Counter-Currents
Nayirah Al-Ṣabaḥ was a Kuwaiti girl who testified about Iraqi atrocities against babies to the US Congress in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War. Although her testimony later turned out to be false, it helped to draw the US into yet another military adventure on Israel’s behalf.
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The reignition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows how information is one of the most critical aspects of modern warfare. For example, several prominent pro-Israeli political influencers almost immediately began circulating accusations of lurid atrocities in the court of public opinion. The most shocking allegation was that 40 Israeli toddlers had been decapitated.
Atrocity propaganda is nothing new, however. In an X thread, Keith Woods laid out its use throughout history. The parallels between current and past conflicts are striking.
In law, whether it be civil or criminal, defendants often find themselves facing serious accusations, from domestic violence to Ponzi schemes to murder. How do we adjudicate these allegations? Prosecutors and plaintiffs certainly have a right to make their case, and society has a right to order, but defendants also have a right to defend themselves. How do we balance the rights and interests of the parties, state, and broader society?
Besides procedural safeguards, we have the rules of evidence, which were developed over time through custom, legislation, and case law. These rules are used to protect the rights of individuals. But allegations of atrocities are much more momentous. They are used to justify declarations of war, and involve the fate of nations.
If so much more is at stake, shouldn’t the court of public opinion have standards similar to the courtroom rules of evidence for adjudicating whether atrocity propaganda is real?
Hard, physical evidence is always the best, especially video footage. In the case of recently alleged atrocities, there was initially a suspicious lack of photo and video evidence, despite how everyone has a smart phone these days. This should have been the first clue that something was amiss. Why tell when you can show, especially when you’re obviously trying to inflame public opinion?
But presenting physical evidence should not be an instant win for its proponent. What if it is fake? A case in point: Ben Shapiro shared what looked vaguely like charred remains in support of the allegation that Hamas had decapitated 40 toddlers. This photo was almost instantly debunked as generated by artificial intelligence.[1] Shapiro took the post down, but not before it was widely circulated — and he never recanted.
If Instagram posts, bloodied knives, and forged documents are subject to careful scrutiny in court, then atrocity propaganda merits the same scrutiny — if not more.
A lot of evidence consists of testimony rather than things, of course. For this, we prefer witnesses who perceived things first-hand rather than “hearsay” evidence for a number of reasons, even if the general rule against hearsay has dozens of exceptions and exemptions. Adam testifying that he heard it from Bob, who heard it from Charlie, can, under certain circumstances, pass muster in court — but it rarely does. Each level of hearsay must be an exception or an exemption. We ideally want the original witness, Charlie, so we can cross-examine him. What exactly did he perceive and how? Is he biased? Doe he have a motive to lie? Is he an honest person? Does his story make sense? And if we can’t cross-examine Charlie, can we at least cross-examine Bob?
In the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War , a Kuwaiti girl, Nayirah, testified that Iraqi soldiers had senselessly pulled babies out of incubators in Kuwait and left them to die. A good attorney would have explored if she had a motive to lie, given that she was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States. A good attorney would have asked for other first-hand witnesses and seen if the stories matched up, or if there were major discrepancies. It turned out that the incubator babies were as real as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were 13 years later.
Fake babies can have very real consequences. President George H. W. Bush used them to garner support for his war against Iraq, which caused thousands of deaths, with many of the lower estimates being over 100,000.[2] And veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of that war certainly contributes to an average of 17 of them committing suicide each day.
You can buy Julius Evola’s East & West here.
We shouldn’t execute a man accused of murder on flimsy evidence. We definitely shouldn’t execute war plans which can kill and injure thousands on flimsy evidence, either.
Conservative influencers usually adhere to traditional Western notions of evidence and justice, such as dismissing #MeToo as the fraud that it is. But Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump Jr., and Ian Miles Cheong, among countless other,s have abandoned their usual empirical rigor. They have amplified fantastical allegations which obviously lack foundation. Perhaps this has something to do with who cuts their checks. Regardless, they have acted no differently than the triggered college students whom they usually lampoon. “Facts don’t care about your feelings” went out the door pretty fast.
In law, a witness’ credibility can be impeached to undermine his testimony. This is one reason why most criminal defendants refrain from testifying, as they usually have rap sheets of prior incidents with the law that undermine their credibility. Israel’s rap sheet is quite extensive, including systematic human rights abuses against the Palestinians, spying on the United States, and bombing the USS Liberty.[3] Thus, Israeli accusations of atrocities should be taken with a pillar of salt.
Serious crimes deserve serious investigation, especially atrocity propaganda. If it’s true, it’s horrible. If it’s not true, it’s also horrible, because someone intentionally or recklessly lied. Just as #MeToo detracts from real incidents of sexual assault, fake atrocities detract from real ones.
But most importantly, atrocity propaganda dehumanizes the alleged perpetrator, thereby justifying war and even retaliatory atrocities against them.
Israel has blockaded the Gaza Strip, denying the Palestinians trapped inside food, water, and electricity. Laura Loomer stated on X: “Israel’s Defense Minister has ordered a complete siege on #Gaza: He said, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.” #GlassIt,” along with a similar but more unhinged rant on Telegram.[5][6] Later, she actually doubled down:
It’s not a call for genocide. It’s a call for counter terrorism. Polling shows 90% of Gazans fully support HAMAS. Why is this so hard for you to understand? You want to talk about the children? Watch this video of Gazan children. This is what HAMAS is teaching Children in Gaza.[7]
To Loomer, the deaths of thousands of Palestinians is entirely justified as collateral damage, and perhaps even welcomed. Even more disturbing is the fact that she was not alone. Genocidal rhetoric has been the norm rather than the exception among pro-Israel influencers.
Those who lie about others being monsters are in fact monsters themselves. They want to behave monstrously towards their enemies, but fear the consequences. Thus, a pretext must be invented to justify their plans.
Atrocity propaganda spreads like wildfire through newspaper and radio, and even faster via the Internet. Thankfully, it can now be almost as swiftly countered. For example, Keith Woods helped get Trump Jr.’s disinformation noted by the Twitter/X community.[8]
It would be impractical to copy and paste the federal rules of evidence into politics. But considering their underlying motives can help guide us on how we can counter atrocity propaganda with empirical rigor. And by countering atrocity propaganda, we can help prevent real atrocities from happening.
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Notes
[1] https://x.com/poxesfoxes/status/1712592679777771702?s=20 Note: the link has photos of dead bodies
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7 comments
When I first saw the “beheaded babies” story, my immediate comment was, “Oh, are they cutting children’s hands off again?” It was just so obvious.
Some commentator on YouTube put it best: “From babies on bayonets to babies from incubators to beheading babies. You would think it says more about whoever is obsessed with torturing babies”.
It’s Friday the 13th… there is a rumour of a “Global Day of Jihad”. Let’s do a search to see if there is any news on the topic. One of the top hits comes from Wired.
The first sentence wastes no time in getting to the perceived real threat….
FAR-RIGHT FIGURES IN the United States are making violent threats against Muslims in response to what they believe is a planned “global day of jihad” today
https://www.wired.com/story/day-of-jihad-disinformation-israel-palestine/
On a day which shall live in infamy, exactly six million babies in incubators in a wet market in China were infected with straight-from-a-bat Covid-23 by a lone gunman named D. Lee Plaza who was a complete unknown to the CIA and who had been seen repeatedly shooting a single pristine bullet at whales in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Sounds plausible. Governments never lie to us.
“But allegations of atrocities are much more momentous. They are used to justify declarations of war, and involve the fate of nations.
If so much more is at stake, shouldn’t the court of public opinion have standards similar to the courtroom rules of evidence for adjudicating whether atrocity propaganda is real?”
We don’t have time for that. It’s work for historians, not for politicians acting in the heat of the moment.
And there’s something false-y about the premise here. As if wars were ever declared and the fate of nations decided based on concern about atrocities. I can’t think of a single case when war was declared for the sole reason of a humanitarian emergency — and if there is one such case, it should also be demonstrated that escalation actually improved the situation, instead of making it worse. But it general, atrocity stories are just window dressing for ulterior motives.
Remember when Orbán called for an international investigation into the Bucha massacre? For a while he was the Most Immoral Person on the planet. The Anglos decided that Zelensky should quit negotiations with Russia, and Bucha was a convenient pretext.(1)
Instead of trying to figure out whether escalation is “justified” or not, we should simply _always_ strive towards containment and de-escalation.
(1) In the following days the Hungarian government sent a large quantity of humanitarian supplies to Bucha. The convoy reached the city on April 20th, almost 3 weeks after the Russians left. By that time practically every European leader was photographed by the side of the mass graves. Bu according to the local authorities the Hun convoy was the first, and for quite a while the only international humanitarian aid shipment that they received.
Have a look at the Daily Mail website right now . As if the “beheaded babies” story wasn’t ridiculous enough , the J’s in Berlin are now pretending they’re having the Star of David grafted onto their front doors !!!! Talk about a “whatcha doin’ Rabbi ?” situation !!
I do not think that this is a “lose/lose” situation for Whites regarding Israel deporting all the Palestinians to Europe.
Palestine’s population is about 5 million. Given the big European countries each take in 1 million per year – maybe more – this really isn’t that much, comparatively.
Also consider they’d likely send some to North America and to Australasia. (Notice how it’s only White countries they’d get sent to.) Some would probably be taken in by the likes of Egypt, also. So it wouldn’t even be 5 million into Europe.
However, let’s say for argument’s sake we did get all of them in Europe. Well, we’d be taking in a population that was utterly anti Semitic and newly energized in being so, having just been ethnically cleansed.
If we are to take in swathes of brown people, they may as well be deeply anti semitic ones, and we can try and benefit from the chaos they create.
The white liberal student left types would be enthralled by these people being as they are both brown and victims. I can easily see leftist student protests burning Israeli flags.
I can envisage a highly biased TV debate, with the main Jewish media shills out in force, and I can forsee an unwitting white libtard student splurt out a home truth – from our point of view, a home run – about who exactly owns the media.
I can forsee many such cases arising.
So if we do take these people in it would send our Philo semitic establishment into a real tizzy. They may even realize the folly of taking in too many brown anti semitic people. They might say, “no more!”, and shut the borders – to brown anti semites, at least. That’s a win.
They might send some of these brown anti semites elsewhere. That’s also a win. We don’t need all of them repatriated instantly as that’s very unlikely to happen. We just need a precedent to be set – multiculturalism didn’t work, and we had peace when we sent those people elsewhere, separate from us. That is precisely the precedent we want to be set. “Remember when we deported those groups of Muslims? Because they hated the Jews so much?” It’s a good starting point.
I can also forsee the White leftist protests when one of these deportations does take place. Groups of immigration officers, banging the door down at 4AM, to be met by a whole streetful of leftists, burning Israel flags. It is a starting point.
If this does break out into a wider war with Iran (which the Jews will try to rope the USA into), for example if Israel carries out a false flag attack on a U.S. ship in the area – something for which there IS a precedent – I can also imagine the draft cards being burnt in piles, and rousing speeches- “I’m not gonna kill or die for the Jews!” Of course, mostly these speeches would not be right wing or pro white. But it is a start. At such events it’d be easy to slip in some of our guys, get some home truths in under the radar (“who actually runs the U.S. government?!”), and also tap up and recruit some of the disaffected young white guys there.
On top of all that, Israel’s reputation on the world stage would be discredited. The BRICS nations may pivot against Israel. If it comes out that the attack was allowed to happen, or orchestrated to happen, then their credibility is shot even further.
If someone thinks this would pan out differently, then suggest how you think this will go. To my mind, Israel deporting the Palestinians here isn’t actually the worst case scenario, and could be used to our advantage.
We are already seeing the white establishment in various countries juggle the hot potatoes of Philo semitism with replacing Whites with 3rd worlders. If we did bring in millions of Palestinians that would only get worse for them.
Could you please explain what “western notion of justice” is? Thanks.
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