False-Flag Operation: Difference between revisions
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** False flagging of this sort happened (or was suspected to happen) all the time in those days. The infamous Protocols of Zion was in fact written by a Tsarist secret service agent to discredit revolutionary groups as working for an "international Jewish conspiracy." This has been proven repeatedly, but it keeps resurfacing nonetheless.
*** The American variation is "[http://www.manuampim.com/lynch_hoax1.html Willie Lynch Speech]".
* Subverted in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''[[
* In the [[Frederick Forsyth]] novel ''The Fourth Protocol'', a Soviet spy pretends to work for South Africa to get a British official to reveal secrets. The British official was a staunch anti-Communist who felt that South Africa needed to know information to help fight the USSR and that South Africa was being denied information because of their "minor" problems with oppressing blacks. So he tells the spy classified information to help South Africa fight Soviet influence. Ironic, huh?
** Not to mention the Russian plot in the book to detonate a nuclear bomb near a US Air Force base, to cause the election of an anti-nuclear, pro-Soviet government (Labour at that time were anti-nuclear. While not pro-Soviet, they had quite a few fellow travelers attempting to influence them from within. In the novel a faction of these are thus waiting in the wings to take control and remove the US nuclear missiles from the UK, eliminating this threat to the Soviet Union).
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* ''Mockingjay'', the final book of ''[[The Hunger Games]]'' trilogy, describes a bomb attack on children from {{spoiler|the Capitol}} using a plane with {{spoiler|the Capitol}}'s emblem. Katniss recognizes the attack as a strategy developed by {{spoiler|Gale and District 13}}.
== Live
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' did this in one of its most celebrated episodes, "In the Pale Moonlight". Sisko puts aside his principles to get the Romulans to join the war against the Dominion. First a holographic recording is faked to make it appear that the Dominion were intending to attack the Romulans, and when this falls through, the Romulan ambassador is assassinated, his shuttle bombed, to make it appear that the Dominion didn't want the truth to be discovered. It is learned that this was the plan all along, Garak knowing the recording would not pass inspection... unless the flaws could be explained as being due to the explosion.
** In another (two-part) episode, a Starfleet admiral brings down Earth's power grid and blames it on Changeling sabotage, so that the Federation will declare martial law (which he thinks is necessary to prepare for a Dominion invasion).
** The Founders of the Dominion also employ this trope by using shapeshifter infiltrators to manipulate the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, not to mention the the withdrawal of the Klingon Empire from the Khitomer Accords, and the Second Federation-Klingon War that results, all in order to weaken the Alpha Quadrant powers for a Dominion invasion
** Also used by the main cast in a captured Jem'Hadar warship to take out a White facility.
** ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' did this one when the Romulans used a ship with a holographic display to fake various species around human space to try and get them fighting each other. Brilliantly unsuccessfully, as it turns out, as the joint effort to find and defeat the ship forms the basis for the Federation and Starfleet.
* In ''[[V (TV series)|V]]'', the Visitors use a staged terrorist attack against a Visitor-run chemical processing plant as grounds to institute martial law throughout most of the world. ''V'' being loosely based on the rise of fascism in pre-[[WWII]] Germany, this incident was inspired by the Reichstag fire of 1933, supposedly set by Nazi operatives posing as Communists.
** Also in ''[[V (TV series)|V]]'' the Visitors claim a conspiracy by Earth scientists is the reason they must take control, to keep order.
* A group of English football (soccer) fans pull one of these to incite a riot with a rival group of fans in ''[[Life On Mars]]''.
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== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Civilization]]'', your Probe Teams can perform various acts of terrorism at your opponents - and with an
* In ''[[Master of Orion]]'' framing another empire is an option for ''very'' successful spy missions. Or just about any spy mission if you're playing the Darloks.
* And in ''Birth of the Federation''. After a successful espionage/sabotage op, you can either leave no trace, or plant evidence incriminating another faction. It's a lot easier for the Cardassians and Romulans to do this than the Federation though.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In the first episode of ''[[The Legend of Calamity Jane]]'', outlaw Bill Doolin fakes raids by both the Comanche tribe and the
* In ''[[South Park]]'', the US Government is ''trying'' to convince the world that 9/11 was a False Flag in order to make them to look more competent. They do this by posing as conspiracy nuts, and running an actual False Flag campaign. This is subverted in that the plan is apparently to prevent trouble: the idea is that if people are determined to suspect the Government of treachery, those people should believe the Government is all powerful, so that they cause don't cause problems.
** What's actually amazing is how many conspiracy theories have similarly sinister origins.
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* The ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' cartoon has this happen when Megatron has the Stunticons built. People automatically assume that 'car transformer = Autobot" and think they're the good guys, until the Stunticons go wild. The Autobots are, naturally, blamed for the attacks.
* [[Archer]]'s mother, in a drunken fit of jealousy, issues a burn notice on her son after he quits ISIS to work for the agency's nemesis ODIN. To save Archer from being killed by his new coworkers, Lana sends a retraction of the burn notice from a Telex in the ODIN office building. Lana's false flag is compounded, as it implies that the burn notice itself was an ODIN false flag operation designed to discredit ISIS and its best field agent.
* In ''[[DuckTales (2017)|DuckTales]]'', General Lunaris successfully persuades his people that the citizens of Earth are evil and that they're plotting to invade the Moon (which he humorously continually refers to as a planet), so he advises them to beat them to the punch. He then takes charge and spearheads the invasion. They realize their mistake when General Lunaris decides to blow up Earth with his people still on it, since apparently having the citizens of Earth die in fear of the moon is just as good as having them live in fear of it.
* The [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] episode "Shopping List". Mr. Krabs tells Spongy and Sandy that they're getting low on the [[Secret Ingredient]]s for his Krabby Patties, and sends them on a mission to get them. Plankton overhears and decides to follow in order to discover what the ingredients are. This mission seems rather dangerous, requiring them to gather get a hair of a yeti, milk from a fangtooth fish, and dandruff from the Flying Dutchman. They succeed at getting them without getting hurt; Plankton isn't so lucky. It turns out, however, that Mr. Krabs was purposely sending them out to get fake ingredients to fool Plankton so he could go shopping for the ''real'' ones. Unfortunately, Krabs ''really'' should have let them in on this first, considering how angry Sandy is once she finds out...
== Real Life ==
* Some claim the Israeli attack on the [[wikipedia:USS Liberty incident|USS ''Liberty'']] during the Six Days War was one of these. On the one hand, the fact that Israel quickly accepted blame for the incident, claiming it to have been a tragic mistake, sort of defeats the notion of it being a "false flag". On the other hand, there is still much controversy over aspects of the incident and how deliberate it may have been, and the theory that Israel would have shifted responsibility to Egypt, if it could have, is certainly in the spirit of the term.
* The [[wikipedia:Celle Hole|Celle Hole]]
* The German police has used (and may still use)
* The Gleiwitz incident, when Nazi Germany provided justification for its war with Poland at the start of World War II by having some soldiers dress up in Polish uniforms, then attack a German radio outpost and broadcast anti-German messages. Then they dressed up concentration camp prisoners as Polish soldiers and shot them "in self-defense". It was just one of a number of independent operations collectively named "Operation Himmler". Noteworthy in that this was such an [[Epic Fail]] (absolutely no one believed it), the fact that Germany claimed self-defense as a reason to go to war is regarded as an interesting bit of trivia instead of an important historical fact.
**They never explained of course why the German Army was fueled and equipped and capable of starting a massive campaign without a hitch. One supposes they could have said that there was a diplomatic crisis going on at the time so naturally they would have sent the word round. But no one bothered to ask anyway so they never gave that excuse.
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*** Done ''several times'' and on a large scale for 2016 Alabama senate race Doug Jones vs. Roy Moore — or, as ''The New York Times'' [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html called it], "secret experiment" — by "New Knowledge" group (it's a [https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/04/new-knowledge-and-the-same-old-same-old/ rather curious organisation]).
** And when entertainment gets overrun by politics, it results in things like "Down With Disney" account on Twitter and Facebook, aka "[https://twitter.com/EthanVanSciver/status/1005665248077123589 WORLD’S MOST HILARIOUS FAKE ACCOUNT]". Which despite having tiny following was promoted by Disney-friendly press as the typical example of hatey haters in "toxic fandom". It even tried to associate itself with specific fans decrying Disney ''Star Wars'', then vanished soon after being caught and denounced as fake.
*** …which turns out to be a part of larger campaign using the same tactics more. One participant even resorted to stealing the identity of his then- (now ex-)wife in order to collect a male fan following in an attempt to [[Divide and Conquer]] the fandom, and disseminate fake inside information. Articles [https://disneystarwarsisdumb.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/lucasfilm-orchestrated-kmt-harassment/ here] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20170730000223/http://millenniumfalcon.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=2015&t=9605 here].
* Operation Trust, in which the Cheka (the first USSR state security service) ran fake counter-revolutionary groups so they could expose and arrest real Soviet counter-revolutionaries.
* In 1975, Indonesia tried to convince the international world that their invasion of East Timor was in fact an independent action by pro-Indonesia factions such as APODETI by giving their paratroopers Russian weapons, and... [[Too Dumb to Live|not much else]]. If that's too hard for you to believe, consider the fact that during the invasion, Indonesian cargo planes accidentally dropped troops on the sea and the forces on the ground traded so much friendly fire that there might've been more Indonesian casualties from friendly fire than from the poorly-armed Fretilin resistance fighters.
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* During the early stages of of the Russian-Ukraine conflict in 2014, there were many reports of "pro-Russian separatists" wearing unmarked (Russian-style) fatigues and performing military operations inside Ukraine with a remarkable professionalism.
* During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, a violent, destructive attack on a government building was performed by the Chinese government to discredit the movement. Aside from the total lack of resistance by present police, the dead give away was that they followed it up with a press conference that was clearly filmed before the incident took place (as shown by an errant wristwatch).{{context}}
* Almost immediately after the end of the attack upon and occupation of the United States Capitol Building by a pro-[[Donald Trump|Trump]] mob on January 6, 2021, right-wing news outlets Newsmax and One America News began pushing the false narrative that the attack was in fact orchestrated and performed in large part by left-wing Antifa (anti-fascist) operatives to besmirch the "good name" and reputation of the MAGA movement.
** It didn't end there either. [https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-influencers-deny-reality-by-claiming-neo-nazis-are-feds?ref=scroll Phony claims of False-Flag Operations] has become the catch-all excuse given by conspiracy theorists pushing "deep state" claims whenever blatant displays of hate groups publicly support their side, almost to the point where it has become a [[Dead Horse Trope]] as far as American politics is concerned.
* [[Alex Jones]] notoriously claimed the Sandy Hook shootings was a hoax perpetrated by “crisis actors” in a broad scheme to trample on Second Amendment rights. Given the lawsuits that resulted and the media platforms he's been kicked off of, it seems this was one time he crossed the line and was unable to do so "twice".
** Also, Jones is so nuts that many other [[Conspiracy Theorist]]s who believe in [[New World Order]] scenarios have claimed he is pulling this type of thing on their behalf! Of course, he makes the same accusations towards ''them.''
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Espionage Tropes]]
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