The immediate trigger for World War II was Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. But how did Nazi Germany justify the invasion of Poland? It was by using a trick that is common in political strategies to build narratives for justification.
It is called “false-flagging”, a covert operation carried out to fix the blame on another party to justify pre-planned actions against it, or build narratives to impress people’s views and opinions in a manner to achieve desired goals.
The plan was carried out on August 31, 1939. The scene of the operation – called “Operation Himmler” – was the Gleiwitz radio station, located in Germany, close to the Polish border.
As per the news reports, a group of Polish insurgents launched an “unprovoked” attack on the Gleiwitz radio station that was manned by a skeletal German staff, overpowered them, took control of the radio station, and then delivered a speech in Polish to declare that the station was now in Poland’s control.
They criticized Adolf Hitler, and then “concluded with disgraceful abuse of the Fuhrer,” according to the report in the German newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter the next day.
The truth was exposed only during the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials (November 1945 to October 1946), when the second-in-command of Operation Himmler – Alfred Naujocks, a Nazi veteran of the dreaded Schutzstaffel (SS) force – revealed the facts. Operation Himmler was actually planned by Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking SS official, a hardcore Hitler loyalist, and an architect of the Holocaust.
Today, social media and artificial intelligence (AI) help reach out to people across the world with narratives – false-flagged or otherwise – leading to easier shaping of people’s opinions by the perpetrators against their opponents. Disinformation is amplified, wrong theories are floated to paint the targeted parties as wrong-doers, facts are deflected, and leaders unjustly discredited.
Political narratives are built by structuring stories, posting AI-generated images, building myths, and lending them legitimacy, while the objectives include bringing disrepute to the targeted parties, sabotaging plans or schemes of ruling dispensations by building negative opinions about them, and shaping mass psychology among voters aimed at generating support for the perpetrating party. This is a potent tool in politics as people’s psychology plays a vital role in the process.
The easier way for people to identify the credibility of narratives is to focus on tangible narratives rather than intangible ones. Tangible narratives pertain to those which people can see, perceive and feel directly – like quality of infrastructure, electricity or water supply, education, healthcare, people’s security, mobility, and even freedom of expression or the lack of it.
Performance of respective elected representatives, too, counts to form more credible opinions, wherein narratives are not required at all. It is the intangible narratives – dealing with abstracts like ideologies, national identity, memory and reputation – which make it easier for politicians and their parties to influence voters’ minds.
A salesman may resort to impressive sales talks to promote mediocre – even substandard – products to impress prospective customers into buying them. But in this case, the minds of people could be compromised by using falsehood, with their own future at stake – and that deals with our country, our state, our city, our town, our village, our living spaces… for that matter, our very world and life!