Visual Tropes and Affect Propaganda in Orbán’s Electoral Campaign
There’s a video circulating online that opens with a little girl sitting by a rainy window. She asks her mom where dad is and when he will come back. The mother answers “soon”. The rain keeps pouring in the next scene, in which a man, whom we assume to be the child’s father, is executed with a single gunshot by a soldier. The voice-over continues, while his daughter’s picture slips from the pocket to the mud: “Do not let others decide the fate of our family. April 12, 2026. War takes everything away from everyone. Let’s not take any chances! Fidesz is the safe choice.”
The Hungarian Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s party, published this AI-generated video as part of its parliamentary electoral campaign, scheduled for April 12, 2026. The video doesn’t clearly state it, but the reference to the war in Ukraine is easy to make. In an article published by the BBC, Orbán’s position was made even clearer than before, when he blocked a Ukraine aid package from Europe, tweeting “No oil = no money”, referring to a dispute around a damaged pipeline that transports Russian oil to Hungary. The aid package he blocked was supposed to help Ukraine keep up its fight against Russia’s invasion for the next 2 years.
Image 1: The 33-second AI-generated video published on Fidesz’s Facebook account.
The concern here is not the use of AI, which Fidesz openly declares, or its reception, since it was criticized by both opposition parties and many enraged Facebook users, but the complete sense of tranquility that seems to inhabit those who conceive and spread this type of content. We’re no neophytes when it comes to witnessing this kind of carefree attitude. Donald Trump gifted us with many such examples, one of the latest regarding his refusal to apologize for posting a video that depicted the Obamas as apes, just to be repaid with the same courtesy by Iran, which shared a series of Lego-themed AI-generated videos mocking him over the Strait of Hormuz’s deadlock.
I won’t go into the analysis of AI-generated video, as there are many more detailed studies on the topic. The idea is to start swimming deeper into the swamp of online affect propaganda, the deployment of pop culture symbols by the far-right, instrumentalizing narratives while fabricating their online personas, not as 4chan anonymous users, but by those running straight for the election.
This reflection started with the general feeling that the concept of representational democracy, as most of the West likes to think of it, no longer exists. In early 2025, together with August Kaasa Sundgaard, Caitlin van Bommel, and Elena Zaghis, we began developing a project called V.I.B.E. (Viral Ideology Broadcast Experiment) out of a shared attraction to the aesthetics and cryptic symbolism of content creators affiliated with right-wing ideology. Was there some schizophrenic-fascist taste emerging through the cotton candy surface? We imagined a speculative electoral campaign, featuring physical voting booths, screens, and election-related materials. We thought that by presenting an overwhelming audiovisual environment through fragmented, repetitive video clips that blended social media imagery, anime characters, and excerpts from the “Manifesto del futurismo” (1909), we could sublimate that feeling, an invitation to take an even closer look at our feeds. We argued that this deliberate overload of conflicting elements bombards the viewer, mirroring political strategies that bypass rational argument in favor of affective influence.
Image 2: Stills from V.I.B.E. (Viral Ideology Broadcast Experiment).
The Pathosformel (as in “the primitive words of passionate gesture language”) that Warburg formulated works well when compared to the social media strategies employed by different political figures. These “emotionally charged visual tropes” underwent an interesting mutation, from being best represented by Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (1486) to our modern age AI-ghiblification of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, smiling together.
Image 3: Posted on Giorgia Meloni’s official Instagram account on January 6, 2026.
They’re the perfect example for this exasperated communicative strategy: two women, two conservatives, two figures that embraced the soft power they know they can generate, to deceive the viewer just long enough for them to move forward with the next point on their agenda. As an overview for those less familiar with the two, Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s Prime Minister in October 2022. She has been president of the far-right party Brothers of Italy (FdI) since 2014, and was president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party from 2020 to 2025. Known for holding conservative views on abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage, in 2018, Meloni launched the hashtag #MeloniChan, after some followers decided to draw her as an anime character. She liked it and uploaded most of the fan art on her official Facebook page.
Sanae Takaichi became the Prime Minister of Japan in October 2025. After becoming President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2024, Shinzo Abe’s protégé also became the first woman to hold either of these positions in Japan. Takaichi has also often taken conservative stands, opposing same-sex marriage and the recognition of separate surnames for spouses, but one of her more debated positions is the revision of Japan’s Constitution article 9, which renounces the use of military force since WW2, and supports strengthening the US-Japan alliance. In the meantime, some of the headlines describing her online are: “Japan Has a New Leader, and She’s a Heavy Metal Drummer,” and images of the Prime Minister as a young and stylish biker.
These tactics, carefully mediated by the use of sugar-coated violence, are extensively covered in Noura Tafeche’s “The Kawayoku Inception.” In her research, Tafeche analyzes how specific visual strategies, from TikTok dances, thirst traps, and innocent features, are implemented on official army accounts as an unconventional recruiting strategy. By following the social media activity of some IDF female soldiers, it became clear that the content they were posting while on duty was explicitly commissioned and promoted by the state of Israel. The emergence of these trends is not something new, as the personification of national identities in feminine figures with childlike, warrior-like, or maternal traits (or a combination of all three) was common in the past, as explored in Tobia Paolo Bettoni’s “Patria-chan” article.
He notices how, throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, various online subcultures began to adopt “gijinka,” or moe anthropomorphism, which is the translation of thoughts and items into female anime characters, wearing symbols that made them connected to their originals (a nation, an historical figure, an army).
We never seem tired of a new Joan D’Arc, and we even like it more when she’s lethal.
Image 4: Picture by Leni Riefenstahl. Beauty in Olympic Competition, Berlin 1937, p. 199 with illustration.
The strategic use of pop-culture symbols to reinforce a message and inspire a mass response is not only known to the far right. A most recent example comes from Nepal, and the so-called “Gen Z protests.” On September 8, 2025, massive-scale anti-corruption protests took place all across Nepal, mainly organized by Generation Z students and youth. The response of Nepalese police was that of using lethal force against those gathered to protest their government’s corruption. One of the testimonies given after the attacks stated that the first wave of unrest was mainly inspired by other protests happening in Indonesia and the Philippines. The protest in the Philippines started in 2024, after a series of corruption allegations and irregularities in government-funded flood management projects. On September 21, 2025, the largest mobilization under the name “Baha sa Luneta” (“Flood in Luneta”) began in Rizal Park (Manila). Apparently, the spark was a TikTok trend by people exposing ‘nepo kids’ luxurious lifestyle during these events. The students protesting their government’s corruption decided to use the Jolly Roger flag from the anime One Piece as their vessel, similarly to the Straw Hat Pirates’ crew. According to Nico, a fictional name of one of the youth rallyists interviewed by the Manila Bulletin in Mendiola, “the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger flag doesn’t just symbolize their adventures of reaching their goals and aspirations. It also became an icon of hope and unity that rallies the people to stand up and fight against evil.” The flag quickly became a symbol of liberation, not only for the students protesting there; it spread quickly enough to inspire the same generational response in different countries.
Image 5: Rioters, some waving Philippine flags and black banners bearing the One Piece Straw Hat Jolly Roger, stand on a burning trailer as clashes erupt with anti-riot police at the foot of Ayala Bridge in Manila on Sept. 21, 2025.
From “The One Piece Flag as a Silent Protest: A Semiotic Study of Popular Culture Symbolism in Contemporary Indonesia”:
“Social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating and normalizing the flag’s new meanings while sparking diverse reactions from the public and authorities. Some view it as a threat to national unity, while others interpret it as a form of free expression and ‘silent protest’. This phenomenon reflects a crisis of trust in national symbols and a shift in collective identity from state-led narratives to pop culture symbols that resonate more with youth aspirations.”
What remains is the symbol’s duality. Pop-culture representations, AI slop, and grotesque social media communication are embraced by conservative representatives worldwide to boost their online aliases and collect sympathy from potential electors. On the other hand, after the government decided to prohibit young people’s access to social media, they began a peaceful protest, where pop culture imaginaries became a symbol of freedom and rebellion, and ultimately, of hope. Is the symbol just a carrier, filled with different messages? Even more disturbing is the symbol’s ability to synthesize reality, coating it with a universally bright new light that appeals to all.
If we go back to the Fidesz AI-generated video, we can read the description:
“This video may be AI-generated, but war is truly horrific! Péter Magyar doesn’t want you to see this video. He doesn’t want you to see what an irreversible tragedy it is to join a war. Péter Magyar doesn’t want it to become widely known that he made a deal with Weber. The same Weber who, just a few days ago, literally said: “The time has come to send soldiers who have the EU flag on their uniforms.” The war is real and tragic. Politicians in Brussels have said publicly that they are preparing for escalation. And Péter Magyar cannot say no to Brussels’ demands. Fidesz alone is the sure choice.”
The attack directed at Magyar, Fidesz’s main opponent and former party member, is just one layer of the video. However the elections in Hungary go, this video will be removed or forgotten, buried by the enormous pile of junk that seems to be multiplying online, especially around election dates. As we acknowledge that it’s getting harder and harder to move through the informational swamp, mistaking a tree branch for a savior’s hand, we also decide to persist. If the symbols that we see only represent a surface that attracts, that attraction might as well intrigue us enough to relentlessly dig deeper.
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Link sources:
https://time.com/7372734/trump-obama-monkey-video-republican-criticism-racist-trope/
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/from-lego-wars-to-teletubbies-trolls-how-iran-is-outplaying-trump-in-the-meme-war/ar-AA1Zjk5N
https://networkcultures.org/tactical-media-room/2024/04/11/killing-intelligence-death-by-tech-and-other-ordinary-horrors-in-gaza/
https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/marinetti-manifesto-del-futurismo-1909/1909%20ansf_op_d_0044_text.pdf
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16440411
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/world/asia/sanae-takaichi-japan-prime-minister.html
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/with-abes-backing-takaichi-goes-from-biker-chick-to-japan-premier-hopeful
https://nouratafeche.com/the-kawayoku-inception
https://www.iconografie.it/tempolinea/patria-chan/
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/giorgia-meloni
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/fillipino-nepo-baby-backlash-tiktok/
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/9/9/protesters-torch-nepal-parliament-as-pm-resigns-amid-turmoil
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20250915-nepal-police-protests-violence-kathmandu
https://mb.com.ph/2025/09/22/gear-up-how-an-anime-became-a-symbol-of-the-youths-fight-against-corruption
Journal sources:
Becker, Colleen. “Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel as methodological paradigm.” Journal of Art Historiography 9 (2013): CB1.
Egea-Medrano, M.-A., Garrido-Rubia, A., & Rojo-Martínez, J.-M. (2021). Political Iconography and Emotions in Electoral Campaigns: A Communicative Approach. Communication & Society, 34(2), 215-230.
Putra, Yuda Syah, and Irpan Riana. “The One Piece Flag as a Silent Protest: A Semiotic Study of Popular Culture Symbolism in Contemporary Indonesia.” JOMANTARA 6.01 (2026): 19-35.
Tafeche, N., & Campagna, T. (Ed.) (2023). The Kawayoku Inception. Digital or Visual Products, Institute of Network Cultures. https://networkcultures.org/void/2023/09/26/kawayoku-inception/
Bio: Giulia Timis is an Amsterdam-based artist and researcher developing practices around live-streaming production, tactical video, and hybrid media performances. Her work focuses on collective media practices, exploring how networked technologies shape participation and political visibility, investigating the affective dimensions of digital presence. She is an affiliate researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures, and part of the practice-based research project THE VOID. Her work has been presented at Ars Electronica (Linz), Sónar Festival (Barcelona), and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), among others.