Today, we are witnessing the creation of atrocity propaganda in real-time.
What is atrocity propaganda, and how has it been used to win support for war? A thread:
🧵 1/12
2/12: An atrocity tale is designed to shock a mass audience by showing a violation of a fundamental cultural value which authorises force to stop the perpetrator.
They are directed at groups rather than individuals. The ultimate goal is to dehumanise an enemy.
3/12: One of the earliest examples of atrocity propaganda was during the Irish rebellion of 1641.
Reports were sent to England of massacres of the innocent by the rebels, and there were later used to justify Cromwell's slaughter of captured Irish rebels.
4/12: The most graphic accounts were published in the English press. Newspapers fabricated graphic accounts of babies being ripped from pregnant women.
These reports especially incited the English public against the Irish.
5/12 Atrocity propaganda in 1641 vs. 2023
6/12: With the spread of communications technology in the 20th Century, atrocity propaganda became more important for garnering support for war. Some of the worst examples came in WW1.
British propaganda, backed by the press, portrayed the Germans as barbaric aggressors
7/12: British media reported stories of the Germans bayoneting Belgian babies and cutting off their hands.
Reports came from Belgium of giant German "corpse factories", where dead bodies were harvested to be turned into candles, lubricants, and boot wax.
8/12: One of the worst examples of atrocity propaganda is the so-called Nayirah testimony.
In the run up to the Gulf War, A 15 year-old Kuwaiti girl gave testimony to US Congress about the horrors of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, most notably babies being pulled from incubators.
9/12: Nayirah’s testimony was rebroadcast across the country and marked a turning point in public opinion on going to war with Iraq.
President Bush repeatedly cited her claims to justify the necessity of the war.
10/12: It turned out Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US.
Her testimony was organised as part of a 'Citizens for a Free Kuwait' public relations campaign.
This was itself was a front-group, created by an American PR firm hired by the Kuwaiti government.
11/12: You may notice a trend with these atrocity tales: children as the subject of violence.
This makes sense. Regardless of the intricacies of a conflict, if one side is slaughtering children, they are obviously irredeemably evil. Who could defend baby killers?
12/12: Today, we may be seeing the creation of atrocity propaganda in real time, this time through the medium of social media.
History should remind us to not be guided by emotion, and treat all claims which direct us toward demands for war with a good degree of skepticism.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
🇬🇧💶 The UK is a poor country with a lot of very rich people. The average person in the UK will soon be worse off than the average Pole or Slovenian.
Britain has actually been in a state of decline since the 80s, how did this happen?
1/13 🧵
2/13 Since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, successive Conservative and New Labour governments have embraced neoliberalism.
The UK transitioned from entrepreneurial capitalism to rentier capitalism.
3/13 In rentier capitalism, the economy is organised around income-generating assets.
Ownership of sought-after scarce assets becomes the source of a large portion of economic activity, and the regime is dominated by vastly wealthy rentiers.
I've recently observed many Zionists say recognising a Palestinian state is "rewarding terrorism"
Ironic, considering Israel was founded on and created by terrorists. Let's take a look at early Zionist terrorism
1/15 🧵
2/15 After WWII a paramilitary group of 50 Jews nicknamed "the avengers" had a failed plot to kill 6 million German civilians by poisoning the German water supplies
The leader of the plot, Abba Kovner, was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970, the country's highest cultural honour
3/15 Once Jews began to settle Palestine in the early 20th Century, terrorism soon followed. Haganah was formed in 1920
Out of this came two more radical Zionist paramilitaries: Irgun (est. 1931) and Lehi or "the Stern Gang" (est. 1940)
☢️💣 If you watched Oppenheimer, you'll recognise this as Lewis Strauss, the film's antagonist.
Strauss is depicted as a fierce Cold Warrior who casts suspicion on Oppenheimer for sympathy to the Soviet Union.
But Strauss held a dual loyalty of his own. 🇮🇱
1/11 🧵
2/11 Strauss was the architect of American nuclear policies in the 1950s.
Strauss left a career as an investment banker on Wall Street to lead the Atomic Energy Commission – an agency set up to be custodian of America’s nuclear materials. ☢️
3/11 Strauss was a conservative and a staunch anti-communist. 🇺🇸
He is now most remembered for his successful fight to strip Robert J. Oppenheimer of his security clearance. This conflict was the focus of Chrospher Nolan's film.
🚨 Major scandal - Gardai caught supporting Antifa - Political Policing in Ireland 🇮🇪
Earlier today, two official X pages for the Garda Síochána - the Irish police service - were caught liking posts by Antifa accounts.
Proof the Gardaí are now political police👇🧵1/6
2/6 The posts in question were calling for X to reinstate Ireland Against Fascism, an account which has spent years doxxing and harassing nationalists, conservatives and critics of mass-immigration.
The Gardaí lent their support to have these left-wing extremists reinstated.
3/6 For those familiar with the Gardaí, this extreme left-wing bias is not surprising.
Earlier this year, the Garda commissioner said he was liaising with other police forces on how to quell peaceful anti-immigration protests, which he found "sinister". Political policing.