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Concept
Accusation in a mirror
Summary
Accusation in a mirror (AiM) (also called mirror politics, mirror propaganda, mirror image propaganda, or a mirror argument) is a hate-speech incitement technique where one falsely attributes to one's adversaries the intentions that one has for oneself and/or the actions that one is in the process of enacting. 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 and the Rwandan genocide. By invoking collective self-defense, accusation in a mirror is used to justify genocide, just as self-defense is 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". The OSAPG includes mirror politics as a factor in their Analysis Framework on Genocide, when analyzing whether a given situation poses a risk of genocide. Scholars such as Kenneth L. Marcus and Gregory S. Gordon have investigated ways in which accusation in a mirror has been used to incite hatred and how its impact can be mitigated.
Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. The name was used by an anonymous Rwandan propagandist in Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement. Drawing on the ideas of Joseph Goebbels and Vladimir Lenin, he instructed colleagues to "impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do". By invoking collective self-defense, propaganda is used to justify genocide, just as self-defense is a defense for individual homicide. Susan Benesch remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary.
The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Official source
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