“Homeland” is propaganda. It advocates for the American side of the story and maintains our antagonistic attitudes toward our terrorist enemies.

But “Homeland,” which premieres its third season Sunday night on Showtime, is not propaganda in the negative connotation. It neither advocates for a malicious cause nor ignores the perspective of the enemy it’s defining.

“Homeland” has two primary characters that are euphemisms for America and terrorism. Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, is a bipolar yet brilliant CIA agent. Nicholas Brody, played by Damien Lewis, is an Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who was turned by al-Qaeda during an eight-year period as a prisoner of war.

Carrie is a paranoid protagonist representing a paranoid nation. Just as American paranoia comes from the constantly suspected, impossible-to-target threat of terrorism, Carrie’s is derived from her suspicion that Brody is a domestic terrorist with catastrophic plans.

The show’s American agenda is understandable. Out-of-state terrorists have been our gravest threat for two decades. As much as we are against ground invasions and intrusive spy programs, our government still has a duty to fight this threat. We must continue to support this duty.

This is why the show convinces us to root for Carrie, the American spy, instead of Brody, the American traitor. But “Homeland” balances its agenda by showing that Brody had a moral, humane reason for becoming the enemy.

Five years into captivity, Brody’s captor, al-Qaeda leader Abu Nazir, chooses Brody to teach English to his son, Issa.

Brody develops a fatherly bond with Issa. It’s the relationship Brody was deprived of having with his real children in the United States.

One day on his way to school, Issa and 82 classmates are killed in a U.S. drone strike that was targeting Nazir. Brody is distraught after losing Issa and furious after watching a TV clip of U.S. Vice President William Walden wrongfully claiming no children were killed in the attack. Brody then agrees to help Nazir get back at America.

Because of Brody’s relationship with Issa, we sympathize with his decision. The American drone strike took away everything he cared about at that moment, just as his capture by al-Qaeda once did.

Through the unlikely relationship between Brody and Issa, the strike reminded viewers that conflicts exist because feelings and actions are reciprocated. Just as the show established its America-terrorism dynamic through Carrie and Brody, it forced us to sympathize with the enemy through Issa. Issa was a cute little kid who played soccer, was learning to read and went to school every day, just like any American kid. It was a sobering reminder that people in other countries do not live all that differently than we do.

With the strike, “Homeland” became a new type of propaganda for a globally connected society. It simultaneously advocates for the American side of the story and bridges the alien divide that muddles our view of foreign countries.

We know more about how foreigners live now because we see and read about their cultures on the Internet. We are all slowly becoming citizens of the world, not just our insular home countries.

Shows like “Homeland” show us this dynamic and help convince us that it’s taking place. In “Homeland,” Brody’s perspective is just as important as Carrie’s. It’s human propaganda with an American slant.

Jarrad Saffren is a senior political science major. He can be emailed at jdsaffre@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @JarradSaff.

Published on September 25, 2013 at 1:40 am