Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
88 lines (60 loc) · 11 KB

I00049.md

File metadata and controls

88 lines (60 loc) · 11 KB
Raw

Incident I00049: White Helmets: Chemical Weapons

  • Summary: On 7 April 2018, a high number of civilians were killed in the besieged Syrian city of Douma, with evidence pointing towards another chemical attack by the regime, according to the EU. Subsequent to this event, a series of images "prove" that the White Helmets "staged" the chemical attack in Syria.

  • incident type: incident

  • Year started: 2017

  • Countries: Russia , World

  • Found via:

  • Date added: 2019-03-20

Technique Description given for this incident
T0001 5Ds (dismiss, distort, distract, dismay, divide) IT00000136 4 D's (dismiss, distort, distract, dismay...Official channels ie: Embassies & Defence Ministry; TASS
T0010 Cultivate ignorant agents IT00000139 cultivate, manipulate, exploit useful idiots (Roger Waters; Venessa Beeley...)
T0019 Generate information pollution IT00000137 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution (synthetic media)
T0031 YouTube IT00000142 YouTube; Reddit;
T0032 Reddit IT00000143 YouTube; Reddit;
T0046 Search Engine Optimization IT00000140 SEO optimisation/manipulation ("key words")
T0052 Tertiary sites amplify news IT00000141 News circulated/amplifed by tertiary sites (Russia Insider, The Duran, Geopolitica.ru, Mint Press News, Oriental Review, globalresearch.ca)
T0053 Twitter trolls amplify and manipulate IT00000135 Twitter trolls amplify & manipulate
T0054 Twitter bots amplify IT00000134 Twitter bots amplify & manipulate
T0056 Dedicated channels disseminate information pollution IT00000138 RT & Sputnik generate information pollution (synthetic media)

DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW

Actor: Russia, Syrian Government and Iran

Timeframe: April-June

Date: April 8, 2018

Presumed goals:

  • can’t trust anyone who is reporting about it & fit into the “false flag,” commonly used conspiracy trope positing that mass casualty incidents are engineered internally to provide pretext for either government repression or military action

Method:

  • One novel attack on the White Helmets in the wake of the Douma attacks featured the claim that the group had run a film studio in the besieged city, and used it to stage propaganda videos. This was initially reported by Lebanon-based Al-Aahed News[81] and Iran’s Fars News,[82] each of which attributed it to the other. It was then picked up by Russian state outlets in both Russian[83] and English.[84] As Bellingcat was quick to point out, the images of the studio were actually taken from the Facebook page of a film called Revolution Man.[85] The way in which this demonstrably false claim was amplified on pro-Assad channels reinforces the conclusion that its purpose was to discredit the White Helmets because their reporting was accurate—not because it was false.
  • A separate line of argument focused on the Western response to the Douma attack, and the conclusion that the chemical attack had indeed been launched by Assad’s forces. This argument claimed, in essence, that the West’s response was hasty, ill-judged, and went beyond the evidence.[86]
  • A third line of attack focused on accusing the West of condoning or staging chemical attacks, including the Douma one, and thus delegitimizing Western outrage. On April 13, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that it had “evidence proving the United Kingdom’s direct involvement in the organization of this provocation in eastern Ghouta,”[91]
  • A fourth tactic featured apocalyptic warnings that any Western strike into Syria that harmed Russians could trigger World War III. On April 8, for example, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned of “very grave consequences” of an American strike.[93]

Counters:

  • Fact checking (Snopes & Bellingcat)

Related incidents:

  • foundation to Russia ramping up chemical weapon disinformation leading-op to Idlib offensive

References:

Datasets:

Notes:

For the Syrian opposition, the use of these weapons in high-casualty attacks now brought the possibility of US military intervention. For the Syrian government and Russia, that same possibility brought an urgent need to sow doubt around the veracity of any claims of chemical weapons use—including by claiming that the reports of chemical weapons use were a conspiracy launched by foreign enemies to trigger more strikes. In parallel, perhaps in an attempt to deflect potential consequences, Russian government sources began claiming that rebel groups and the White Helmets rescue organization, backed by Western powers, were planning “false flag” chemical attacks, designed to kill civilians and point the blame at the Syrian government. Against the background of the 2017 US strikes that followed the Khan Sheikhoun attack, such claims introduced the idea of American complicity in any future attacks, suggesting that such attacks would be a false flag to cover an already-decided US engagement, rather than a consequence of the regime or Russia’s decision to use chemical weapons. This seeded a narrative that could later be passed on to anti-interventionist media outlets and campaigners in the West. The claim that a given incident was a false flag attack, designed to discredit the Russian government, has regularly been deployed by Kremlin supporters—for example, over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine and the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England, as well as in Syria. Such claims have been repeated and disseminated through a complex ecosystem of blogs and social media posts, largely written in English by self-styled “investigative journalists” with ties to Kremlin-operated media outlets.[18] These provided vital validation to the Syrian/Russian narrative, and played an important role in its dissemination. The disinformation campaign waged by the Syrian and Russian regimes was large scale, persistent, and supported by a range of Western commentators. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, its impact was limited, and the bulk of mainstream reporting focused on establishing the series of events. According to an online scan of Twitter mentions of the word “Douma” conducted with the Sysomos online service, none of the ten most-retweeted tweets posted on April 7-9 contained pro-Assad content, indicating that the conversation was dominated by other voices.[110] In all, the scan collected some 435,000 tweets. Progressively, however, the mainstream media shifted their focus to other issues, while the supporters of the Syrian and Russian regimes kept their focus on Douma; thus, the overall volume of traffic declined, and the share of the conversation dominated by pro-Assad voices increased. In a similar scan of the period from April 10-16, six of the ten most-retweeted posts came from Assad supporters, out of a total of 487,000 posts.[111] This analysis also reveals the integration of government-funded media (RT, SputnikNews) and geopolitical think tanks (GlobalResearch) as source content for anti-WH [anti-White Helmet] narratives.”[120] Pro-Assad and pro-Russian disinformation was further amplified by a group of ostensibly independent news websites that have since been demonstrated to have Iranian links,[121] and which systematically promoted pro-Iranian regime messaging.[122] These sites included IUVMPress.com, an apparent news site that reproduced content from Iranian regime and pro-regime sources, stripped it of its attribution, and passed it onto other sites; institutomanquehue.org, ostensibly a think tank focused on Latin America; and britishleft.com, apparently a site dedicated to left-wing British politics Commentators such as Beeley, Bartlett, and 21st Century Wire colleague Patrick Henningsen bridged the gap between the “alt-right” movement in the United States and the Russian state communications network, being cited both on sites such as RT, and alt-right hubs such as Infowars. Beeley and Bartlett contribute to both 21st Century Wire[129] and RT;[130] Henningsen formerly wrote for Infowars,[131] writes for 21st Century Wire, and is featured as a contributor on RT’s site.[132] Their contributions helped to spread pro-Assad and pro-Kremlin messaging into US audiences, very much in the manner described by Simonyan, when she spoke of the need for “English-speaking talking heads” to validate the Kremlin’s view.

On at least one occasion, their messaging broke into the mainstream. On April 13, 2018, rock guitarist Roger Waters told a concert in Barcelona that he thought the White Helmets were a “fake organization that is creating propaganda for jihadists and terrorists”—a very similar misrepresentation to that publicized by the Kremlin disinformation networks.[134 A video clip of his comments was repeatedly uploaded to YouTube by Kremlin and pro-Kremlin users, including RT UK,[136]Beeley,[137] Hands Off Syria,[138] and Clarity of Signal.[139] Together, these totalled more than 140,000 views by September 19, 2018

When incidents such as the Waters amplification are taken into account, the reason that Russia’s General Dvornikov spoke so highly of information operations becomes clear. The combination of state-funded outlets, covert outlets such as IUVMPress, official statements, and supporting bloggers and trolls allowed the pro-Assad narrative to dominate the online conversation for extended periods, especially during times when the credible media outlets were focusing on other issues.