When Edward Said wrote his seminal book Orientalism, he analyzed an era in which science, literature, the arts, and religious discourse were intricately intertwined to sustain white supremacy. These elements worked in tandem to manufacture consent, normalize oppression, and justify horrific acts under the guise of intellectual rigor. Today, however, we are living in an era where hegemony no longer requires the same sophisticated justifications. Instead, it operates with a blatant disregard for nuance, relying on crude, AI-generated propaganda and digital manipulation to reinforce the same structures of dominance.
The recent AI-generated video shared by US President Donald Trump exemplifies this new form of Orientalism in the digital age. The video envisions Gaza as a luxury resort, complete with a golden statue of Trump, bearded belly dancers?, and AI-generated figures like billionaire Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing in the new and improved Strip. This grotesque spectacle does more than erase Gaza’s suffering—it actively transforms it into a Western-led neoliberal fantasy. The underlying message is clear: only through American intervention and capitalist restructuring can this region be “civilized.”
Unlike the colonial narratives of the past, which at least required a degree of intellectual effort, today’s propaganda is lazy, automated, and devoid of artistry. There are no elaborate justifications, no attempts to mask exploitation behind grand ideological claims. In Said’s time, colonial rulers relied on scholars, artists, and writers to craft intricate myths about Western superiority. Today, all it takes is an AI-generated video—one that wasn’t even created by Trump’s team, but rather stolen from two Israeli directors. Their only grievance? Lack of credit. The video was taken out of its original context, but the filmmakers themselves share the same ideological vision—it was, after all, created to depict exactly what they believed should happen.
This is the new face of hegemony. The West no longer needs to build compelling arguments or complex narratives to justify its actions. Instead, it relies on AI-generated images, memes, and digital scraps to reinforce its worldview. It is hegemony without the effort, propaganda without poetry, domination without disguise.
Historically, genocide has always been accompanied by denial. The logic is as old as colonialism itself: erase the indigenous people, then erase their memory. The settler-colonial narrative often begins with the myth of “an empty land”—a justification for occupation and extermination. This was the case in the colonization of the Americas, in Australia, and in Palestine, where the Zionist slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” falsely framed the region as uninhabited, conveniently erasing its native population.
But today, for the first time, we are witnessing a heavily televised genocide. The images of destruction, the videos of children buried under rubble, the live-streamed testimonies—it is all there, undeniable, unfolding in real time. And yet, the response is not to mask or deny it, but to reframe it in an unabashedly grotesque way: we are the saviors.
The AI-generated Gaza resort video embodies this new phase of genocide denial—one where there is no longer an effort to pretend that mass death did not occur. Instead, the narrative shifts to one of rebranding: All those children were murdered so we could ethically cleanse you and build a resort. It is an explicit admission of violence, repackaged as a necessary step toward “progress.”
This is not unique to Gaza. The United States justified the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as necessary sacrifices for peace. European colonial powers framed their massacres as “civilizing missions.” Rwanda, Bosnia, Armenia—each genocide followed the same pattern: first, a denial of the atrocity, and later, an attempt to co-opt history and claim that the very perpetrators were actually the saviors.
What makes this moment particularly chilling is that the West no longer feels the need to obscure its imperial ambitions. The erasure of Gaza is being live-streamed, and the response is not denial, but acceleration. The logic is clear: we did it, and now we will profit from it. It is neoliberal colonialism at its most brazen—genocide not just as a war crime, but as a business opportunity.
Another layer in the video is the absurdity of gender representation. The video’s depiction of bearded belly dancers is not just a surreal visual choice—it is a deliberate distortion of gender and cultural symbolism to serve a neoliberal spectacle. In the past, gendered imagery in colonial narratives followed a rigid binary: women were either hypersexualized figures in red and gold, performing in hammams, or symbols of oppression in need of Western liberation. Men, on the other hand, were cast as rigid, dark-haired patriarchs, embodying the “barbaric” masculinity that the West sought to subdue.
Now, this dynamic has been grotesquely reconfigured, not as an attempt at actual inclusivity, but as a hollow spectacle meant to provoke and entertain. If in the past, belly dancers were adorned in lavish, shimmering fabrics, today, they are reduced to mockeries—bearded, dancing in mismatched fast-fashion outfits, their presence intended not as celebration but as caricature. This is not gender fluidity; it is neoliberal absurdity, where identity is stripped of meaning and repackaged as empty provocation.
The irony is stark: the same forces that have spent years claiming to champion women’s rights, combat masculinity, and promote gender inclusivity are now using these very identities as tools of capitalist performance. This is not about progress—it is about control. It is about reducing gender to an aesthetic, an image that can be twisted to fit whatever narrative is most profitable at the moment. It is not about amplifying queer or trans voices, nor is it about breaking gender binaries in meaningful ways. Instead, it is a cynical use of gender imagery to reinforce the same structures of power, now with a veneer of provocation and spectacle.
This is the ultimate neoliberal paradox: a world where gender, like everything else, is stripped of its radical potential and transformed into entertainment for the very elites who uphold structural oppression. The bearded belly dancer is not an act of defiance, nor is it a reclaiming of cultural space—it is a mockery designed to amuse, to distract, and to reinforce the idea that identity itself is just another commodity to be manipulated at will.
Trump’s AI-generated video is a symptom of a larger transformation in how power operates. It marks the shift from ideological persuasion to blatant, unfiltered domination. We are witnessing a profound shift in how hegemony operates. The powerful no longer bother with intellectual finesse, nor do they need to. The sheer weight of their authority is enough. Gone are the days of ideological debates and carefully woven myths of civilization. Instead, we are left with cheap, algorithmic fabrications that make no effort to disguise their intent. The dystopia is no longer creeping—it is here, blatant and unapologetic, and those in power no longer see the need to hide it.
The algorithmically generated and instantly disseminated discourse may alarm us as there is a risk to erase histories and cultures with a few clicks. However, this shift also presents an opportunity: the intellectual void at the heart of modern propaganda encourages us to continue resisting. Their tools are lazy, their narratives are crude, and their imagination is hollow. But we are here to prove that we are not as shallow as they think we are. We can see through it.
We know how this system works, and ironically, their reliance on such low-effort propaganda makes it easier for us to pinpoint, dismantle, and expose it. If their goal is to flood the digital sphere with meaningless, repetitive content, then ours is to counter it with narratives that are thoughtful, nuanced, and true. This is not a time for despair—it is a time to fight their laziness with precision, their distortions with clarity, and their hollow myths with ideas that endure. If they think they can manipulate reality with cheap AI videos, then we will remind them that real history, real resistance, and real stories cannot be so easily overwritten.
