Accusation in a mirror

Accusation in a mirror (AiM) (also called mirror politics, mirror propaganda, mirror image propaganda, or a mirror argument) is a technique often used in the context of hate speech incitement, where one falsely attributes one's own motives and/or intentions to one's adversaries. It has been cited, along with dehumanization, as one of the indirect or cloaked forms of incitement to genocide, which has contributed to the commission of genocide, for example in the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Armenian genocide. By invoking collective self-defense, accusation in a mirror is used to justify genocide, similar to self-defense as a defense for individual homicide.

The Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG) defines mirror politics as a "common strategy to create divisions by fabricating events whereby a person accuses others of what he or she does or wants to do", and includes it as a factor in their Analysis Framework on Genocide, when analyzing whether a given situation poses a risk of genocide. Scholars such as Kenneth L. Marcus and Gregory S. Gordon have investigated ways in which accusation in a mirror has been used to incite hatred and how its impact can be mitigated.

Description


Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. The name was used by an anonymous Rwandan propagandist in Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement. Drawing on the ideas of Joseph Goebbels, he instructed colleagues to "impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do". By invoking collective self-defense, propaganda is used to justify genocide, just as self-defense is a defense for individual homicide. Susan Benesch remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary.

The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". The OSAPG prepares The Analysis Framework on Genocide which comprises eight factors used to "determine whether there may be a risk of genocide in a given situation". The fourth of the eight categories is the "motivation of leading actors in the State/region; acts which serve to encourage divisions between national, racial, ethnic, and religious groups." "Mirror politics"defined as a "common strategy to create divisions by fabricating events whereby a person accuses others of what he or she does or wants to do"is included in this category as one of five issues to be considered.

The tactic is similar to a "false anticipatory tu quoque" (a logical fallacy which charges the opponent with hypocrisy). It does not rely on what misdeeds the enemy could plausibly be charged with, based on actual culpability or stereotypes, and does not involve any exaggeration, but instead is an exact mirror of the perpetrator's own intentions. The weakness of the strategy is that it reveals the perpetrator's intentions, perhaps before it can be carried out. This could enable intervention to prevent genocide, or alternatively aid in prosecuting incitement to genocide. Kenneth L. Marcus wrote that despite its weaknesses, the tactic is frequently used by genocide perpetrators (including Nazis, Serbs, and Hutus) because it is effective. He recommends that courts should consider a false accusation of genocide by an opposing group to satisfy the "direct" requirement, because it is an "almost invariable harbinger of genocide". Marcus described AiM as a deceptively simple "rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one's enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one's adversaries by drowning them in a particular river, then one should accuse one's adversaries of plotting precisely the same crime."

In her work on dangerous speech, Susan Benesch defined accusation in a mirror as follows: "Claims that members of the target group pose a mortal or existential threat to the audience, aptly dubbed "accusation in a mirror". The speaker accuses the target group of plotting the same harm to the audience that the speaker hopes to incite, thus providing the audience with the collective analogue of the only ironclad defense to homicide: self-defense. One of the most famous examples is the Nazi assertion, before the Holocaust began, that Jews were planning to wipe out the German people." In Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (2017), Gregory S. Gordonwho had served as a Prosecutor in International Criminal Tribunal for Rwandadiscussed the tension between protecting free speech while regulating hate speech, citing that the use of accusation in the mirror as a form of hate speech, is an indicator of violence. He said that the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) "recognized straight away that Nazi barbarities were rooted in propaganda." Gordon traced the early use of propaganda to the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Gordon wrote that the "Young Turk government created the template for the modern genocidal propaganda campaign." International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated the "atrocity-triggering speech in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda".

Origin of the term
The phrase "accusation in a mirror" was introduced as "l'accusation en miroir" in an adult continuing education 1970 book by French social psychologist and author Roger Mucchielli. The book, Psychologie de la publicite et de la propagande, was written against the backdrop of the protests of 1968, and discussed the history of the social psychology behind publicity and propaganda. The book's intended purpose included deepening understanding of psychology and the human sciences, and increasing the reader's ability to recognize true values and to resist manipulation. In the conclusion of his book, Mucchielli likened his seminar to the work of Columbia University's professor, Clyde R. Miller, who established the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) in 1937, to educate others to be able to identify propaganda techniques in order to thwart them.

Mucchielli described accusation in a mirror as imputing to the adversaries the intentions that one has oneself and/or the action that you are in the process of enacting. Mucchielli explained how the perpetrator who intends to start a war will proclaim his peaceful intentions and accuse the adversary of warmongering; he who uses terror will accuse the adversary of terrorism. In this section in which Mucchielli describes accusation in a mirror, he referred to the work of Serge Tchakhotine who was known for his opposition to the Bolshevik regime (1917–1919) and who warned against the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Tchakhotine's work on how to resist propaganda, like that of Mucchielli, was informed by Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, and Frederick Winslow Taylor. Mucchielli also referred to the work of Joseph Goebbelsthe Nazi Party's chief propagandist.

The description of accusation en miroir occurs in a single paragraph of the first chapter of the fourth unit, entitled "La propagande d'endoctrinement, d'expansion et de recrutement" ("The psychology of propaganda used in politics"). Mucchielli included three other chapters in this section on the propaganda of agitation, integration, and subversion. The three main units preceding the one on the political use of propaganda include the first unita comparison between the psychology underpinning publicity and propaganda; the second unit examines publicity used by commercial enterprises, and the third investigates public relations.

Genocide strategy document
In the 1990s, a team of human rights activists working with Human Rights Watch, led by Alison Des Forges, found a mimeographed document in a Rwandan Hutu hut entitled "Note relative à la propagande d'expansion et de recrutement", by an anonymous author. The document was a detailed description of Roger Mucchielli's 1972 analysis of the psychology underpinning propaganda, transforming his writing into a propaganda manual. Des Forges' work was "instrumental in assisting the International Criminal Tribunal in its prosecution of those responsible". Her description of accusation in a mirror was included in her book Genocide in Rwanda: the planning and execution of mass murder (1999) and in the posthumously published Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (2014).

The author of the memo proposed two techniques that would become commonly used in incitement of the Rwandan genocide. The first was to "'create' events to lend credence to propaganda", and the second was accusation in a mirror, through which "his colleagues should impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do." The memo states: "In this way, the party which is using terror will accuse the enemy of using terror." The memo described how "honest people" can be made to feel justified in taking whatever measures are necessary "for legitimate [self-] defense." Des Forges said that accusation in the mirror was used effectively in the 1992 Bugesera invasion as well as in the "broader campaign to convince Hutu that Tutsi planned to exterminate them." While Rwandan officials and propagandists used both these techniques as described in the memo, Des Forges found no proof they "were familiar with this particular document".

Usage during the genocide
As part of their strategy, Hutu hard-liners had founded their own radio station (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, or RTLM). Des Forges described how "Rwandans learned from experience that RTLM regularly attributed to others the actions its own supporters had taken or would be taking. Without ever having heard of “accusations in a mirror,” they became accustomed to listening to RTLM accusations of its rivals to find out what [its own supporters] would be doing."

Léon Mugesera, a Rwandan politician convicted of incitement to genocide, was named in Des Forges's work as an example of accusation in a mirror. His inflammatory anti-Tutsi speech, which was reported in the Rwandan newspaper Kangura, was alleged to be a precursor to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In 2016, he was convicted of incitement to genocide and sentenced to life in prison. Des Forges wrote that Mugesera and Kangura appeared to "have been implementing the tactic of “accusation in a mirror” by connecting the Tutsi with the Nazis." She added that "copies of films about Hitler and Naziism" were allegedly found in the residence of Juvénal Habyarimana after he and his family left in early April 1994.

Andrew Wallis described accusation in a mirror as a "simple idea" but a "winning formula to win over the masses to participation and sympathy for the crime at hand." The technique, which "especially targeted journalists" in Rwanda, was a "direct and easily persuasive strategy to ensnare those who knew little about the reality of the Rwandan situation".

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (IDRC) (1998 2007)
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) 1998 ruling in The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu case considered testimony by Des Forges on "mirror politics", which included incidents of accusation in the mirror such as the 1992 Bugesera invasion. Jean-Paul Akayesu was a former teacher who served as mayor of Taba commune in Gitarama prefecture who was convicted of genocide for his role in inciting the Rwandan genocide. Trial documents described how mirror politics was used in Kibulira and in the Bagoguye region where the "population was goaded on to defend itself against fabricated attacks supposed to have been perpetrated by RPF infiltrators and to attack and kill their Tutsi neighbours". The document noted "the role that Radio Rwanda and, later, the RTLM, founded in 1993 by people close to President Habyarimana, played in this anti-Tutsi propaganda. Besides the radio stations, there were other propaganda agents, the most notorious of whom was a certain Léon Mugesera...who published two pamphlets accusing the Tutsi of planning a genocide of the Hutu."

ICTR prosecutor Gregory S. Gordon said that the Akayesu judgement should have included a greater discussion of propaganda methods, saying the "anemic treatment of the range and specific characteristics of speech techniques (such as accusation in a mirror or predictions of violence) leaves it woefully underdeveloped and incapable of capturing the full range of liability inherent in atrocity speech."

According to a 2007 book co-published by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (IDRC) the University of Butare had a copy of Mucchielli's 1972 book, which has a paragraph on accusation en miroir in the unit called "Psychologie des propagandes politiques". The anonymous author referred to Mucchielli's "accusation in a mirror""accusation en miroir".

In the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's 2007 book The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien described the psychology of those who perpetrated the mass slaughter of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda in 1994 by the Hutus by referring to Muchielli's book. Chrétien described the propaganda tools such as "accusations in the mirror" as "the mechanisms for moulding a good conscience based on indignation toward an enemy perceived as a scapegoat."

Cambodia and Vietnam
In the book Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (2007), American historian Ben Kiernan said that the accusation in a mirror propaganda technique had also been used in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Sabra and Shatila massacre
On 16 September 1982, the Phalange (also known as the Kataeb Party), a right-wing Christian Lebanese militia group, entered the Sabra and Shatila camps and killed as many as 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. In interviews with film director Lokman Slim in 2005, some of the militia fighters who committed the massacre reported that, prior to the massacre, the IDF took them to training camps in Israel and showed them documentaries about the Holocaust. The Israelis who were training them told these Lebanese fighters that the same would happen to them too, as a minority in Lebanon, if the fighters did not take action against the Palestinians. The film was called "Massaker", it featured six perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and it was awarded the Fipresci Prize at the 2005 Berlinale.

United States
According to a 2019 Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center article, investigations on the rise of violence by far-right extremists had been "upended by conservatives who insisted the real threat came from the left". The article described how the Proud Boys often used the "rhetorical trick" of accusation in a mirror, by blaming "leftists and anti-fascist activists" for resisting their violence and asserting that self-defense by leftists was the real violence. In a November 2018 YouTube video, Gavin McInnes, the founder of Proud Boys said, "We are under siege...We are threatened with violencereal physical violenceon a regular basis."

Russo-Ukrainian War


In her January 25, 2022 article, CNN's Moscow bureau chief, Jill Dougherty, described the Russian media's depiction of Ukraine during the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis, as "mirror image propaganda", citing as an example the way in which NATO forces were described as "carrying out a plan that's been in the works for years: Encircle Russia, topple President Vladimir Putin and seize control of Russia's energy resources." On 7 September 2022, Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia did not "start" any military operations, but was only trying to end those that started in 2014, after a "coup d’état in Ukraine".

On 21 September 2022, Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation, following a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv. In his address to the Russian audience, Putin claimed that the "Policy of intimidation, terror and violence" against the Ukrainian people by the pro-Western "Nazi" regime in Kyiv "has taken on ever more terrible barbaric forms", Ukrainians have been turned into "cannon fodder", and therefore Russia has no choice but to defend "our loved ones" in Ukraine. Putin also claimed that "The goal of the West is to weaken, divide and destroy our country."

Political scientist and espionage scholar Thomas Rid suggests the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory may be a case of the Kremlin "accusing the other side of the thing they are in fact doing" (accusation in a mirror) based on historical precedent. In the 1980s, when the Soviets deployed chemical weapons in Laos and Afghanistan, Soviet-aligned press published disinformation alleging that the CIA was weaponizing mosquitoes. False Soviet reports blaming HIV/AIDS on the United States, commonly called Operation INFEKTION, also aimed to distract from contemporary Soviet activities. The Kremlin has a history of fomenting conspiracy theories about ordinary biology labs in former Soviet republics, having previously spread propaganda about Georgia and Kazakhstan similar to recent accusations deployed against Ukraine.