MAGA Push INSANE LIES As MN Shooter Revealed To Be Trump Supporter The Bulwark Jun 15, 2025 Tim Miller: “I was reluctant to come back on to do this uh to talk about what is happening in the dialogue in the far right fever swamps talking about these assassination attempts but it has bubbled up to such prominent accounts uh that I I feel like it must be addressed and that is that we are seeing from MAGA Republicans from influential um right-wing uh accounts and the advancement of a notion that this assassin the suspect uh was a Democrat of some kind and was unhappy with his fellow Democrats”
This is not an unusual cognitive warfare tactic unfortunately.
Confronting Evil: Genocide in Rwanda – Human Rights Watch Mar 28, 2014 Corinne Dufka: “When I was interviewing these these militia men from this one checkpoint I asked them and I said you know there are a lot of accounts of a lot of killing going on and of massacres going on I didn’t use the word genocide but I used the word massacres – of massacres of Tutsi going on now is this true and how can you explain it and so on and so forth and you know one I got the predictable answer of you know of denial as well as explaining that in fact it was the Tutsis who were actually planning to massacre the Hutu.”
There’s a name for this spin, and it’s called Accusation in a Mirror, and it’s actually quite common. You will hear this most often referred to in the US as “every accusation is a confession” especially in regards to Donald Trump. It’s a legal concept, and well understood by genocide scholars.
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 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.