survivors, but subtly reframes Hungary as a victim, glossing over Hungarian complicity during WWII.

Europe’s ideological influence on cinema today is more diffused than during the fascist era, but it is no less potent. What binds these diverse national cases – from Riefenstahl to Orbán, from the 1930s to contemporary times – is the use of cinema to shape collective memory: whether through imperial nostalgia, fascist myth-making, or historical revisionism.

Censorship & suppression: silencing dissent

The film can function, not merely as propaganda, but also as a tool for collectivizing memory by the powers that be. In Indonesia, the Suharto regime 15 mandated nationwide screenings of Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, a state-produced film depicting the 1965 communist coup attempt as a barbaric betrayal, thereby legitimising the regime’s violent anti-leftist purges. Broadcast annually as compulsory viewing until Suharto’s ouster in 1998, it reinforced the dictatorship’s official narrative through repetition and institutional enforcement.

Latin American authoritarian projects, on the other hand, did not operate in isolation; they were often indirectly bolstered by U.S. Cold War interventions – a larger continuation of foreign policy set in stone since the Monroe Doctrine (1823) 16. The CIA and the US State Department, as part of their broader anti-communist campaigns, actively supported cultural initiatives aimed at countering leftist influence, thereby entangling Latin American cinema in a wider geopolitical struggle 17.

In the 1980s, Reagan’s administration ran an Office of Public Diplomacy that, among other things, provided briefing materials and possibly footage to producers to encourage anti-communist storylines (for instance, in 1980s action films featuring Cuban or Soviet antagonists in Central America) 18 . These were indirect methods (unlike the blunt bans and propaganda of local regimes), but contributed to a media atmosphere supportive of right-wing, anti-communist positions.

Censorship was another tool widely employed by the State. Brazil’s 1964–85 military government heavily censored the provocative Cinema Novo movement 19. Filmmakers who critiqued the regime or societal injustice, like Glauber Rocha, faced exile or suppression. Brazil’s resistance film Pra frente, Brasil (1982), which depicted torture during the junta, was censored, and the filmmakers were persecuted. Its suppression maintained the regime’s desired narrative (that there were no abuses) until after the dictatorship. Meanwhile, the Brazilian state’s film agency ‘Embrafilme’ subtly encouraged projects that were nationalistic and non-subversive.

In Argentina, the junta (1976–83) banned films that referred to the “disappeared” or human rights abuses. Instead, they quietly supported movies that glorified Argentine traditions or the military. One infamous propaganda piece was La Patagonia Rebelde (1974), which depicted a 1920s labor uprising being crushed (which the anti-communist regime at the time approved of).

In Chile, Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship took a different approach: rather than investing in elaborate cinematic propaganda, the regime prioritized the suppression of dissenting voices 20 while producing sparse but strategic newsreels that reframed the 1973 coup as a necessary salvation from Marxist tyranny. Decades later, the release of Pinochet (2012), a documentary sympathetic to the former dictator, reignited public outrage 21 and film as a battleground for historical interpretation.

Hollywood’s military-entertainment complex and right-wing funding

In the United States, Hollywood has long maintained a symbiotic relationship with the national security apparatus – a collaboration often described as the “military-entertainment complex 22.” The U.S. government does not own or operate studios, but exerts influence through military liaisons, technical support, script vetting, and indirect incentives. This setup has enabled American films to double as vessels for pro-military messaging, advancing narratives that align with the Pentagon’s interests.

Since World War II, the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) has maintained formal liaison offices in Los Angeles to assist filmmakers seeking access to military bases, hardware, and personnel. In return, the Pentagon requires final script approval to ensure “accurate and positive” portrayals of the armed forces 23. This influence is both light-touch and sweeping, ranging from altering lines of dialogue, to reshaping major plot points.

For instance, the producers of Top Gun (1986) accepted extensive Navy input in exchange for access to F-14 Tomcats and an aircraft carrier. Scenes portraying military personnel negatively were removed, and the final product celebrated the Navy as a glamorous, elite force. Navy recruitment surged by 500% in the film’s release year 24. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) followed a similar pattern, with the Pentagon again providing modern jets, aircraft carriers, and script review 25.

This practice extends beyond war films. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), for instance, has worked closely with the Pentagon and the FBI. Iron Man (2008) received Air Force support in exchange for script alterations. A scene in which an F-22 mistakenly fires at Iron Man was removed, as was a joke about military suicide 26. Subsequent films like Captain Marvel (2019), which featured Air Force pilots and branding, were directly used in recruitment campaigns aimed at women 27. Even in WandaVision (2021), the closing credits include a “special thanks” to the DoD. These edits, while subtle, collectively portray U.S. military and intelligence agencies as virtuous, effective, indispensable, while reinforcing both the ‘savior-of-the-world’ narrative, with the ‘center-of-the-world’ narrative – vital tools in the arsenal of the US as a soft power.

The FBI has also shaped Hollywood narratives. During the Red Scare, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI blacklisted leftist writers and forced script changes in films such as Moon Pilot (1962), where a foolish FBI agent was rewritten as a generic “security officer 28.” Documents released via the Freedom of Information Act show the FBI continued reviewing film and TV scripts into the 2010s, granting or withholding use of its name and seal depending on portrayal 29.

Similarly, the CIA has been involved in Hollywood productions involving espionage. Zero Dark Thirty (2012), which dramatised the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, was made with extensive CIA and DoD briefings. Critics argue the film sanitises the agency’s use of torture, thereby legitimising controversial counterterrorism tactics 30.

The Cold War marked a high point for overt propaganda. The CIA covertly funded films like Animal Farm (1954) and 1984 (1956) — where the storylines were altered to show how coups can overthrow communist regimes — while the USIA (United States Information Agency) distributed American values-themed documentaries across the Global South 31. Although these films were not mainstream theatrical releases, they were crucial in projecting U.S. soft power abroad. Hollywood’s patriotic instinct became entrenched: filmmakers eager for DoD cooperation often internalised the messaging requirements, even without direct interference.

Frustrated by what they perceive as liberal dominance in Hollywood, conservative billionaires and activists started funding their films and documentaries to push nationalist or ultra-patriotic messages. In the 21st century this relationship has become more overt, even as it has grown more complex. Hollywood now receives private funding channelled through offshore vehicles, with investors increasingly seeking to steer films away from what they describe as “liberal narratives” that challenge the cultural authority of the military and the nation-state.

In 2023, Dan Snyder, a billionaire donor and Donald Trump ally, secretly funded, through a shell-production company, a biographical film about Trump’s early years. Although Snyder had assumed that it would be a hagiography of his friend, the finished film portrayed Trump critically 32.

More transparently, outlets like The Daily Wire, backed by right-wing donors, have created an alternative production ecosystem. Their 2023 action film Run Hide Fight, about a high school shooting, promotes armed self-defense and critiques liberal gun control policies. Likewise, political commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s pseudo-documentary 2000 Mules (2022) alleged, without credible evidence, that Democrats committed large-scale voter fraud in the 2020 election. The film was distributed via right-wing media nonprofits and reached millions despite widespread debunking 33.

What’s notable is the migration of such content to major platforms. Amazon briefly hosted 2000 Mules for rental; Run Hide Fight premiered at Venice before being picked up by DailyWire+. This suggests that ideologically driven cinema – once confined to fringe channels – can now penetrate mainstream cultural circuits.

Far from being shaped by organic cultural trends alone, American cinema today is actively curated by a convergence of state and private conservative forces. Scholars argue this has created a “censorship-by-cooperation” model: filmmakers self-censor in exchange for institutional support, while ideologues use funding to build parallel systems.

While the collaboration between Hollywood and the Pentagon never disappeared, what’s new is the scale and openness of these ideological alliances. Recent films like The Terminal List (2022), an Amazon Prime series starring Chris Pratt, portray Navy SEALs and intelligence agents as lone warriors against deep-state conspiracies – part fiction, part recruitment fantasy. It embodies the fusion of action tropes, paranoia, and nationalist valor, echoing the “comeback” of propaganda-style cinema in a more polished, algorithmically distributed form 34.

Films as soft power in India

Soft power is a vital element of both domestic and foreign policy. The film industry is both one of the biggest exports and sources of soft power for India. 35. In 2008, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a press address to Indian Foreign Service officers, emphasized that, “The soft power of India in some ways can be a very important instrument of foreign policy. Cultural relations, India’s film industry, Bollywood… I find wherever I go in the Middle East, in Africa, people talk about Indian films” 36. In the post-streaming era, the impact is magnified in some senses. In 2024, for example, Bollywood’s global revenue grossed $130 million 37, after what could be described as a ‘weak’ year for Indian cinema (with an overall 6% drop in YoY revenue and cinema footfalls).

And while authoritarian regimes have long exploited cinema for political control, India under Modi’s BJP has refined this practice into an unprecedented machinery of nationalist mythmaking, where film has become both weapon and battleground in the struggle over national identity 38.

Under Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian cinema has witnessed a pronounced surge of films explicitly aligned with Hindutva – the belief that India fundamentally belongs to Hindus. This shift, particularly visible since Modi’s ascent to power in 2014, has coincided with a broader societal polarisation driven by aggressive nationalism and Islamophobia 39.

Recent big-budget Hindi films increasingly portray Muslims as villains or historical aggressors, while glorifying Hindu warriors and freedom fighters 40, often presenting hagiographical accounts and urban myths as historical fact. Scholars and critics highlight how such portrayals systematically erase or vilify the substantial contributions Muslims have made to India’s diverse history. Films such as Padmaavat (2018), despite protests from historians, vividly depicted a Muslim ruler as brutal and lustful, and the object of his desire was a fictional Hindu queen called Padmavati. This depiction is from a 16th-century epic poem by Malik Muhammad Jayasi, who himself described it as a work of fiction 41.

Journalists have revealed that many recent high-budget films promoting Hindutva narratives are produced or funded by individuals directly affiliated with the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 42. Swatantra Veer Savarkar (2024), celebrating Hindu nationalist icon Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (the alleged co-conspirator in Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi’s assassination), is produced by Sandeep Singh, who was also responsible for producing movies such as PM Narendra Modi, Main Atal Hoon (on Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a former Indian Prime Minister and BJP leader) and the upcoming The Pride of Bharat: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (on the Hindu ruler who fought the Mughals). Importantly, these films revolve around Hindutva nationalist leaders or icons appropriated by the Indian ‘far right’ 43.

Such films typically valorise Hindu symbols, military might, and India’s historical grandeur, in turn framing secularists, critics, communists, or Pakistanis as antagonists 44. The film Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), based on India’s military operations against Pakistan, was emblematic of this trend, glorifying nationalist fervour and military prowess while framing critics of aggressive nationalism as anti-national.

Cultural theorist Sayandeb Chowdhury argues these films are consciously designed to deepen communal divides, depicting Muslims as national threats and progressive intellectuals as traitors to India’s Hindu identity45. BJP politicians frequently integrate these films into election campaigns. Modi often references such films during his political rallies, prominently mentioning Article 370 (2024), which endorsed his controversial policy revoking Kashmir’s autonomy, and The Kerala Story (2023) 46, which was widely criticised as Islamophobic propaganda for suggesting Muslim men systematically recruit Hindu women for ISIS.

Overseas, sections of the Indian diaspora have played an increasingly active role in amplifying Hindutva-aligned narratives through culture, particularly cinema, transforming films into instruments of soft power. Organisations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), Overseas Friends of the BJP, and allied community networks have leveraged their cultural legitimacy within diaspora spaces to promote nationalist films as historical truth rather than political interpretation.

The coordinated US-wide screenings of The Kashmir Files in 2022 — organised by the Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora across multiple cities — followed by curated “impact screenings,” panel discussions, and outreach to policymakers and media figures, circulate as emotional narratives of grievance and civilisational threat, reinforcing Hindu victimhood while flattening the complexities of Kashmir and communal violence. In this way, diaspora networks function as transmission belts, extending domestic majoritarian politics into global cultural arenas and recasting popular cinema as a transnational vehicle for right-wing nationalist messaging 46.

Israel’s narrative warfare: IDF-backed films and censorship of Palestinian stories.

For decades, the Israeli state (either via the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) or other government-funded film bodies) has actively shaped cinema to legitimize and sanitize state violence, especially regarding the occupation of Palestinian territories.

In 1960, Otto Preminger’s Hollywood epic Exodus (adapted from Leon Uris’s novel) was made with enthusiastic Israeli government support. Israeli officials launched “Operation Exodus” to assist production, seeing the film as a potent Zionist narrative for Western audiences47. Exodus, starring Paul Newman, framed Israel’s founding in heroic terms while marginalizing Palestinian perspectives and the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian expulsion). A contemporary critic noted the film was “dishonest” and essentially “propaganda designed to be the best promotion Israel ever had 48.”

Reports have revealed that Zionist film executives have lobbied Washington to support an independent Jewish ethnostate 49. In fact, films such as Sword in the Desert (1949) and The Juggler (1953) retell the story of Israel’s ‘War of Independence’ much before Exodus did the same. They’re deliberately engineered to have similar overarching plots – ensemble dramas grouping European Holocaust survivors with American Zionist volunteers.

Another Hollywood film, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), about a U.S. volunteer in Israel’s 1948 war, similarly relied on IDF cooperation. The Israeli government demanded script approval as a condition for providing troops and tanks, ensuring the portrayal flattered the IDF. Officials even insisted the film not fall into typical Hollywood distortions (they didn’t want one American hero “winning” Israel’s war)50.

Most Israeli films rely on public funding, and the Ministry of Culture (via bodies like the Israeli Film Council and Israel Film Fund) exerts influence through script review and funding conditions 51. Filmmakers (including Palestinian citizens of Israel) who seek grants must undergo content vetting; projects are often required to register as “Israeli” in international festivals and are expected to offer a “positive portrayal of the Israeli state and society.”

This serves as a “soft censorship” mechanism where films critical of Israel’s founding narratives or the IDF may struggle to get funded 52. Indeed, Israeli culture ministers have openly warned arts institutions against hosting works deemed “against the state” or that “disparage” Israeli soldiers.

In late 2024, after a human-rights film festival screened documentaries about the Nakba, officials threatened to pull subsidies, calling the films “incitement” and accusing them of slandering the IDF. Israeli filmmakers admit that if they broach controversial topics like 1948 or alleged war crimes, they won’t get funding. As one documentarian summed up, “In a fascist regime, culture becomes propaganda… Israeli culture is becoming like that.” 53 The current government has further re-instituted a pre-1948 censorship law to pre-screen and block films about historical expulsions until they can be vetted.

Similar to the US, the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit has a Film and Video department producing training and “information” films, documentaries, and even TV commercials to promote the army’s image 54. This unit coordinates closely with civilian media: it not only disseminates footage to news outlets but also loans military equipment and provides location access to filmmakers in exchange for favorable portrayal.

The IDF’s cooperation (much like the Pentagon’s in Hollywood) means films can utilize tanks, bases, or soldiers as extras. But (much like in Hollywood), the content must align with the official narrative. For example, in Cast a Giant Shadow, Israel’s military assistance came with the stipulation that the story emphasize the collective effort of Israeli soldiers rather than glorify a single foreign savior 55.

More recently, the IDF has even produced its own documentaries. A stark example is Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre (2023), a 47-minute film produced by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit that compiles raw footage of Hamas’s purported attack on Israeli civilians 56. Israeli authorities held private screenings of this graphic film for journalists, diplomats, and even Hollywood executives “to garner support…and to deflect criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza” 57.

Portrayal of Palestinians and the occupation in state-supported Israeli films tends to reinforce the official narrative. Often, these works humanize Israeli soldiers and officials, while Palestinians appear only as background threats or “terrorists.” A critique in The New Arab observed that many popular Israeli dramas and spy thrillers on platforms like Netflix are suffused with “human feelings humanizing the roles of soldiers and spies…while ignoring the real reasons behind the events” 58.

The overarching hasbara (public diplomacy) template is to frame Israel’s use of force as righteous self-defense against irrational “evil”, with Palestinians cast as aggressors or obstacles to peace. By omitting context (such as the occupation’s realities or settler violence) and focusing on Israeli protagonists’ moral dilemmas, such films essentially sanitize state violence. This pattern drew sharp criticism from Palestinian advocates, who argue that streaming platforms have become “a haven…to serve Israeli propaganda, while turning a blind eye” to Palestinian suffering 59.

State partnerships with filmmakers extend beyond borders. Israel has leveraged international co-productions and distribution to push its viewpoint. In the United States, pro-Israel narratives cultivated via movies like Exodus profoundly swayed public opinion. David Ben-Gurion, former Prime Minister of Israel, reportedly said that Uris’s novel (and by extension the film) was “not much as literature, but as propaganda, it’s the greatest thing ever written about Israel. 60”

More recently, Israeli creators (often ex-military personnel) have found success abroad with series that double as slick propaganda for streaming platforms. The TV series Fauda (an Israeli production later streamed globally) was criticized for glorifying undercover IDF units hunting “terrorists” in the West Bank, largely erasing the occupation’s context 61.

Similarly, the Netflix miniseries The Spy (2019) celebrated an Israeli agent in 1960s Syria with no mention of Israel’s regional meddling 62, inaccurately presenting him as a patriot defending his nation. Such entertainment, though not directly state-produced, aligns with official narratives and has even been promoted by Israeli diplomacy. (Israeli embassies often host film festivals or Netflix launch events to showcase these productions as cultural achievements. 63)

Observers note that these platforms help export Israel’s messaging: the world is shown Israel’s feared enemies (whether Hamas, Hezbollah, or generic Arab militants) through a lens that emphasizes Israeli heroism and restraint, implicitly, or explicitly, justifying harsh military measures. Digital content has thus become an adjunct to Israel’s propaganda machine, complementing traditional hasbara efforts 64.

An interesting example from more recent times involves a documentary by a joint Palestinian-Israeli team about nonviolent resistance to West Bank home demolitions, No Other Land (2025). When it won an Oscar, Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar blasted the filmmakers for “amplifying narratives that distort Israel’s image” and called their Academy Award “a sad moment for the world of cinema. 65” He labeled the film’s global recognition a form of “sabotage” against Israel’s reputation, especially amid the then-ongoing war with Hamas. Zohar also bragged that his ministry had recently changed public film funding to “dry up support” for such documentaries, calling the domestic film industry “an industry that builds its career on slandering Israel on the global stage. 66”

Indeed, new guidelines in 2023-24 now prioritize commercial, apolitical films (judged by box-office potential) over “arthouse” projects that tackle sensitive historical or human-rights issues. At the same time, the government boosted funding for films by settlers in the West Bank, effectively subsidizing content that celebrates the settlement enterprise, which films like No Other Land criticize.

Nonetheless, human rights groups and Palestinian advocates continue to challenge Israeli propaganda in film. They point out that even as Israel’s government invests in polished messaging and military-approved movies, reality finds a way through independent films, often forcing difficult conversations abroad.

Conclusion

Films, especially big, popular films, backed by the biggest studios in the world that carry great financial heft and power, are invariably intertwined with capitalist forces that are not eager to threaten the prevailing order. In the current climate of growing global fascism, they serve as soft power arms of the government, legitimizing and paving the way for state-sponsored brutalities, particularly by the army and the police.

The public image of cinema is glamor and art, but peeling back the curtain reveals “a murkier issue of the close relationship between Hollywood and the US government,” or between Bollywood and Hindu nationalist politicians, or between national film industries and foreign benefactors. At times, as we’ve seen, these relationships produce outright propaganda films. At other times they produce entertainment that just happens to reinforce the status quo. The mechanisms of influence range from overt to subtle.

In an age of streaming and international co-productions, propaganda in film is arguably more dangerous than the blunt force days of old. It can fly under the radar, embedded in what looks like an exciting, slick, thriller or historical drama, reaching far wider audiences than a clunky newsreel ever could. The networks behind it (ideologically driven financiers, overseas influencers, domestic censors) remain mostly invisible to the average viewer. As consumers of media, understanding this landscape is vital.

If there is a silver lining, it’s that awareness of these networks can foster critical viewing. Filmmakers with integrity around the world also continue to resist and expose these machinations, often at great personal risk, by making films that contest dominant narratives such as the Latin American filmmakers who championed the revolutionary third cinema movement.

The story of right-wing and authoritarian influence on film is both a cautionary tale and an affirmation of film’s power. Authoritarians wouldn’t obsess over controlling cinema if it wasn’t so effective at shaping and influencing minds, young and old. By shining light on secret funding deals, cross-border propaganda circuits, and narrative trickery, we can perhaps better understand when a film is enriching our perspective or trying to commandeer it.

This article was produced by the Reactionary International research consortium.

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This article was produced by the Reactionary International research consortium.