I’m just not understanding why everyone isn’t apprised about how this works. It seems a pretty basic thing to spread the word about it. It would absolutely take some of the wind out of this as a cognitive attack, if people understand it’s happening to them, on either end of it. So people are warned about when they’re being whipped up to commit genocide, or warning people that they may be the targets.
Kenneth L. Marcus, Accusation in a Mirror, 43 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 357 (2012). Loyola University Chicago Law Journal Volume 43 Issue 2 Winter 2012 Article 5 The basic idea of AiM is deceptively simple: propagandists must “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.” 9 In other words, AiM is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one’s adversaries by drowning them in a particular river, then one should accuse one’s adversaries of plotting precisely the same crime. As a result, one will accuse one’s enemies of doing the same thing despite their plans.,, It is similar to a false anticipatory tu quoque: before one’s enemies accuse one truthfully, one accuses them falsely of the same misdeed.” This may seem an unlikely means of inciting mass-murder, since it would intuitively seem likely not only to fail but also to backfire by publicly telegraphing its speakers’ malicious intentions at times when the speakers may lack the wherewithal to carry out their schemes.12 The counter-intuitiveness of this method is best appreciated when one grasps that its injunctions are to be taken literally. There is no hyperbole in the Note’s directive that the propagandist should “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.”I 3 The point is not merely to impute iniquities that are as bad as the misdeeds that the propagandist’s own party intends. Instead, AiM is the more audacious idea of charging one’s adversary with “exactly” the misdeeds that the propagandist’s party intends to commit. But why, out of all of the serious allegations that one might level at one’s enemy, should one accuse the adversary of precisely the wrongs that one’s own party intends to commit? After all, the risks are apparent. By revealing the propagandist’s own intentions, AiM deprives the propagandist’s party of the advantages of speed and surprise and gives the adversary an opportunity to anticipate and prepare. At the same time, this method provides independent observers and subsequent judicial tribunals with evidence of intent. Moreover, AiM is not based on any evaluation of what misdeeds are most plausibly ascribed to the enemy, such as those that are based on traditional stereotypes, defamations, or actual culpability, since it relies instead on the plans of the propagandist’s party. Despite its counter-intuitive nature, AiM has proven to be one of the central mechanisms by which genocidaires publicly and directly incite genocide, in part because it turns out to be quite effective. Once AiM’s structure and functions are understood, its pervasive and efficacious presence can be discerned not only in mass-murder but also in a host of lesser persecutions. These qualities can make AiM an indispensable tool for identifying and prosecuting incitement. The Genocide Convention criminalizes “direct and public incitement to commit genocide,”l 4 regardless of whether actual genocide occurs.15