False Flag Conspiracies

Submission 25,499

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About

False Flag Conspiracies refer to when conspiracy theorists describe mainstream events as having been perpetrated by governments or entities that did not actually perpetrate them, often in the name of creating diversion from another political event.

Origin

A false flag is a military operation originated by the navy, where a boat would fly the flag of another country when completing an operation, in order to fool onlookers into believing that the action was being committed by the other country. False flag operations have been pretexts for declarations of war on many occasions, including during World War II, when a false flag attack on German forces by Germany convinced the German state to attack and eventually take over Poland, and the Second Sino-Japanese War, when a Japanese detonation of a Mongolian railway was used as a pretext to attack Manchuria.^[1]

False flag conspiracies first gained traction online among members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of whom believed that the attacks on the World Trade Center were perpetrated by the American government as a way to gain public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, the web site 9/11 review published "A History of False Flag Operations,"^[2] listing The War on Terror, saying:

"War on Terror: The war was launched by Bush administration October 2001. The war was claimed to be the response on terrorism, especially the 9-11 incidents. Most of the people in the world today know that these reasons are false and that those events were based on MIH type (make it happen) inside job."

Spread

False flag theories began recirculating in 2013, after the Boston Marathon Bombings, when prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones tweeted 30 minutes after the attack that he believed it was a false flag.^[3] Infowars, Jones' web site, has mentioned false flags over 9,000 times.^[4]

False flags have been discussed over 27,000 times on the 4chan board /pol/,^[5] often in irony; however, the over 125 discussions of false flag theories on the subreddit /r/conspiracy are mostly, if not all, sincere.^[6] The subreddit /r/falseflagwatch was created in 2012, and has over 2,200 readers.^[7]