A Theory of Atrocity Propaganda

On August 26, 2014, the Telegraph published an article titled "The Children Killed in Gaza during 50 Days of Conflict."1 Heading the article was a list of the names and ages of 504 children killed during summer fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants. Social media quickly spread the story, with the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald just one of many to tweet the headline.2 Respondents to Greenwald's tweet expressed outrage at Israel, Hamas, and the international community. A second line of response challenged the integrity of the list and of its source, the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. "These lists lack context and verification," said one respondent.3 "You mean the propaganda pieces used by Hamas???" another exclaimed.4

One year earlier, on August 29, 2013, British prime minister David Cameron called a special session of the House of Commons to debate a motion authorizing the use of force in response to suspected chemical weapons use by Syrian president Bashar al Assad. In his opening remarks, Cameron claimed that "the question before the House today is how to respond to one of the most abhorrent uses of chemical weapons in a century, which has slaughtered innocent men, women and children in Syria."5 Both supporters and opponents of the prime minister's motion agreed with his assertion that the attack "illustrates some of the most sickening human suffering imaginable."6 But critics of Cameron's request for authorization for a forceful response cautioned that this gruesome attack on civilians "could have been done by the Syrian rebels with the direct aim of dragging the west into the war" and warned that "we do not want to be conned into a war, in effect, by actions designed to do just that."7

Challenges to the integrity of reports of atrocities extend far beyond these particular conflicts. In recent years, charges of atrocity propaganda have been lodged against reports of murder, mutilation, and torture in Ukraine, at the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere.8 Not all such charges are credible. But the standards for assessing them are nebulous, the criteria for rebutting them unclear. They will remain so until the defining aims and features of atrocity propaganda have been adequately explained.

In this essay, I offer a novel theory...