🧩 BND Motif Index · M597
Tail wags the dog
A smaller ally is said to secretly steer a great power's wars and policy for its own ends.
📜 Plots🗂️ Who rules🗂️ Influence and Corruption
- 12claims filed under it
- 1left show it came up on
- 4center shows it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🔗 goes with: 🧩 Manchurian candidate
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up, by the show's lean
🫏 left 1
⚖️ center 4
🎙️ Breaking Points 🎙️ The Daily (NYT) 🎙️ The Take (Al Jazeera) 🎙️ Top Story with Tom Llamas (NBC)
🐘 right 1
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, newest first, in our words, with where each was heard
- 2026-10-27 “Israel is pushing the world into more war.”
🎙️ Top Story with Tom Llamas (NBC) 🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) - 2026-10-22 “Donald Trump is completely under the control of Netanyahu and Israel.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ The Daily (NYT) - 2026-10-21 “Israel seeks to drag the United States into a larger war with Iran.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ Breaking Points - 2026-10-21 “Israel is about to attack Iran, which will destroy regional energy infrastructure and cause a global depression.”
🎙️ Breaking Points 🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) - 2026-10-18 “The US and Israel blocked the renewal of UNIFIL to stop Hezbollah's expansion.”
🎙️ The Take (Al Jazeera) - 2026-10-15 “Israel seeks to entangle the United States in war to shift the regional balance of power away from Iran.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ Breaking Points - 2026-10-09 “Netanyahu uses the United States military as a tool to threaten Israel's enemies.”
🎙️ The Jimmy Dore Show (podcast) - 2026-10-09 “The war with Iran is a conflict that the United States entered at the behest of Israel.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ Breaking Points - 2026-10-08 “The war is being fought to satisfy Israel's desire to topple the Iranian regime rather than for the interests of the United States.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) - 2026-10-07 “Iran does not possess the capability to strike the United States.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) - 2026-10-03 “Israel is directing the U.S. to attack people without reason, and both political parties are blindly agreeing to it.” 🗳️ voters in The Focus Group
- 2026-08-15 “Voters associate Middle East wars directly with Israel's actions” 🗳️ voters in The Focus Group
M597 · first seen 2026-10-07 · last 2026-10-27 · what this is · how the index works