Thread by @bidetmarxman

Another day, another instance of atrocity propaganda in western media.

But what exactly is atrocity propaganda and how does it work? 🧵

Atrocity propaganda is the deliberate misrepresenting or misattribution of a real or manufactured act of brutality with the express purpose of generating feelings of outrage in a target audience, often with the goal of building broad consent for retaliation.

A key characteristic of atrocity propaganda is its appeal to base emotions (anger/disgust/fear) while being very thin on verifiable facts, timeline, or any logical motive by the perpetrators.

Atrocity propaganda takes advantage of the inherent murkiness of war and leverages media’s reliance on ‘official’ sources and the state’s ability to block out dissenting voices or inconsistencies to its advantage.

The picture we’ve been painted of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is no exception.

But behind the headlines, everything we’ve seen so far indicates Russia is going out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and provide opportunities for the UAF to surrender.

By contrast, the disregard the Ukrainian govt appears to have for civilian safety coupled with the brutal instances of degradation and torture by factions of the UAF against soldiers and civilians alike, betrays an enthusiasm for using fascist violence as a tool.

The 3 most notable atrocities splashed across western headlines (Maternity hospital bombing, Mariupol Theatre bombing, and now the slain civilians in Bucha) all have major holes in the official narratives, yet our media unquestioningly attributes responsibility to Russian forces.

And in light of these inconsistencies, when one side is calling for an open investigation and the other side is actively blocking that investigation, you can be sure that the truth, as the saying goes, is a casualty.

And yet this utter disregard for the truth isn’t new for the west! They have been running the same playbook for decades now to great success.

A perfect example of this strategy was on display in the lead up to the imperial assault on Syria, immediately after the Houla massacre.

Before any investigation, the west rushed in to attribute the wonton massacre of civilians to the Syrian army under direction by Assad.

But subsequent investigation found that it was in fact the US-backed Syrian “rebels” that perpetrated the massacre.

Why do they even bother?

Because western states care A LOT about what you think. They know that the broad consent for the overt aggression required to maintain the imperial empire is in direct conflict with the empire’s carefully crafted self-image as the global moral authority.

In order to bring public opinion in line with imperial goals, global imperialists know they need to appeal to peoples’ sense of justice and retribution, while dehumanizing the imperial enemy and recasting them as depraved monsters.

But at this point, anyone still rushing to uncritically consume each new instance of atrocity propaganda pushed out by western media isn’t an unwilling dupe, they’re actively seeking their next dopamine shot that comes with being one of The Good Guys™

This ‘good guy’ fantasy is a small comfort in a distressing and chaotic-seeming world. The alternative is having to recon with an uncomfortable reality – that violence continues to be waged on our behalf for the furtherance of goals designed to subjugate vast swaths of humans.

And this is the kernel at the center of atrocity propaganda: that it grants the consumer permission to hate without guilt those that threaten to upset the current profoundly unjust global order.