A list of examples of attack-response reversal:
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 1
- Lasswell (TV Guide), April 12 2003, Message Unit 13
- Paget (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 2
- Paget (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 3
- Belt (LJW), April 18 2004, Message Unit 1
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 1
- Miller, April 12 2004, Message Unit 1
- Payne (Reader's Digest), May 2004, Message Unit 1
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 9
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 10
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 6
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 2
- Belt (LJW), April 11 2004, Message Unit 3
- (LJW), November 12 2004, Message Unit 2
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 1
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 2
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 3
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 4
- J-W Wire Reports, April 9 2004, Message Unit 5
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 1
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 2
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 4
- Associated Press, November 8 2003, Message Unit 13
- Douglas and Stearns (Knight Ridder) April 6 2004, Message Unit 13
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 3
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 6
- McCain, November 21 2005, Message Unit 7
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Definition of
attack-response reversal
In
reality,
group A went and attacked group B on group B's own land. Group B was not attacking group A.
In the
patriotic message,
this attack is shown, but it is not shown as an attack. Instead, it is presented as a response, as if group A were acting in self-defense against group B.
Sometimes the
patriotic message
presents the attack as a response to events that in
reality
occurred after the act.
For example, it might present a takeover of someone else's land as a "defense"
against events that were in
reality
acts of resistance to the takeover.
Many or most
attack-response reversals
are visibly nonsensical. For example, suppose US troops are taking over someone else's country. They attack its people in their own homes, and the people fight back. The
patriotic message
presents the actions of the US troops as defensive because the people they went to conquer are fighting back against the US attack.
One of the most important propaganda functions performed by
attack-response reversal
is to make the US and US troops the perennial victims. Any hardship that US troops experience due to the fact that the people of other countries resist
being conquered by the US is used to portray the US troops and the US as the victims in the situation, rather than the attackers. The result is that the more countries the US attacks, and the more people of other countries the US imprisons, injures, or kills, the bigger victim the US becomes.
This effect's self-reinforcing character is significant. In the mid twentieth century, US troops killed huge numbers of Southeast Asians and virtually destroyed their countries in what the Americans call the Vietnam War, a war in which no Southeast Asians tried to harm any Americans except those who came to their countries to harm them. Yet it is almost certain that the Vietnam War was a major reason for the near-ubiquitous American support for US troops as they killed huge numbers of Iraqis and destroyed much of their country in the early twenty-first century, again in an act of unprovoked aggression. The reason this worked is probably because the victims of the Vietnam War came to be seen as the US troops instead of the Vietnamese.
A comparable situation would be if the reaction of the Japanese or the Germans to the horrors their troops committed in the 1930s and 1940s was widespread support for their troops if they committed similar horrors in later years.
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patriotized history
