Nationalism, Extremism, and Wartime Propaganda

I want to discuss this quote by Arthur Schopenhauer because I think it’s quite relevant. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably notice the massive uptick in nationalism rhetoric just about everywhere. Well, here is what Schopenhauer has to say about that:

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Analysis of Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer is making a deliberately harsh distinction between pride in what you have personally earned or developed and pride in something you merely happen to belong to. At the core of the quote is this idea: The less someone has as an individual, the more tempted they may be to borrow dignity from a group.

Schopenhauer calls national pride “the cheapest sort of pride” because it costs the individual nothing. You do not create your nation, achieve your nationality, or prove merit by being born into it. It is accidental. So, in his view, taking deep pride in it is a weak substitute for pride based on character, intellect, talent, integrity, or accomplishment.

When he says that a man proud of his nation “has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud,” he is not just criticizing patriotism. He is suggesting that some people use collective identity as a crutch. Instead of saying, “I am admirable because I am wise, brave, disciplined, or kind,” they say, “I am admirable because my country is great.” That is secondhand self-worth.

His next point is subtler. He says that someone with “important personal qualities” will be more ready to see his own nation’s shortcomings. Why? Because a strong person does not need illusions for self-esteem. If your dignity rests on your own substance, you can afford honesty. You do not need to pretend your country is flawless in order to feel valuable. In fact, the more serious and thoughtful you are, the less likely you are to confuse loyalty with blindness.

That is why Schopenhauer contrasts the thoughtful person with “every miserable fool.” The insult is strong, but the argument is clear: a person with nothing inwardly developed clings to national identity as a “last resource.” It becomes compensation. He defends “all its faults and follies tooth and nail” because criticism of the nation feels like criticism of himself. Since his ego is fused with the group, he cannot tolerate honest judgment. So the quote is not only about nationalism. It is really about borrowed identity and ego-defense. A few key themes are running through it:

Accidental membership versus earned worth: Schopenhauer values what belongs to you as an individual: your mind, discipline, character, and achievements. Nationality is inherited, not earned. His complaint is that people often reverse the order and boast most about what required the least from them.
Group identity as compensation: He thinks insecure people often seek grandeur through association. “My nation is glorious” becomes a way of saying “therefore I matter,” without having to build a life of substance.
Honest criticism as a sign of strength: A genuinely confident person can love a country while seeing its defects clearly. Blind defense, for Schopenhauer, is not loyalty but weakness.
Pride can become tribal irrationality: Once pride attaches to a group, people begin defending obvious wrongs just because they are “ours.” That is one of the dangers he is warning about.

There is also a broader philosophical background here. Schopenhauer had a very low opinion of human vanity and self-deception. He often thought people use illusions to protect their ego. In this quote, national pride is one more illusion: a way of inflating oneself without deserving it. That said, his claim is intentionally exaggerated. It is powerful, but not completely fair if taken literally. There is a difference between national pride as chauvinism (“my country is superior, therefore so am I”) and patriotism as affection and responsibility (“this is my country, and I care about its well-being”)

Those are not the same. One can value a nation’s culture, history, language, institutions, or ideals without using them as a substitute for personal worth. One can also criticize one’s nation precisely because one cares about it. In that sense, Schopenhauer’s strongest point is not that all national feeling is empty, but that identity becomes corrupt when it replaces personal substance or blocks moral judgment. A modern restatement of his idea might be: People who lack individual achievement often hide inside collective pride, while people with real substance do not need to pretend their side is perfect. His quote is really a warning against any form of tribal ego: not just nation, but also party, religion, race, class, school, company, or fandom. Whenever someone says, in effect, “I am important because my group is important,” Schopenhauer would see that as counterfeit pride. Schopenhauers lesson is the healthier your sense of self, the less you need to derive status from belonging, and the more capable you are of loving something without lying about it.

Nationalism in Historical Context

When I was in high school, we learned an acronym called “MAIN”, that explained the context and proximate causes leading up to WW1. Each letter refers to a concept:Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. It is a useful teaching model because it shows that WWI was not caused by one assassination alone. The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 was the spark, but Europe had already become dangerously unstable. MAIN helps explain why the system was so combustible.

Militarism meant the glorification of military power and preparedness. European states built huge armies and navies, and military thinking began to dominate politics. Alliances divided Europe into rival camps, especially the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. This meant that a conflict between two states could quickly draw in many others. Imperialism created competition for colonies, resources, prestige, and strategic advantage. European powers were constantly measuring themselves against each other. Nationalism intensified all of this by convincing people that the nation was sacred, superior, threatened, or destined for greatness. It turned rivalry into moral drama. These need not be independent factors; Nationalism often energized the other three.

Nationalism in the WW1 context means more than simple love for a country. Historians usually mean a political and emotional ideology built around ideas like my nation is a natural, unified community, the nation deserves loyalty above other loyalties, the nation has distinct interests, honor, and destiny, the nation is in competition with other nations, and the nation must be defended, expanded, or “fulfilled”. In 19th- and early-20th-century Europe, nationalism had several forms:

State nationalism: This was loyalty to an existing state such as France, Britain, Germany, or Russia. It encouraged citizens to identify deeply with the power, prestige, and survival of the state.
Ethnic or cultural nationalism: This defined the nation by language, ancestry, religion, or culture. It often drew lines between “real members” and outsiders.
Irredentist nationalism: This held that all people of a given nationality should be united in one state. That idea was explosive in places like the Balkans, where populations were mixed and borders were disputed.
Anti-imperial or separatist nationalism: Groups living inside empires, such as Serbs, Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and others, sought autonomy or independence. This weakened the big multinational empires, especially Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

This is why nationalism mattered so much before WWI: it did not just unite people; it also divided, ranked, and mobilized them. Nationalism helped create the mental world in which war became easier to imagine and easier to justify. National honor became sacred; States increasingly framed disputes not as practical disagreements but as matters of honor, dignity, and survival. Once political issues are presented this way, compromise begins to look humiliating. Other nations became rivals by default; Nationalism encouraged comparison: whose army is stronger, whose culture is superior, whose empire is greater, whose people are more virile, disciplined, or civilized. Minority groups challenged empires. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire ruled over many ethnic groups. Nationalist movements within those empires destabilized them. Serbian nationalism, for example, directly threatened Austrian control in the Balkans. Nationalist culture made ordinary people more willing to accept sacrifice, military service, censorship, and war. Violence could be moralized. War could be presented not merely as strategy but as duty, purification, destiny, liberation, revenge, or defense of civilization. That is why nationalism is often treated as one of the deepest causes of WWI. It shaped how people felt, not just what governments did.

The clearest example of nationalism leading to WW1 is the balkans. It’s quite interesting too, that we have a phrase “balkanized”, when referring to radical division and tension. The Balkans were full of overlapping national claims. Serbia wanted to expand and unite South Slavs. Austria-Hungary feared that Serbian nationalism would encourage separatism among Slavs within its own empire. Russia supported Serbia in part because of Slavic solidarity and its own strategic ambitions. These pressures made the region extremely unstable. So when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist linked to radical circles, assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the act was not random. It came out of a nationalist environment in which imperial rule was seen as illegitimate and national unification was worth violence.

Nationalism mattered across every european country. Rulers used it, movements used it, newspapers spread it, schools taught it, and crowds absorbed it. This lead to the total consumption of society by nationalism. Nationalism “consumes” a society when national identity stops being one loyalty among many and becomes the master lens through which everything is judged. A society is consumed by nationalism when people begin to ask of every issue: Is this good for the nation? Does this insult the nation? Does this strengthen enemies? Are these people truly loyal? Once that happens, politics, culture, education, journalism, and even private morality begin to reorganize around national belonging. This follows a very predictable process:

Identity narrows: People begin to see themselves less as individuals, neighbors, workers, believers, or citizens of the world, and more as members of a nation in struggle. This can feel empowering because it offers belonging, meaning, and pride. But it also reduces complexity. The nation becomes the answer to everything.
The nation is idealized: A selective story develops. Our people are virtuous, our past is glorious, our suffering is unique, our enemies are aggressive or decadent, our mission is historic. This story does not need to be entirely false. It only needs to be one-sided.
Threat perception grows: Nationalism becomes especially powerful when people are told they are under threat, outsiders want to weaken them, traitors within are helping the enemies, and decline is coming unless we unite. Fear is crucial. A nation that feels merely proud is one thing; a nation that feels wounded, humiliated, or encircled is much more combustible.
Dissent becomes betrayal: Once the nation is sacred, critics are no longer just wrong. They are disloyal. This is one of the clearest signs that nationalism is consuming a society. A journalist, teacher, artist, or politician who questions policy can be accused of weakening the nation.
Complexity gives way to myth: Nuanced explanations lose ground. Nationalist narratives prefer simple moral binaries: us versus them, patriots versus traitors, strength versus weakness, and purity versus corruption.
Public emotion is militarized: Sacrifice, discipline, obedience, masculinity, honor, and revenge become glorified. The population becomes psychologically prepared for confrontation.
Institutions adapt: Schools, media, churches, parties, and cultural institutions start reproducing the same themes. Nationalism becomes normal, then expected, then enforced socially.

That is what it means for nationalism to consume a society: it becomes not just a belief but an atmosphere. And crucially, that atmosphere is cultivated by the media ecosystem. Media is one of the main engines of nationalism because it turns abstract identity into repeated emotional experience. Throughout europe prior to WW1, this included forms like newspapers, speeches, novels, school textbooks, and patriotic songs (among many other forms). Within each media type exists different substance common among all nationalist rhetoric:

Repetition of symbols: Flags, maps, uniforms, anthems, heroic leaders, martyrs, and historical anniversaries appear constantly. Repetition makes the nation feel natural and sacred.
Emotional storytelling: Media rarely spreads nationalism through dry argument alone. It uses stories; things like heroic soldiers, violated borders, historical humiliation, innocent victims, glorious ancestors, or national rebirth. Emotion works better than analysis.
Enemy construction: Nationalistic media often creates a vivid enemy: foreign powers, neighboring nations, immigrants, internal minorities, cosmopolitan elites, or “traitors”. The enemy may be shown as brutal, sneaky, decadent, parasitic, or existentially dangerous.
Selective memory: Media highlights victories, grievances, and sacrifices that reinforce national unity while minimizing crimes, failures, or internal divisions. This is one of the most powerful tools: controlling what is remembered.
Simplification: Complicated geopolitical issues are reduced to narratives ordinary people can quickly absorb: they insulted us, they fear our strength, we are only defending ourselves, or history is on our side.
Moral framing: Nationalistic propaganda rarely says, “We want power.” It says: we want justice, we want security, we defend civilization, we protect our people, or we reclaim what is ours. Aggression is recoded as righteousness.
Saturation: The same messages come from many directions at once: newspapers, speeches, schools, ceremonies, art, clergy, and entertainment. When every institution echoes the same themes, people stop experiencing them as ideology and start experiencing them as common sense.
Peer reinforcement: Media also works socially. People repeat slogans, shame doubters, and reward visible patriotism. This can create conformity even among those who are privately skeptical.

In practice, nationalistic media tends to rely on recurring patterns. It emphasizes a golden age, lost greatness, heroic ancestors, or sacred founding moments, the mythic past. It reminds people of defeats, injustices, betrayals, occupied lands, or disrespect from rivals, the humiliation and grievance elements. It suggests the nation has an authentic essence that must be protected from dilution or corruption, the purity/belonging aspect. It praises soldiers, mothers, workers, and youth as contributors to national destiny, the heroism aspect. It insists that the nation is at a turning point, under siege, or facing decline. Constant emergency state. And It defines who belongs and who does not. National unity is often built by naming internal outsiders. This is the boundary making aspect. This is why propaganda is not just about falsehood. It is often about organizing emotion.

There are many causes of nationalism; factors, historical forces, enabling conditions etc. I am not aware of a necessary or sufficient set; I imagine for a complex ideological movement like this, we would be looking for INUS conditions. But there are quite a few obvious ones we can consider. For example, industrialization and rapid social change uproots old identities. When people are displaced by urbanization, class conflict, or modernization, nationalism can offer stability and belonging. Nationalism often serves as a reaction to these changes. Another example, In post WW1 germany, you had a sense of humiliation and perceived decline following because of the loss. Humiliated societies are often especially receptive to nationalism because it promises a restoration of dignity. Also, Economic insecurity tends to always precede nationalist backlash. Periods of inequality, stagnation, or disruption can make people receptive to narratives that blame foreigners, minorities, or global forces. We can also point to psychological needs. Nationalism satisfies deep human desires like belonging, meaning, pride, order, identity, and moral certainty. This is why it can be so powerful. It is not just doctrine; it is emotional shelter.

Nationalism is not automatically violent. It can unify people, support independence movements, and inspire civic duty. But it becomes dangerous when it shifts into forms like:

chauvinism: belief in national superiority
exclusion: narrowing who counts as part of the nation
resentment politics: organizing identity around grievance
sacralization: treating the nation as beyond criticism
militarization: tying citizenship to struggle and sacrifice
mythic politics: replacing reality with emotionally useful stories

Patriotism usually means affection for one’s country, its people, or its institutions. Nationalism often means making the nation the highest political value, especially in competitive or exclusionary ways. In the pre-1914 world, these features made Europe more brittle and more war-prone. In the MAIN framework, nationalism is not just “people liked their countries.” It is the process by which national identity becomes emotionally absolute and politically explosive. Before WW1, nationalism deepened rivalries between states, destablized empires within, turned disputes into moral tests of national honor, made propaganda more effective, and prepared ordinary people to accept war. And more broadly, nationalism consumes a society when it transforms the nation into a sacred identity, trains people to view politics as a struggle between loyal insiders and dangerous outsiders, and uses media, memory, grievance, and fear to make that worldview feel natural.

Modern Nationalism

In modern times, nationalism is less often a single doctrine and more often a recurring political grammar: a way of telling people who “we” are, what threatens “us,” and what must be defended, restored, or purified. Across countries, ideologies, and media systems, the specifics change, but the structure repeats. Scholars of nationalism and media note that media has long been central to nationalism, while newer digital systems have changed its speed, scale, and style rather than replacing the core mechanisms. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

The first recurring pattern is boundary-making. Nationalism draws a line between insiders and outsiders. Sometimes that boundary is civic, based on citizenship and institutions. Sometimes it is ethnic, religious, linguistic, or civilizational. But in every case, nationalism answers the same question: who really belongs? Once that line is drawn, politics becomes easier to moralize. Policy disagreements start to look like struggles over the survival or dignity of the nation. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

The second pattern is mythic storytelling. Nationalism usually depends on a simplified story about the past: a golden age, a humiliation, a betrayal, a struggle, a rebirth. Modern nationalist movements often weaponize memory, taking selected historical episodes and turning them into identity scripts for the present. That does not require inventing history from scratch; it usually works by selecting, dramatizing, and repeating the parts of history that make grievance and solidarity feel emotionally obvious. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

The third pattern is threat inflation. Nationalism grows stronger when people are told that the nation is endangered — by migration, foreign influence, cultural dilution, economic decline, border insecurity, elite betrayal, demographic change, moral decay, or hostile media. The threat can be real, exaggerated, or partly imagined; politically, what matters is whether it becomes a shared emotional frame. OECD and UNESCO both describe today’s information environment as one where polarization, distrust, and disinformation can intensify exactly these threat perceptions. (OECD)

The fourth pattern is fusion of identity and politics. In a healthy civic order, a government can be criticized without rejecting the nation itself. Under stronger nationalist conditions, criticism of leaders, state policy, military action, or dominant cultural narratives is recoded as disloyalty. This is one reason nationalist politics often sits comfortably beside attacks on journalists, fact-checkers, universities, minorities, or independent institutions. Freedom House has documented direct attacks on fact-checkers and researchers in multiple countries, showing how information control becomes part of political identity struggles. (Freedom House)

The fifth pattern is compensation through belonging. Nationalism can be especially potent in periods of rapid change. When people feel atomized, economically insecure, culturally disoriented, or socially displaced, national identity offers certainty, meaning, and dignity. That is why nationalism often surges during modernization shocks, crises of trust, perceived status loss, and periods when people feel elites no longer represent them. OECD explicitly links declining trust, polarization, and disinformation pressures to contemporary democratic strain. (OECD)

Nationalism usually does not arrive all at once. It often unfolds in stages. First, there is a sense of dislocation: economic change, migration, war, austerity, elite failure, corruption, geopolitical humiliation, or rapid cultural transformation. Then comes a story that explains the discomfort in national terms: we were strong, now we are weakened; we were respected, now we are mocked; we were unified, now we are divided. Then comes identification of causes: outsiders, internal enemies, global institutions, decadent elites, disloyal minorities, cosmopolitans, hostile media. Then comes mobilization: symbols, slogans, rituals, policy demands, and pressure for conformity. Finally, if the process deepens, the national frame becomes ambient: people start judging journalism, art, schools, laws, business, and even private morality by whether they serve “the nation.” The result is not just patriotism but an environment in which national belonging becomes the dominant measure of legitimacy. This identity-centered mobilization is close to what political scientists describe as “identity propaganda,” in which elites alter group identity to shape behavior. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

What changes in the present is not the core logic but the form nationalism takes.

One major form is ethnonationalism. This defines the nation in terms of ancestry, religion, bloodline, or civilizational inheritance. It is usually concerned with purity, demographic change, border anxiety, and the idea that the “real nation” is being replaced or diluted. Contemporary research on extreme-right digital propaganda shows how this form now thrives in multimodal online spaces using video, memes, music, and visual identity performance. (Taylor & Francis Online)

Another form is civic nationalism. This defines the nation around laws, institutions, constitutional values, language of citizenship, and shared public norms. In its healthier forms, civic nationalism is more inclusive. In its harsher forms, it can still become exclusionary by insisting that dissenters, migrants, or minorities fail to embody national values. The difference is that the boundary is framed as moral and political rather than biological or ancestral. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

A third form is populist nationalism. Here the nation is equated with “the real people,” while elites, judges, journalists, academics, and transnational institutions are cast as corrupt or alien. This is especially common today. It ties nationalism to anti-elitism and portrays the leader or movement as the authentic voice of the nation. Recent scholarship on digital populism emphasizes how social media allows “the people” to be continuously staged, visualized, and performed online rather than represented only through parties or newspapers. (SAGE Journals)

A fourth form is diaspora or long-distance nationalism. Digital platforms allow people living outside a country to participate intensely in homeland politics, grievances, symbolism, and conflict narratives. This can intensify nationalist politics because distant participants often experience identity at a high emotional pitch and a lower personal cost.

A fifth form is state-managed digital nationalism. In some systems, governments actively steer or tolerate online nationalist outrage, patriotic amplification, and enemy framing as part of state persuasion. Recent commentary on China, for example, describes a digitally networked nationalism shaped by both user expression and state influence. Freedom House’s reporting across countries also shows how online information spaces can be distorted by coordinated pro-government narratives and political manipulation. (SAGE Journals)

A sixth form is defensive or anti-imperial nationalism. Not all nationalism today is majoritarian or exclusionary. In some places it is tied to sovereignty, decolonization, self-rule, or resistance to foreign domination. Even here, though, the same dynamics can appear: selective memory, emotional mobilization, pressure for conformity, and suspicion of internal dissent.

A seventh form is platform nationalism. This is newer. It is not just nationalism expressed on platforms; it is nationalism shaped by the incentives of platforms — short-form outrage, virality, visual identity performance, algorithmic amplification, and networked swarming. In this form, the nation is not only narrated; it is constantly performed by users through flags, hashtags, clips, symbols, irony, and participatory antagonism. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

Across all these variations, the same deep patterns recur:

Nationalism simplifies. It reduces social complexity into moral clarity.
Nationalism personalizes politics. Public issues become identity wounds.
Nationalism sacralizes symbols. Flags, borders, language, military sacrifice, and historical memory acquire moral intensity beyond ordinary policy debate.
Nationalism thrives on comparison. It asks whether “our” nation is respected, declining, invaded, mocked, replaced, humiliated, or rising again.
Nationalism often needs an enemy. That enemy may be external, internal, or both.

And nationalism is strongest when it feels less like an ideology than like common sense — when people no longer hear a narrative as a narrative, but as reality itself. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

How nationalism is propagated in modern media

This is where the biggest shift has happened. Older forms of nationalist propagation were more centralized. Newspapers, radio, schools, official ceremonies, monuments, posters, patriotic songs, film newsreels, and state broadcasters pushed national narratives in a mostly one-to-many direction. Elites, editors, clergy, and officials were the gatekeepers. Messages traveled more slowly, and audiences were more passive. The classic media role in nationalism was to help strangers imagine themselves as one people through repeated symbols, maps, stories, and rituals. That basic role has not disappeared. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment) Modern media keeps those functions, but changes the mechanics in five major ways.

From broadcast to participation

Old propaganda mostly asked people to receive, repeat, and obey. Modern media asks them to perform nationalism. People do not merely consume patriotic content; they remix it, meme it, duet it, clip it, quote-post it, and weaponize it in comment sections. That makes nationalist messaging feel organic even when elites seed it. Research on visual self-mediation shows how digital infrastructures let “the people” stage themselves visibly and collectively, not just be represented from above. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
From periodic messaging to constant ambient messaging

Older media had rhythms: the morning paper, the speech, the broadcast bulletin, the holiday ceremony. Digital platforms create continuous exposure. Identity cues, outrage clips, symbolic imagery, and grievance narratives appear throughout the day. Nationalism no longer needs to wait for a rally; it lives in feeds, recommendations, shorts, streams, and group chats. OECD and UNESCO both stress how today’s digital environment intensifies exposure to mis- and disinformation through pervasive online systems. (OECD)
From gatekeeping to algorithmic amplification

Old media filtered messages through editors and institutions. Modern platforms rank content by engagement signals, which often rewards anger, conflict, novelty, and emotionally charged identity frames. That does not mean algorithms “create” nationalism by themselves, but they can advantage the kinds of content nationalism uses best: us-versus-them conflict, humiliation stories, enemy identification, visual symbolism, and moralized outrage. Current research increasingly examines these platform dynamics and their role in politicized visibility. (SAGE Journals)
From centralized propaganda to hybrid ecosystems

In the past, nationalist messaging often came from the state, party newspapers, or formal organizations. Today it moves through hybrid networks: influencers, anonymous accounts, partisan outlets, alt-tech communities, encrypted chats, diaspora networks, troll farms, clipped television segments, and official accounts. A state may not need to control every message if sympathetic ecosystems will circulate it. Research on alternative social platforms and authoritarian persuasion points to these more diffuse systems of influence. (SAGE Journals)
From text-heavy persuasion to multimodal persuasion

Modern nationalist messaging is far more visual, affective, and memetic. It travels through short video, music, memes, livestreams, image macros, symbolic merchandise, ironic jokes, historical edits, and emotionally loaded clips. This matters because images and short videos can convey threat, pride, disgust, or solidarity faster than argument can. Recent work on multimodal extreme-right propaganda and visual populism underscores that contemporary nationalist communication is increasingly image-centered and performative. (Taylor & Francis Online)

In contemporary media, nationalism is often spread less through one grand manifesto and more through repeated micro-techniques.

symbol flooding: constant use of flags, maps, military clips, border footage, historic monuments, and patriotic music.
grievance looping: resurfacing the same humiliations, crimes, slights, migration incidents, or elite statements until they become a stable narrative of injury.
identity shorthand: phrases like “real citizens,” “our people,” “traditional values,” “national dignity,” or “civilizational survival” that condense a worldview into emotionally recognizable code.
enemy personalization: attaching abstract fears to vivid targets — migrants, minorities, activists, journalists, supranational organizations, neighboring states, “globalists,” or traitorous elites.
conspiracy adaptation: blending nationalism with rumors and conspiratorial claims so that ordinary policy disputes become existential plots. Recent political science work on rumors, propaganda, and conspiracies links these to democratic backsliding and illiberal politics. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)
networked harassment and policing: users enforce nationalist norms on one another through dogpiling, doxing, ridicule, and accusations of betrayal. Freedom House’s country reporting documents how online harassment and coordinated disinformation campaigns can target journalists, civil society, refugees, and researchers. (Freedom House)
pseudo-authenticity: content framed as “just ordinary people speaking truth” rather than propaganda. This is powerful because modern audiences distrust formal propaganda. Nationalist messages therefore often appear as jokes, eyewitness clips, influencer commentary, lifestyle content, or “uncensored” takes rather than official doctrine.

The older model was strong at uniformity. The newer model is strong at immersion. Digital media can target narrow audiences, adapt messages quickly, test what triggers engagement, and blur the line between organic speech and coordinated persuasion. AI further lowers the cost of manipulation by making disinformation, voice cloning, and synthetic imagery easier and faster to produce. Freedom House has warned that AI can amplify censorship, surveillance, and disinformation by making these tools cheaper and more effective. (Freedom House)

Modern media is also better at creating the feeling that a nationalist mood is universal. Trending topics, viral clips, visible swarms of agreement, and endless reposting can make a position seem socially dominant even when it is not. This perceived majority effect matters because nationalism gains strength from the impression that “the people” are awakening together.

But modern media does not make nationalism inevitable It is important not to overstate technological determinism. The same systems that spread nationalist propaganda can also support fact-checking, pluralism, satire, cross-border solidarity, civic education, and resistance to manipulative narratives. OECD emphasizes media literacy and information integrity as key democratic responses, while Freedom House highlights the role of civil society and counter-disinformation efforts in some countries. (OECD)

So the real change is not that old propaganda disappeared and new propaganda replaced it. It is that the contemporary information environment makes nationalist politics more participatory, personalized, visual, persistent, and rapidly scalable.

In older media systems, nationalism was often something authorities broadcast. In modern media systems, nationalism is something authorities, movements, influencers, and ordinary users can co-produce. That is the major shift. The recurring structure remains familiar — belonging, grievance, threat, memory, purity, sacrifice, enemy-making — but the delivery system is now faster, more intimate, more visual, more interactive, and more adaptive than it was in the age of newspapers and posters. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

At the end of this blog, I will provide a collection of resources that can be used to evaluate wartime propaganda.

The Religious Extremism Driving the Current War

Now that we have an understanding of historical and modern nationalism, let’s see how it maps onto the modern US/Israel-Iran conflict.

Israeli Religious Extremism

Far right politics in Israel is not ruled by a single organization. It is a coalition of parties, settler movements, and religious-ideological networks inside and around Netanyahu’s governing bloc. The two most important cabinet figures have been Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir: Smotrich, as finance minister, has also held major authority over West Bank settlement policy, while Ben-Gvir, as national security minister, has controlled the police portfolio. Reuters describes Smotrich as a hardline Religious Zionism leader who opposes Palestinian statehood and wants West Bank settlements expanded and eventually annexed, and Ben-Gvir as the far-right Jewish Power leader in charge of police who also opposes Palestinian statehood. (Reuters)

Ideologically, there are several overlapping currents here, not all identical. The main ones are:

Religious Zionist / “Hardal” messianic nationalism.

This current sees the Land of Israel as divinely promised, treats settlement as a religious duty, and often views territorial compromise as a betrayal of God’s plan. In practice, that means pushing permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, opposing a Palestinian state, and framing military force as part of a historic-redemptive struggle. Carnegie summarized Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as political leaders whose outlook treats war as a tool for entrenching occupation and ethnic cleansing, tied to messianic hopes rather than ordinary pragmatic politics. AP has also reported that Smotrich was given cabinet-level authority over settlement policy and has vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank. (Carnegie Endowment)
Kahanist / Jewish supremacist ultranationalism.

This is most closely associated with Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power). Reuters notes that Ben-Gvir is a disciple of Meir Kahane; Kahane’s movement was banned from the Knesset, and Ben-Gvir himself was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support for a terrorist-designated group. This current is often less about classic rabbinic theology than about militant Jewish power, hostility to Arabs and Palestinians, collective punishment, and aggressive policing. (Reuters)
The pro-settler state-building camp.

This is the ecosystem around Religious Zionism, settlement councils, groups like Regavim, and activists whose goal is to erase the line between sovereign Israel and the occupied territories. AP reported that Smotrich’s coalition arrangements created a new settler-oriented agency inside the Defense Ministry to manage construction and land-use matters in Area C, and that his role made him the first minister to oversee civilian life in the West Bank in a way critics saw as moving toward permanent control. (AP News)

So, in plain English: the core bloc is Smotrich’s Religious Zionism camp plus Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, backed by a broader settler-religious movement. Some members are explicitly messianic, some are more ethno-nationalist, and many combine both.

There is a strong desire to “speed up the return of the messiah”: that is a real theme in parts of this milieu, but it needs nuance. Not every supporter literally says policy should trigger the Messiah, and many frame their agenda in political-security terms. But in the more ideological wing that backs Netanyahu, settlement expansion, Jewish sovereignty over all the land, and especially challenges to the status quo around the Temple Mount / al-Aqsa compound are bound up with redemptive religious ideas. Reuters reported that Ben-Gvir’s Temple Mount visits and calls for Jewish prayer there inflamed tensions and were seen, even by many Israelis, as a dangerous challenge to the long-standing status quo. (Reuters)

On direct influence over decisions and operations, the ministries matter a lot:

Finance / Smotrich: this is not just about budgets. Reuters and AP report that Smotrich has combined the finance post with unusually strong influence over West Bank administration and settlement policy, letting him channel money, bureaucracy, planning, and legalization toward settlement expansion and de facto annexation. (Reuters)
Police / Ben-Gvir: as national security minister, Ben-Gvir has formal authority over police policy. Reuters reported that Israel’s attorney general warned Netanyahu that Ben-Gvir had allegedly crossed from setting general policy into improper operational interference, threatening police independence and public trust. (Reuters)
Cabinet leverage over war policy: Reuters reported that both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich pushed for a more aggressive Gaza war, opposed ceasefire deals, and called for permanent conquest of Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there, even when Netanyahu publicly rejected that end-state. (Reuters)

The through-line is a belief that Palestinian national claims should be crushed, not accommodated. In Smotrich’s camp, that often appears as a theological-historical claim that Jews have an exclusive right to the biblical land. In Ben-Gvir’s camp, it appears more as hard coercion, maximal force, and Jewish supremacy. AP summarized Smotrich’s vision as one state from the river to the sea in which Palestinians would live quietly with second-class status or leave; Reuters described Ben-Gvir as rejecting Palestinian statehood and backing harsher war aims. (AP News)

One important caveat: calling them all “religious extremists” can blur real differences. Smotrich is more rooted in the religious-settler, messianic-state-building tradition. Ben-Gvir is more rooted in Kahanist ultranationalism. They overlap on annexation, anti-Palestinian politics, and opposition to a two-state solution, but they are not the same political animal. (Reuters)

The simplest map is this:

Religious Zionism / Smotrich: messianic settler project, annexation, bureaucratic capture of West Bank governance.
Otzma Yehudit / Ben-Gvir: Kahanist policing, anti-Arab incitement, harsher war and internal security posture.
Broader settler movement and Temple Mount activists: social base and ideological pressure network that normalizes “redeeming the land,” permanent control, and confrontation over holy sites. (AP News)

Far Right Extremism in the United States

There is a real and important overlap between the Israeli far right and parts of the U.S. Christian right. But it helps to separate three things that often get blurred together:

Christian Zionism: support for Israel grounded in theology.
Christian nationalism / dominionism: the belief that the U.S. should be governed in explicitly Christian terms.
Apocalyptic or “spiritual warfare” politics: language about demons, prophecy, Armageddon, and a divinely chosen leader.

Those three currents overlap heavily on the American right, and together they can shape how some politicians, activists, pastors, donors, media figures, and officials talk about Israel, Palestinians, war, and U.S. power. The strongest evidence is not that all U.S. policy is secretly run by end-times believers. It is that these ideas have had substantial influence over staffing, rhetoric, electoral incentives, lobbying pressure, and some concrete policy decisions. (Reuters)

The clearest historical example is Trump’s Jerusalem decision. In 2017 an “intense and sustained push” by U.S. evangelicals helped drive Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the embassy move. In 2019 that Trump’s softer stance on Israeli settlements fulfilled a long-running wish list of his evangelical base, many of whom see the return of Jews to the biblical land as part of God’s plan. That does not prove theology was the only reason for those moves, but it does show organized evangelical pressure was a real policy force. (Reuters)

That influence has not disappeared. In 2025 that Mike Huckabee — a longtime evangelical Christian Zionist who rejects calling the West Bank “occupied” and prefers biblical framing — was confirmed as ambassador to Israel. Netanyahu’s camp has long counted on support from American evangelicals as a durable pillar of U.S. backing for Israel. In other words, this is not just a cultural affinity; it is part of the political architecture that helps sustain hardline U.S.-Israel alignment. (Reuters) The merger of Israel support with Christian nationalist rule-at-home is of particular. Trump created a White House faith office in February 2025 and directed the attorney general to lead a task force targeting what he called “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government. Trump has repeatedly taken steps that conservative Christians see as victories, including institutionalizing this “anti-Christian bias” initiative and elevating allies like Paula White-Cain. That matters because it creates official channels through which a specific ideological wing of Christianity gets closer to state power. (Reuters)

The rhetoric revolves around a few major themes. In 2024 that Trump framed the election as a Christian battle and likened it to D-Day. Reuters also reported that Christian media figures were presenting Trump as an instrument of God’s will, sometimes in overtly messianic terms. Revival-style political events, where preachers described Trump as God’s favored candidate against “forces of darkness,” and where participants pledged to take control of leadership in government and culture, have become much more common. That is not metaphor in a casual sense; it is a worldview in which politics becomes cosmic war and opposition becomes evil rather than legitimate disagreement. (Reuters)

This is where Seven Mountains / dominionist thinking matters. The core idea is that Christians should gain control over major spheres of society — government, media, education, business, family, religion, and culture. PRRI’s analysis of charismatic and Pentecostal conservatives says these movements are increasingly shaping the American right with ideas of prophecy, spiritual warfare, dominion, and Zionism. AP’s reporting from a 2024 rally captured people reciting a decree about “righteous” laws and “biblical” judicial rulings while pledging to permanently control leadership positions. So even when the term “Seven Mountains Mandate” is not used onstage, the governing logic is often there. (PRRI)

That has a foreign-policy effect because for many Christian Zionists, Israel is not merely an ally. It is a theological object. Conservative American evangelicals are among Israel’s strongest supporters because many believe the Bible grants the land to the Jewish people and that supporting Israel brings divine favor. Many evangelicals feel a religious connection to the Holy Land and view Jewish return to biblical territory as divinely significant. Once that frame takes hold, ordinary strategic or humanitarian objections can get recast as resistance to God’s plan. (AP News)

At the same time, not every Christian Zionist is an apocalyptic extremist. Some are motivated more by biblical literalism, some by anti-Iran hawkishness, some by alliance politics, and some by domestic electoral identity. It would be inaccurate to say that all evangelical support for Israel is about trying to trigger Armageddon. But it would also be inaccurate to pretend that apocalyptic belief is marginal. It is one of the recognized strands inside this ecosystem, especially where prophecy preaching, spiritual warfare language, and Trump-as-anointed-leader rhetoric converge. (Reuters)

Christian media often potrays Trump as an instrument of God who is persecuted by enemies. Many pastors and activists explicitly presenting him as spiritually chosen to defeat dark forces. This is the older “Cyrus” pattern made more militant: Trump is treated as an imperfect but divinely appointed ruler whose political success is part of a sacred script. That kind of framing lowers resistance among believers to policies they might otherwise see as cruel, corrupt, or dangerous, because the leader is judged less by law or ethics than by supposed providential purpose. (Reuters)

Recently, there have been reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received more than 200 complaints from service members alleging that some commanders framed war with Iran in terms of God’s plan, Armageddon, and Trump being “anointed by Jesus.” Cornell summarized the same set of allegations as evidence that end-times rhetoric is reaching service members through commanders. If true, they would represent a profound breach of church-state norms inside the chain of command. (The Guardian)

A text message from Huckabee to Trump was publicly released in June 2025, and Reuters had already established Huckabee’s long record as a staunch evangelical backer of Israeli settlement claims. Taken together, that is strong evidence that explicitly providential language is not confined to fringe pastors; it can sit very close to formal diplomacy and the presidency. (Reuters)

So the deepest danger is not just “religious people influence policy,” which is normal in a democracy. The danger is a more specific pipeline: apocalyptic theology → spiritual-war political rhetoric → demonization of opponents → sacralization of national power → support for maximalist policy at home and abroad.

Once politics becomes a battle against demons, compromise looks like surrender to evil. Once a leader is “anointed,” accountability feels like rebellion against God. Once Israel’s expansionist right is read through prophetic destiny, Palestinian rights become easier to erase. And once all of that is embedded in media, churches, campaign machinery, and government offices, it becomes more than rhetoric; it becomes an organizing logic. (Reuters)

There is substantial evidence that far-right Christian fundamentalist ideas are influencing U.S. politics and some foreign-policy choices regarding Israel. There is also evidence that these ideas are being normalized through official appointments, White House structures, political media, and movement churches. What is harder to prove, case by case, is that a given war decision or diplomatic action was made because of end-times belief rather than because of standard partisan, strategic, or geopolitical motives. The reality is usually an overlap: theology supplies the moral narrative, politics supplies the machinery, and state power gives it consequences. (Reuters)

Iranian Religious Extremism

In Iran, the main story is not multiple big “sects” competing the way people sometimes imagine it. The Islamic Republic is built primarily around Twelver Shiism, and the most consequential divisions are currents within revolutionary Shiism and the state apparatus—especially the office of the Supreme Leader, the clerical establishment, and the IRGC. (Institute Global) The core doctrine is velayat-e faqih—the “guardianship of the jurist.” In Iran’s system, that means political and religious authority is concentrated in the Supreme Leader as the deputy of the Hidden Imam during the Imam’s occultation. The constitution gives the Leader command of the armed forces, authority over war and peace, and appointment power over the IRGC commander, top judges, and other key institutions. That is why the Supreme Leader is not just a symbolic cleric; he is the regime’s central political-theological sovereign. (Institute Global)

And as of March 8–9, 2026, Iran’s Assembly of Experts selected Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father. He is closely tied to the IRGC, opposed to engagement with the West, and seen as a sign that hardliners remain firmly in charge. (Reuters)

The most useful way to map the Iranian far-right religious landscape is this:

Khomeinist / “absolute velayat-e faqih” hardliners

This is the regime’s founding ideological core. It is the belief that, during the Hidden Imam’s absence, a ruling jurist should exercise supreme authority over the state and society. This was a major break from older, more quietist Shiite traditions, which had generally held that no fully legitimate Islamic government could exist until the Imam returned. In the Islamic Republic’s version, clerical rule is not temporary modest supervision; it becomes a full political order with divine legitimacy. Opposition to the Leader can therefore be framed not just as political dissent, but as rebellion against a sacred order. (Institute Global) This current is “far right” in the sense that it fuses theocracy, authoritarianism, moral policing, anti-pluralism, and absolute hierarchy. It is not merely conservative religion. It is a doctrine of state power.
IRGC revolutionary hardliners

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not just a military branch. CFR describes it as a force created to protect the revolutionary order and answer directly to the Supreme Leader, bypassing elected institutions. Iran’s constitution and later doctrine frame it as an ideological army, not just a national army. (Council on Foreign Relations)

This matters because the Guard’s worldview is broader and more militant than ordinary national defense. According to the MEI study, the IRGC’s ideology centers on clerical rule, total obedience to the Leader, export of the revolution, anti-Americanism, and the destruction of Israel as a core objective. The same study says ideological commitment is heavily weighted in promotions and that indoctrination increased significantly after the 2009 protests, helping produce younger, more radical IRGC generations. (Middle East Institute)

The Khomeinist-IRGC nexus is the fundamentalist current most directly influences policy. That is the bloc that most directly shapes security policy, regional proxy policy, repression at home, and the regime’s confrontation with the West. Reuters also notes that Mojtaba Khamenei’s support inside the IRGC, especially among younger radical cohorts, is a major source of leverage. (Reuters)
Mahdist or messianic hardliners

In Twelver Shiism, the Mahdi is the hidden Twelfth Imam who will return at the end of history to defeat evil and establish justice. Traditionally, many Shiite scholars treated this as a reason for political restraint: since the Imam is absent, clerics should not claim full sovereign rule. But Khomeini flipped that logic. His reinterpretation argued that Muslims should build an Islamic government in preparation for the Mahdi’s return (sound familiar?). (Institute Global)

The MEI study goes further and argues that Mahdism has become increasingly important inside the IRGC, especially after 2009. It describes a worldview in which the return of the Mahdi is tied to a final struggle against evil, and says some hardline clerics and Guard-linked institutions have tried to turn Mahdism from a devotional theme into a more systematic ideology shaping military readiness and regional activism. (Middle East Institute)

That does not mean all Iranian policy is made by people literally trying to trigger the apocalypse tomorrow. That would be too simple. But it does mean that some important hardline circles interpret geopolitics through a cosmic frame: truth versus falsehood, Islam versus arrogance, the camp of justice versus the camp of evil. In that worldview, conflict with the U.S. and Israel is not just strategic; it can be narrated as part of sacred history. (Middle East Institute)
The Mesbah-Yazdi / Paydari camp

A particularly hardline current inside the broader system has been associated with Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi and the Paydari Front. This camp is more absolutist, less interested in compromise, and more open to heavily ideological, Mahdist language. USIP describes Mesbah-Yazdi as a hardline cleric who oversaw a strict school of thought and backed figures like Ebrahim Raisi and Saeed Jalili. Other reporting describes Paydari as the most right-wing edge of the principlist camp and ties it to radical Mahdist interpretations. (Iran Primer) This current overlaps with the IRGC and security state, but it is not identical to the whole regime. Think of it as one of the most doctrinaire factions within the hardline universe: more apocalyptic, more rigid, more hostile to compromise.
Hojjatiyeh-type messianic traditionalists

The Hojjatiyeh was a Shiite lay association founded in the 1950s, originally focused on combating the Baha’i faith. Encyclopaedia Iranica says it influenced the worldview of parts of the revolutionary elite, though indirectly. Historically, Hojjatiyeh was associated with a more quietist idea: that true Islamic government should await the Mahdi rather than be seized by clerics before his return. (Encyclopaedia Iranica)

So Hojjatiyeh is not the same thing as Khomeinist rule. In fact, older Hojjatiyeh-style thought cut against Khomeini’s doctrine. But the name persists in debate because Iranian politics has long contained rumors, accusations, and intellectual residues of Hojjatiyeh-like messianism, anti-Baha’i activism, and end-times thinking. The safest way to put it is: Hojjatiyeh is historically important, but the main policy drivers today are the Supreme Leader system and the IRGC, not a standalone Hojjatiyeh state. (Encyclopaedia Iranica)

So how do these currents affect actual policy? First, they shape who rules. The constitution places ultimate authority in a jurist-leader above elected institutions. Ties to the IRGC and opposition to engagement with the West remain central markers of hardline legitimacy. (Constitute Project) Second, they shape regional policy. Iran’s constitution speaks in explicitly transnational terms about the unity of Muslims and support for the struggles of the oppressed worldwide, and the IRGC has long treated export of the revolution as part of its mission. That ideological frame helps explain Iran’s support for allied militias and armed nonstate actors across the region. (en.mfa.ir) Third, they shape how the West is understood. Not every Iranian official is literally “end-times” in the American evangelical sense. A lot of the regime’s anti-Western posture is revolutionary, anti-imperial, and strategic rather than explicitly apocalyptic. But Reuters notes that hostility to the U.S. was central to Ali Khamenei’s rule, and the IRGC’s own ideological framing casts America as the camp of evil or arrogance. That creates a moral-cosmic reading of conflict even when officials are also acting out of cold power politics. (Reuters) Fourth, they shape repression at home. If the state sees itself as divinely mandated, then dissent is easier to cast as sedition against God’s order, not just disagreement with a government. That is one reason moral policing, censorship, and violent suppression of protests fit so naturally into the regime’s self-understanding. Reuters and CFR both describe a system in which unelected clerical-security institutions sit above the elected layer. (Council on Foreign Relations)

Iran’s most powerful far-right religious tendency is not a miscellaneous collection of sects. It is a state ideology: Khomeinist clerical absolutism, enforced and radicalized by the IRGC, with some factions adding a stronger Mahdist-messianic layer. The most important divide is between more pragmatic hardliners and more doctrinaire or apocalyptic hardliners—not between separate giant sects. (Reuters) In Iran, the regime more often frames relations with the US as a sacred struggle against arrogance, domination, and the enemies of Islam and the revolution. In some circles that slides into explicit Mahdist or apocalyptic language; in others it stays at the level of militant revolutionary theology. Either way, the effect can be similar: compromise looks like betrayal, and geopolitical conflict gets moralized into holy history. (en.mfa.ir)

This Zealotry is the Minority

A set of militant, nationalist, absolutist religious minorities inside powerful states and movements can exert influence far beyond their numbers, especially when they are embedded in security institutions, coalition governments, donor networks, media ecosystems, and party machines. In the Middle East and around it, those actors often frame territory, sovereignty, and war in sacred terms, which makes compromise look like betrayal and turns ordinary politics into existential struggle. (Reuters)

That framing matters because it appears across three different but interacting arenas:

the Israeli far right: settler messianism, annexationism, Kahanist ultranationalism, “Greater Israel” Expansionism;
the Iranian hardline theocracy: clerical absolutism, IRGC revolutionary ideology, Mahdist currents;
the U.S. Christian nationalist / Christian Zionist right: dominionism, apocalyptic prophecy politics, sacralized support for Israeli maximalism. (Reuters)

The common pattern is not theological sameness. These are very different religions and traditions. The common pattern is far-right political theology: a belief that the nation has a sacred destiny, that opponents are not just rivals but enemies of God or history, and that exceptional violence or domination is justified because the struggle is cosmic. That is where this ties directly into broader nationalism: nationalism becomes more combustible when it is fused with divine mission. (Tony Blair Institute)

What drives instability is often not “the majority religion” in any of these societies. It is the organized, disciplined, institutionally placed hardline wing. A movement does not need majority support to shape policy if it has veto power in coalition politics, leverage over armed institutions, control of key ministries, intense media and donor infrastructure, or the ability to define what counts as betrayal. (Reuters) That is why minority ideological factions can generate outsized instability. They are often the least willing to compromise, but the most willing to organize around red lines. Let’s look at these three coalitions side by side:

Israel: religious-nationalist maximalism

The key Israeli hardline actors are the Religious Zionism / settler-messianic camp around Bezalel Smotrich and the Kahanist ultranationalist camp around Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich is the far-right finance minister driving settlement expansion and opposing Palestinian statehood, while Ben-Gvir has used the national security portfolio to shape policing and a harsher security posture. Several countries have sanctioned or condemned both men for incitement against Palestinians. (Reuters) Their ideological core is:
- the land is divinely promised;
- Jewish sovereignty should extend across the whole biblical land;
- Palestinian national claims are illegitimate or subordinate;
- compromise is not realism but surrender. (Reuters)
This current affects policy through budgets, settlement approvals, policing, legal normalization of occupation, and pressure for more maximal war aims. In this model, nationalism is not merely civic; it is redemptive territorial nationalism. Land becomes sacred, so territorial compromise becomes spiritually intolerable. (Reuters)
Iran: clerical absolutism plus revolutionary messianism

Iran’s ruling ideology is centered on velayat-e faqih, the doctrine that a supreme jurist rules in the absence of the Hidden Imam. The Supreme Leader is therefore not just a political executive but the apex of a sacred order. The Tony Blair Institute’s explanation of velayat-e faqih describes it as Khomeini’s transformation of Shiite doctrine into a theory of clerical sovereignty, rather than older quietist restraint. (Tony Blair Institute)

The state’s hardline edge is the Khomeinist-IRGC nexus. Iran’s leadership struggle experienced a split between hardliners and pragmatists, but Mojtaba Khamenei’s strength lay in hardline networks and the Revolutionary Guards. The Middle East Institute describes how parts of the IRGC have elevated more explicit Mahdist ideas, tying revolutionary struggle to end-times themes and final confrontation. (Reuters)

So the Iranian version is not settler colonial messianism. It is:
- theocratic sovereignty;
- revolutionary anti-Westernism;
- sacralized resistance;
- and, in some factions, Mahdist end-times meaning layered onto state ideology. (Tony Blair Institute)
This makes compromise harder because backing down can be cast as betrayal of the revolution, betrayal of Islam, or betrayal of the oppressed. National security becomes inseparable from theological legitimacy.
United States: Christian nationalism, Christian Zionism, dominionist politics

In the U.S. case, the hardline religious current is not the state itself, but a powerful movement ecosystem that influences party politics and foreign policy. This is seen by the evangelical pressure applied to Trump with his Jerusalem decision and in the 2019 settlement-policy shift. Mike Huckabee, a longtime evangelical Christian Zionist and defender of settlements, became ambassador to Israel. (Reuters) This is essentially a wing of charismatic and dominionist Christianity that treats politics as spiritual warfare, sees Trump as divinely chosen, and embraces ideas associated with the Seven Mountains Mandate. PRRI’s 2026 mapping found about 11% adherents and 21% sympathizers to Christian nationalism nationally — not a majority, but a very large and politically consequential bloc. (PRRI) Its relevant beliefs include:
- America has a sacred Christian destiny;
- secular pluralism is degeneration, not neutrality;
- Israel has prophetic importance;
- political conflict is a battle against evil, darkness, or demons. (domestically and internationally) (PRRI)
This current affects policy less through formal theocracy than through electoral pressure, appointments, mobilization networks, media ecosystems, and the moral legitimation of hardline pro-Israel policy. In nationalism terms, it is civil religion turning into militant Christian nationhood.

These three camps are not identical, but they reinforce one another because each one likes versions of the same political story:

Chosen people / sacred nation / holy land / existential enemy / redemptive struggle / compromise as betrayal.

That story travels well across borders even when the theology changes. An Israeli settler messianist, an Iranian Mahdist hardliner, and an American Christian nationalist may hate one another, but structurally they often operate the same way:

they sacralize politics,
absolutize territory or sovereignty,
moralize violence,
and delegitimize pluralism.

That is why they can be mutually escalating even while being enemies. Each side helps prove the other side’s worldview, more on this later.

In the U.S., Christian nationalism is influential but not majority belief. PRRI’s 2026 data places adherents and sympathizers together at about a third of the public, with adherents alone at 11%. In Israel and Iran, the most militant religious-nationalist factions are also not simple stand-ins for the entire population. (PRRI) But instability is not produced by raw population share alone. It is produced by where organized minorities sit: in armed institutions, in ministries, in coalition bargaining, in propaganda networks, in clerical hierarchies, in donor and activist infrastructures. (Reuters) For example, in the United States, AIPAC donors have significant influence over the politicians they have bought. Miriam Adelson is a great example. She is best understood as a pro-Israel hawk and major Republican megadonor. She is the lead financier for pro-Trump efforts; her and Sheldon Adelson have a long record of support for Israel-focused causes and Jewish philanthropy, alongside traditional Republican giving. Her interests are tied to U.S.-Israel policy, Middle East issues, and broader conservative politics, with her wealth rooted in the casino business through Las Vegas Sands.

A hardline minority with veto points is often more geopolitically consequential than a moderate majority without institutional coherence.

As democratic norms weaken, nationalist projects increasingly seek deeper sources of legitimacy than ordinary elections or law. Religion becomes one of the most powerful such sources. It supplies a sacred history, moral certainty, a story of decline and restoration, and a justification for exceptional measures. (Freedom House) That is why religious far-right politics is so destabilizing. It does not just say “our interests first.” It says our nation is holy, our enemies are evil, history or God has chosen us, and extraordinary conflict is necessary for restoration. Once nationalism becomes redemptive, it becomes much less governable.

Today’s instability in the Middle East is not simply the product of ancient hatreds or undifferentiated religion. It is increasingly driven by organized far-right factions that fuse nationalism with sacred destiny. In Israel, that takes the form of settler messianism and Kahanist ultranationalism; in Iran, clerical absolutism and revolutionary-Mahdist hardline ideology; in the United States, Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism that moralize expansionist and militarized policy. These actors are often minorities, but they wield outsized power because they are concentrated in ministries, security institutions, coalition politics, and media ecosystems. Their shared political logic is to turn compromise into heresy and conflict into providence. The problem is not religion in general. It is far-right political theology fused with nationalism and state power.

Wartime Propaganda Evaluation Resources

Below is a beginner → advanced annotated bibliography focused on wartime propaganda, disinformation, media participation, and how to navigate wartime information ecosystems without being manipulated. It’s biased toward resources that help anyone build not just detection skills, but also assessment, evaluation, decision-making, and response habits. Contemporary scholarship treats wartime disinformation as part of a broader media ecosystem that includes strategic narratives, platform amplification, emotional manipulation, and harms to civilians’ ability to make informed safety decisions. (SAGE Journals) A good progression is:

learn the basic mechanics of wartime propaganda and verification,
then learn the psychology and network dynamics of manipulation,
then move into case-specific and research-heavy work on conflict propaganda, hybrid warfare, and information harms. RAND’s “firehose of falsehood” model, UNESCO’s handbook, Data & Society’s media-manipulation work, and inoculation/prebunking research form an especially strong core. (RAND Corporation)

These are the best starting resources for a person who wants practical defenses against wartime propaganda.

Cherilyn Ireton and Julie Posetti (eds.), Journalism, “Fake News” & Disinformation: Handbook for Journalism Education and Training (UNESCO, 2018).

This gives a grounded vocabulary for misinformation, disinformation, verification, source evaluation, and responsible news consumption. It is not war-only, but it is extremely useful for conflict contexts because it teaches how manipulated information moves through media systems and how to assess claims before reacting to them. (UNESCO Digital Library) You learn terminology, verification basics, source evaluation, and how journalism should work under information disorder. This is used for building a first mental checklist before consuming war coverage.
Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model (RAND, 2016).

This is one of the clearest short explanations of modern propaganda tactics in conflict and near-conflict settings. RAND describes a model characterized by high volume, multichannel dissemination, rapid repetition, and indifference to consistency. RAND also warns that simple fact-by-fact rebuttal is often not enough once falsehoods have spread. (RAND Corporation) In this, you learn why wartime propaganda can feel overwhelming, contradictory, and still persuasive. Use it for recognizing manipulation by volume, speed, repetition, and emotional saturation.
Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis, Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online (Data & Society, 2017).

This is essential for understanding how manipulators exploit journalists, influencers, algorithmic ranking, and attention incentives. Data & Society explicitly describes tactics such as coordinated amplification, gaming trends, and social engineering of journalists and public figures. (Data & Society) This teaches you that propaganda succeeds not only because of the message, but because actors know how media systems behave. Use this for assessing whether a claim is being pushed because it is true, or because it is strategically amplifiable.
First Draft, Too Much Information: A Public Guide to Navigating the Infodemic.

This gives habits for slowing down, checking context, and dealing with emotionally charged claims in fast-moving information crises. (First Draft) You learn everyday techniques for not becoming an unwitting relay for manipulative content.
Mike Caulfield, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers and SIFT.

SIFT teaches four moves—stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, trace claims/media to original context. Caulfield’s approach is especially useful in wartime ecosystems because many false or misleading claims are not outright fabrications; they are decontextualized, recycled, or source-washed. (Hapgood) This resource shows you how to evaluate claims laterally instead of staring at one post and trying to “feel out” whether it is true.
Bellingcat, A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Verification

War propaganda often relies on photos and videos stripped of time, place, or source. Bellingcat’s beginner guide explains how to approach visual verification without needing advanced tools. (bellingcat) This source shows you how to ask whether a video is authentic, current, and correctly attributed. It’s used for checking viral clips before sharing or drawing conclusions.
Bellingcat, First Steps to Getting Started in Open Source Research

This source gives a novice pathway into disciplined, evidence-based monitoring of conflict information. (bellingcat) You learn how to observe, document, and verify rather than react impulsively.

By the end of this section, you should be able to ask:

Who is the source?
What is the original context?
Is this being amplified strategically?
What would count as independent corroboration?
What decision should I postpone until I have stronger evidence?

Those questions are the foundation of self-protection in wartime media environments. UNESCO, Caulfield, First Draft, and Bellingcat all converge on slowing down, tracing provenance, and seeking corroboration rather than relying on intuition. (UNESCO Digital Library)

These next works help you understand why propaganda works psychologically and structurally, and how to develop stronger resistance.

Sander van der Linden et al., work on inoculation theory and prebunking.

A good entry point is Cambridge’s overview, plus the SDM Lab publication list and the “Bad News” research. The core idea is that exposing people to weakened examples of manipulation tactics in advance can build resistance to later misinformation. Cambridge and SDM Lab report evidence that prebunking interventions can reduce susceptibility across contexts. (University of Cambridge) You learn resilience can be trained before exposure, not only after falsehoods spread. This gives you an understanding for how to build a personal “mental immune system.”
Bad News game and associated research.

This is one of the best learning tools for recognizing common manipulation tactics from the inside. The associated research finds measurable improvements in resistance to misleading content after gameplay. (Bad News) You learn about impersonation, emotional provocation, conspiracy framing, polarization, trolling, and manufactured credibility.
Sander van der Linden and Stephan Lewandowsky, research on countering misinformation and prebunking.

The SDM Lab lists review articles showing that prebunking and psychological inoculation are among the more promising approaches to countering misinformation, especially where corrections arrive too late or are poorly remembered. (sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk) You learn why corrections fail, when they work, and why response strategy matters. Use it for developing response mechanisms beyond “just fact-check it.”
NATO StratCom COE, Social Media as a Tool of Hybrid Warfare

This report directly addresses how social media serves as fertile ground for propaganda, disinformation, perception management, and panic generation in hybrid conflict. (StratCom Centre of Excellence) You learn wartime information operations are not just about lies; they use trust networks, social engineering, and identity signaling. Use it for mapping how conflict narratives move through platforms.
NATO StratCom COE, Strategic Communications Hybrid Threats Toolkit

This is useful for identifying ecosystem features such as front organizations, pseudo-civil actors, influence channels, and media coverage as tools within hybrid threats. (StratCom Centre of Excellence) You learn how seemingly independent actors can function inside larger influence architectures. Use it for assessing whether “grassroots” messaging is authentic or strategically cultivated.
Reuters Institute, Fake News, Propaganda, and Influence Operations – a guide to journalism in a new, and more chaotic media environment

This is a bridge between academic ideas and newsroom practice. Especially useful for people who want norms for not amplifying dubious war claims. (Reuters Institute) You learn practical standards for evidence, skepticism, and framing. Use it for deciding when not to repeat or amplify uncertain claims.
Bellingcat geolocation and verification guides.

Start with A Beginner’s Guide to Geolocating Videos, then Searching the Earth: Essential Geolocation Tools for Verification, and later shadow-based or map-search tools. These methods help determine whether conflict footage was recorded where and when it claims. (bellingcat) You learn how to move from “this looks real” to “this is independently supported.” Use it for assessment of visual evidence, not just detection of fakes.
First Draft, Understanding and Addressing the Disinformation Ecosystem

This is useful for thinking beyond single false posts toward the broader ecosystem of actors, incentives, platforms, and media uptake. (First Draft) You learn that disinformation is usually an ecosystem problem, not an isolated content problem. Use it for evaluating how a claim fits into wider narrative operations.

At this stage, you should stop asking only “is this true?” and start asking:

What tactic is being used on me?
Why this claim, now?
Who benefits if I become uncertain, enraged, panicked, or tribal?
Is the goal persuasion, confusion, demoralization, or social fragmentation?

That shift is crucial because conflict propaganda often aims less at convincing you of one thing than at eroding trust, exhausting attention, and degrading judgment. RAND, NATO StratCom, Data & Society, and inoculation research all point in that direction. (RAND Corporation)

These are more research-heavy works for someone who wants deep analytical tools and case-based expertise.

Jon Roozenbeek, Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

This is one of the most directly relevant recent academic books for your topic. It focuses specifically on propaganda and ideology in a major contemporary war. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment) You learn how historical narratives, identity, ideology, and propaganda interact in a live conflict.
Media, War & Conflict (journal).

This is one of the best journals for scholarship on wartime disinformation, propaganda strategies, strategic narratives, media systems, and conflict communication. Its anniversary issue notes that wartime disinformation and propaganda have become part of mainstream political communication. (SAGE Journals) This resource shows you current debates, newer cases, and methodological diversity. Use it for literature review building.
Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda

Not war-only, but one of the strongest books for understanding how media ecosystems legitimize, circulate, and entrench false or strategic narratives. (Data & Society) You learn that propaganda is shaped by network structure, institutional incentives, and asymmetric media ecosystems. Use it for analyzing not just content, but the architecture of credibility.
Samuel Woolley, Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity

This is useful for computational propaganda, automation, anonymity, and networked amplification. (Data & Society) You learn how digital infrastructures and covert amplification shape public perception. Use it for connecting wartime propaganda to bots, sockpuppets, and platform manipulation.
NATO StratCom COE, Social Media’s Role in “Hybrid Strategies”

This goes deeper into fronts, agents of influence, pseudo-civil actors, and the mixing of media, civil society, cyber, and political techniques. (StratCom Centre of Excellence) You learn that conflict propaganda is often embedded in broader strategic action, not separable from it. Use it for mapping influence infrastructures.
ICRC work on harmful information in armed conflict.

The ICRC argues that harmful information can create serious protection risks for civilians, intensify distress, aggravate persecution, and undermine people’s ability to make informed decisions about safety and well-being in conflict. (International Review of the Red Cross) You learn that misinformation in war is not only epistemic; it is also humanitarian and protective. Use it for linking media analysis to civilian harm and ethical response.
Bellingcat’s higher-level conflict-monitoring and methodology pieces.

Two especially useful items are A Guide to Monitoring Conflict Amidst a Sea of Misinformation and OSHIT: Seven Deadly Sins of Bad Open Source Research. These teach not just tools, but failure modes: overconfidence, confirmation bias, premature conclusions, and bad evidentiary practice. (bellingcat) You learn advanced evaluation requires disciplined humility, not just technical skill. Use it for research design and evidentiary standards.

For explicit skill-building, these are especially strong:

Read: UNESCO handbook + RAND firehose + Data & Society report. (UNESCO Digital Library) Practice: Bad News game + SIFT + Bellingcat beginner verification. (Bad News) Deepen: NATO StratCom + ICRC + Media, War & Conflict + Roozenbeek’s book. (StratCom Centre of Excellence)

This is the practical layer the readings support.

Slow the tempo of judgment: Propaganda in wartime often exploits urgency, outrage, and fear. If a post seems designed to force immediate moral or political reaction, treat that as evidence about the post’s intent, not just its content. RAND’s model emphasizes speed and repetition; inoculation research suggests resilience improves when people recognize tactics before reacting. (RAND Corporation)
Evaluate claims laterally, not vertically: Do not stare at a single post and ask whether it “feels credible.” Leave it. Check who is saying it, whether multiple independent outlets corroborate it, and whether the media is old, recycled, or decontextualized. That is the core logic of SIFT and Bellingcat-style verification. (Hapgood)
Distinguish content truth from strategic function: Even true information can be selectively framed or timed to inflame, demoralize, polarize, or misdirect. Data & Society and NATO StratCom are especially useful on this point. (Data & Society)
Ask what the manipulation is trying to do to your decision-making: Wartime propaganda often aims at one of five effects: panic, hatred, fatalism, tribal certainty, or total cynicism. If you can name the intended effect, you regain some control over your response. ICRC’s recent work underscores that harmful information can impair people’s ability to make informed safety decisions. (International Review of the Red Cross)
Prefer “not enough evidence yet” over premature certainty: Advanced verification culture treats uncertainty as disciplined judgment, not weakness. Bellingcat’s work on bad OSINT practice is very good on this. (bellingcat)
Do not become part of the propaganda supply chain: Avoid quote-tweeting, rage-sharing, or “just asking questions” amplification when evidence is thin. Reuters Institute and First Draft are especially helpful here. (Reuters Institute)

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