Talk:Atrocity propaganda

Neutrality
This article includes several claims that they are all lies, and the entire lede is written under the assumption that atrocity propaganda is necessarily false.

Would that it were. There are atrocities, and the foes of those who commit them do use them in propaganda. Goldfritha (talk) 15:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Huh? I'm removing the tag you added. Viriditas (talk) 11:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Post 9/11 Atrocity Propaganda
Are the opening paragraphs meant to be an illustration of the method? If so, well done! From now on I'll be sure to check under the bed for terror children. --212.9.60.124 (talk) 10:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems a lot like original research
Most of this article seems WP:synth to me. Andries (talk) 10:03, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Please give specific examples. Viriditas (talk) 11:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Too early to be certain, but I suspect http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11080165/Yazidi-girl-tells-of-horrific-ordeal-as-Isil-sex-slave.html may eventually turn out to also be relevant. Cariaso (talk) 21:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality
There indeed is a problem with this article. Since it's about disinformation, and that both the claims and denyers may be politically-motivated, it's a very difficult subject. There are instances where exageration was so plain that we can easily consider them false, but other cases where although we could mention a source which deny the claims, it's much less clear. The other issue is that during wars, war crimes ensue. Of course, isolated instances may be exagerated. Drawing the line here is again another difficult issue. Finally, we face claims against denials, and evidence which cannot be fully demonstrated does not mean that something did not occur, or that an actual event was not the root of an exagerated claim. We cannot go back in time, other than through specific scientific methods in specific scenarios.

Since I'm supposed to help improve the article here, I should provide an example. The article mentions the case of Jimmy Massey. We claim that he claimed to "intentionally" cause civilian casualties, and then present a source which denies that. From what I know, he didn't claim to intentionally fire on civilians, but said that he was instructed that the enemy used human shields, that suicide bombers were commonly disguised as civilians, that they stole ambulances and drove them, hid in hospitals, etc. That he had no choice but to indiscriminately do his job, and that when doing so many civilian casualties resulted as a result. This is a far more realistic perspective, and one which matches much of what we already knew about the events there, and about guerilla warfare in general. Can his claims unequivocally be considered a good example of "atrocity propaganda" in this article? I doubt it. 76.10.128.192 (talk) 03:15, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Other examples
how abaout that one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier#Uranium_from_Niger — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.39.1.132 (talk) 16:08, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

The absurd notion that Assad would drop chemical weapons on his own citizens, after he has already celebrated with Putin for winning the war against ISIS. There are many photos online of White Helmets staging atrocities, so I am convinced that this is propaganda designed to help ISIS overthrow the Syrian government as part of jihad to establish an authoritarian Islamic government. There are even videos of White Helmets standing by with body bags as ISIS fighters carry out executions, proving that they are working with ISIS, which is strong evidence that they are using children to paint Assad as an evil dictator, and working with media organizations to feed false stories to the western world. https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/white-helmets-assisting-public-executions-rebel-held-syria — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.172.169.97 (talk) 21:13, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you have reliable sources which express this opinion? If not, we cannot put this into Wikipedia. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

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Article problems
For starters, see WP:SYNTHESIS. Taking a concept and alleging that another situation is related to it without sources that do this is improper editing. As such, every example in the article should have a reliable source explicitly calling it "atrocity propaganda". Not every instance of exaggeration or misreporting is atrocity propaganda and needs to be included here. If that were the case we'd have hundreds if not thousands of examples. The actual sources in the article about atrocity propaganda explain that they take an atrocity and knowingly exaggerate it through falsehoods, using it as propaganda to achieve a certain goal.

user:Underlying lk: The paragraph in question was very arguably not about propaganda and its inclusion is based on a source that never even uses the term "atrocity propaganda". Per WP:SYNTH, using a source showing falsehoods in a story to claim it is also automatically atrocity propaganda would be against policy.

user:Queen Geedorah88: This one is more serious because falls under the arbitration between Palestinian and Israeli articles, and should not be used here as a way to insert a POV outside of the usual topic articles. If you revert again, you break that policy, so discuss it here if you still disagree. The source does not use "atrocity", "propaganda" or, most importantly, "atrocity propaganda". It doesn't matter that it was demonstrably falsified and used politically, because it's not our responsibility to define what is and isn't something. Having nothing to do with the subject outside of a subjective comparison, this falls under WP:OR and is not appropriate for inclusion.

Of course one can argue that some others don't have sources using the term "atrocity propaganda" either, and this would be perfectly justified. I haven't checked them all and don't doubt it. Though some, such as against Germany in WW1, are well documented and easily supported. The problem is these two examples are not well known. If one reads up on "atrocity propaganda", neither will turn up. That's why I doubt there even are sources out there supporting such a claim. But by all means, if you find any then they would be valid. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 18:23, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with the interpretation that policy requires the sources to explicitly include both the words 'atrocity' and 'propaganda' to warrant inclusion in the article - reading the examples given in WP:SYN it's clear that it was meant to forbid the use of separate points in different sources (or within the same source) to reach a totally new conclusion. Given the accepted meaning of the words atrocity propaganda, I think that SYN does not forbid the inclusion of any incident in which a party has been shown to provide deliberately false accounts of atrocities, provided of course that they're backed by sufficiently reliable sources.
 * Regarding the specific case, the article makes it clear that Massey had been raising awareness of nonexistent massacres to promote the anti-war cause - so I see nothing wrong with its inclusion in the article.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Prinsgezinde: According to your reasoning (which I don't share), we should delete the entire article, maybe with the exception of the WW1 section. In the meantime, removing only the part about Palestinians that you don't like is unnaceptable POV.--Queen Geedorah88 (talk) 20:01, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Merge with Atrocity story
The subject of the two is basically the same. the only difference between the two is that "AtrProp" article is focused in war propaganda. But propaganda is not limited to war. It may be eg religious or anti-religious propaganda, racist propaganda, revolutionary propaganda, etc. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree, but suggest that the entire Views and studies section be merged instead into apostasy instead. Daask (talk) 22:35, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Section move ✅ Klbrain (talk) 09:39, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 09:58, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

The definition by Ventemiglia and Bromley was used only for cults during the great American Cult wars. I re-inserted this context.Andries (talk) Andries (talk) 12:06, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I started this article Atrocity story and the merger makes this article a mix, missing coherence. Andries (talk) 12:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

The introduction should be changed to reflect the merger which will not be easy because atrocity stories about cults are not necessarily false and certainly not deliberately. Andries (talk) Andries (talk) 12:32, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

This entire article is clearly negative take a look at every part of the talk section
I mean seriously this is all q anon level false flag crisis actor level stuff.

This needs to be heavily edited and with academic level citations or reduced greatly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.63.157.32 (talk) 15:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: CMN2160B
— Assignment last updated by Xinyue Hu (talk) 13:28, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Atrocity story and the Unification Church
I have serious issues with the atrocity stories regarding new religious movement and the Unification Church. For one the individuals who support the claims of false atrocity stories are clearly sympathizers of the said religion. For instance, David G. Bromley is a complete Unification Church apologist who blamed the US tax evasion charge against Moon without providing any evidence.[//www.people.vcu.edu/~dbromley/unificationmovementdescriptionLink.html] James T. Richardson co-authored journals with Massimo Introvigne[//cesnur.net/archives/], founder of CESNUR, which is very much pro-Unification Church and other cults, also currently considered an unreliable source on Wikipedia. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe are both considered "one of the foremost social science authorities" in Encyclopedia of Religion and Society[//rowman.com/isbn/0761989560] published by the Association for the Sociology of Religion which Richardson served as president. All these don't bode well in terms of COI. Accuser of atrocity story should maintain some level of neutrality, not a transparent apologist of the one being "framed", e.g. Saddam Hussein or Hamas. Even with attribution, their claims are too outlandish compared to other wartime atrocity propaganda stories listed in this article. Most importantly those claims lack secondary or tertiary sources. If there are no non-primary sources readily available, I will do the housekeeping myself and clear all those cult apologist contents. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 14:56, 10 March 2024 (UTC)