Watch how government propaganda techniques portray Chicago as a city at war with the feds

https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/11/06/watch-how-government-propaganda-techniques-portray-chicago-as-a-city-at-war-with-the-feds

Nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, social media feeds from his administration and its right-wing allies paint a grim picture of Chicago: a city plagued by violent criminals that is at war with the federal government.

Made-for-Hollywood videos depict heroic military-style raids. “Criminal illegal aliens” are chased down and handcuffed. An immigration facility is shown bracing for attacks by “agitators” and “terrorists.”

Altogether, the media blitz aims to build public support for these enforcement efforts.

Yet the government’s storytelling doesn’t always match what’s happening in communities across the nation’s third-largest city and its suburbs. Nick Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, calls it government “propaganda.”

“By propaganda, what I mean is mass political persuasion,” said Cull, who co-edited the book “Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present.”

The Trump administration uses particular elements of propaganda to build its case that the enforcement is needed, Cull and other experts say.

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