GraficAttac – call for graphics against war propaganda
“If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must prepare for war”
– Ursula Von Der Leyen, speech at the Royal Danish Military Academy, march 2025
“Si vis pacem, para bellum”,
– Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in Dē Rē Mīlitārī, 5th Century AD
Justifying war as an instrument for living in peace is an argument as old as it is ridiculous. Still, specific war propaganda of each era has often succeeded in convincing a part of the population and reaching a critical threshold of soldiers and popular support to actually wage war.
Europe is arming itself and the weapons, once produced, must be used. War has in fact always been a revitalisation of the economy. Those who profit from war need, still today, to install in young minds the idea that war is an instrument for peace and to create the desire to join the army. They are working on this since decades, in a sophisticated, hyper-financed and gradual manner: the presence of soldiers in the streets, the expansion of their responsibilities, army-related activities in schools, the praise for the military in the media, movies and games, have increased bit by bit, slowly allowing us to get used to it. Today, propaganda operates in the online world as well, using AI-powered algorithms to optimize the content of messages, images and videos in order to be as manipulative as possible. Through the use of other algorithms a selection is made of best ways to share these messages on various social media, at times generating them artificially. The Italian army, for example, produces at least one online video a day, in which there are no deaths nor enemies, but exciting job- and internship opportunities, trying to convince people to sign up for contests to be recruited among the 6000 VFI volunteers (Volontari in Ferma Inizale) announced for this year.
Let’s instead count on collective intelligence, to create a counter-narrative capable of challenging the war propaganda machine and impact the real world. Indeed, faced with the expropriation of practical and intellectual skills that characterises societies in the global “north”, reclaiming creativity is one of the necessary steps towards the concrete possibility of fighting for a different world. And as we face a near-total virtualisation of communication, it seems that the walls are one of the few places left where one can still fight on equal terms.
GraficAttac is a space for:
– sharing posters, stickers, flyers and written content to counter war propaganda, in all its persuasive forms, in order to counter and dismantle its subtle mechanisms of manufacturing social consent and colonising the imagination.
– interrupting the mediatic flow in support of armies and the militarization of society, against the creation of consent for repression, re-arming, military recruitment, weapon industry, war.
– taking the streets with sticking posters, tearing down the walls of war propaganda
– freeing, sharpening and maintaining critical thought
Send us your contributions at graficattac@autoproduzioni.net before the 25th of April 2026.
The contributions will be uploaded on this blog. Other calls will follow periodically.
Everybody is invited to download the posters, print them and stick them everywhere.