• klu9@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    falsely accusing the center and the left of doing the things you’re doing or about to do is part of the far-right playbook to muddy the waters

    The goal of accusation in a mirror is often lot more dangerous than just muddying the waters.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror

    Accusation in a mirror (AiM) is a technique often used in the context of hate speech incitement, where one falsely attributes one’s own motives or intentions to one’s adversaries. It has been cited, along with dehumanization, as one of the indirect or cloaked forms of incitement to genocide, which has contributed to the commission of genocide, for example in the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Armenian genocide. By invoking collective self-defense, accusation in a mirror is used to justify genocide, similar to self-defense as a defense for individual homicide.

    The Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG) defines mirror politics 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”, and includes it as a factor in their Analysis Framework on Genocide, when analyzing whether a given situation poses a risk of genocide.