ABSTRACT
After briefly presenting a rhetorical approach to fictionality, this chapter outlines some of the relations between propaganda, fake news, and fictionality, and then moves on to examine three different cases and the ways in which each uses fictionality for political purposes related to war. The first cluster of cases concerns the information wars about Ukraine and Russia’s invasion of the country. Next, Top Gun 2: Maverick (2022) is discussed in terms of how the movie propagandistically sells war to the American people through fiction. Before concluding, the chapter briefly turns to Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) and explores the complex ways in which this film thematizes (anti-)war propaganda in fiction.
