See Who Salutes

I logged into Amazon last night. I was looking to purchase some false flags. It turned out, however, that when I typed in “false flags” what popped up was about a score of books with that term (singular or plural) in the title. Nothing to run up a flagpole to see if anyone saluted.

I was motivated in my search by the claims of numerous Republican/conservative/rightwing/batshit crazies that the storming of the United States Capitol building was not perpetrated by their swamp creatures but was a “false flag” operation. As Rolling Stone noted:

One of the most prominent figures to publicly promote this claim has been Rep. Matt Gaetz, a far-right politician and conspiracy theorist, who claimed on the House floor on Wednesday night that some of the rioters had been antifa plants. “Some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” he alleged, without any basis in reality. (1)

That is just one of many reports on the false “false flag” accusations.

The best response (as the riot was happening) was by Mark Leibovich, Chief National Correspondent of the New York Times:

When the president’s defenders keep saying “we don’t know who these people are” and “this is not who we are,” it might be more convincing if they weren’t all wearing MAGA gear.

* 

Thinking over the nature of “false flag” accusations, I have concluded that they are a sub-category of the “No-True-Scotsman” fallacy. I wrote about “No-True-Scotsman” back in 2011, (2) but here, briefly, is what it is:

Hamish MacTavish of Aberdeen is reading his newspaper at breakfast. He reads a story about a brutal murder in Manchester, and proclaims, “Och, no Scotsman would do that!”

 

Two days later, reading his paper at breakfast, he reads about another brutal murder, this one in Glasgow. “Och,” he announces, “no true Scotsman would do that!”

The fallacy is an attempt to immunize one’s cohort from blame—slicing away the negative elements from the group by narrowing the definition of the group. “That is not who we are” is a paler version of the fallacy.

At heart these attempts to cast the blame elsewhere and to display one’s own clean hands are cowardice in action. It is a refusal to accept responsibility and to examine the dirty secrets of one’s own identity—and of the flag that one has chosen to march behind.

*

In the case of the Capitol rioters, the false-flaggers were repudiated by another set of crazies who glorified what they did. Here’s one example:

[A]s the protesters swarmed the Capitol, “Stop the Steal” national organizer Ali Alexander posted a video of himself overlooking a sea descending onto the nation's capital saying, "I don't disavow this. I do not denounce this.” (3)

*

And it’s nice to see that Trump got ahead of the postal crush by sending his Valentine’s Day message to the rioters 39 days early:

 “We love you, you're very special.”

*

P.S.: I sense a business opportunity. Anyone else want to go into the manufacture and sale of false flags?

***

(1)  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/antifa-false-flag-maga-riot-1110941/

(2)  https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2011/06/drop-puck.html

 (3) https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-allies-helped-plan-promote-234801490.html