Facts / interpretations / warfare – History is littered with events that research shows didn’t happen or were overblown. It is hard to avoid being a part of spreading misinformation in this day and age but we all need to try
“THE THINGS ONE feels absolutely certain about are never true,” Oscar Wilde said. Or, at least, never as true as we think. If you are having a difference of ideological or political opinion with someone, it can be a real argument-stopper to ask: “Why do you believe that?” Even the most certain interlocutor should be embarrassed to have to answer: “I read it somewhere” or “I saw it on the internet.”
Do you remember George Lakoff’s 2004 book “Don’t Think of an Elephant”? He says our mind inserts ideas and images into frames that have been created by past inputs and reinforced by repetition. See a cogent summary and critique of the work here. One example: Richard Nixon should not have said “I am not a crook” because then people started associating Nixon with crookedness.
The sensational often produces the strongest false memories. Did you ever hear of German soldiers in World War I impaling Belgian babies on bayonets? Probably so, and they didn’t. I hesitate to post this gory cartoon (by M.B.Walker, from Wikimedia Commons) but as it appeared in a wide-circulation US magazine, Life for 25 July 1915, I figure we can deal with it today, after 108 years of historical horrors. And it is a sort of test: will we remember the outrage inspired by the cartoon, or the fact that it depicts a fiction?
Did the Nazis do just as bad and worse to babies? According to a prison camp survivor, yes, though as always you’d want to look for more evidence. But such atrocity claims are usually false, at least going back as far as English accusations against the Irish in 1641, according one author who has studied the question.
These stories provide a current lesson. On Oct. 11 a CNN news report claimed that Hamas had decapitated babies and toddlers, as confirmed by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. President Biden himself stated that “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children” but evidently was carried away in the heat of the moment because soon “Two senior administration officials said Biden was referring to reports from Israel about beheaded children and cited several media reports of beheadings.” In other words, no pictures. And even if there were photos, it is all too easy these days to reappropriate or artificially generate images of atrocities, as brought out in an analysis by Elizabeth Vos.
OF COURSE, WAR itself is an atrocity, but it serves no purpose other than propaganda facts of it to be either exaggerated or (probably more often) understated.
Journalists (of whom at least 29 have already been killed in the current conflict) are essential in helping us understand what is happening, but even they are fallible, as seen in the embarrassment of CNN relaying the decapitation claim and then its reporter having to apologize and admit that “I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry.”
As regards the devastating explosion in a Gaza hospital (or, more precisely, its courtyard and parking lot), Max Boot in the Washington Post wrote (in the words of his title) that “Israel was judged guilty of bombing a Gaza hospital before the evidence was in,” and Israel offered its own evidence that a Palestinian terror group was responsible, as was again restated by President Biden.
But then New York Times reporters analyzed video evidence and concluded that an off-course rocket launched by Islamic Jihad that is often claimed (including by Israeli and US officials) to have hit the hospital actually never came closer than 2 miles. That doesn’t solve the culpability question but does show the fragility of purported evidence. For more background on conflicting claims in past Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, see Michelle Goldberg, “The Danger of Jumping to Conclusions.”
Although “truth is the first casualty in war,” we still have the duty to try to understand what is going on. Officials we elected are making decisions about far-off places, our taxes are paying for vast amounts of armaments around the world, and people we know may be risking their lives in the military as we speak.
I have put in more links than usual, in case anyone asks: “Why do you believe what you believe?” But the ultimate questions come down to judgments that can be argued.
Some celebrated “the end of history” in 1989 after the collapse of the Soviet Union—but even the underlying claim that liberal democracies had proven their lasting superiority seems, unfortunately, on shaky ground. The US won in Iraq and Afghanistan, right? Not so sure now; and what does it mean to “win”? Do ordinary people really gain anything from a war?
I think: let’s all do our best to figure out the facts, and then marshal our analyses to debate our interpretations, evaluations, and predictions, in our quest to get the closest we can to understanding the world we live in.
Nathaniel Smith is a retired professor in international studies and languages. He lives in West Chester, PA where he is active in environmental activities and the Chester County Democrats. This post first appeared as an email and is used with permission. Sharing with credit is permitted.