Accusation in a mirror
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.
"[11] "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.
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.
[18] 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'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.
[2] In this section in which Mucchielli describes accusation in a mirror, he referred to the work of Serge Tchakhotine[21][22] 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.
[4][8][9] 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").
"[29] 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.
"[28] 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.
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.
[1] 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.
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.
"[33] 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.
[37] 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".
"[38] 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.
[46][43][47][48] 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.
