ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a specific subset of propaganda, one that uses sexual violence as a key logic in the transmission of its message. Sexual violence can take many forms; here, I examine how the threat of sexual violence is used as a propaganda tool. Sexual violence is used as an instrument of propaganda to create one actor as a victim and another as an enemy and is strategically positioned to promote particular ideologies and identity constructions, those that are typically white, masculine, and nationalist. I discuss the way sexual violence is exploited during times of war, whether this is on the ground military combat or a digital cultural war, as a way to justify continued violence; through multiple forms of media, including digital social media, sexual violence propaganda depends on a doubling down on binary understandings of gender, fueled by other elements of the war context, including authoritarianism and a nostalgic melancholy manifest in nationalism and patriarchy.
