Description
Atrocity fabrication – the invention and reporting of atrocities purportedly committed by an adversary – has a centuries-long history at the heart of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion. Its use can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets, transforming in the public eye wars of unprovoked aggression into wars of liberation of the oppressed, or turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure abusive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions. As it plays a large and growing role in global conflict in the 21st century understanding atrocity fabrication and the consistent means and ends to which it has been used has become crucial to comprehending geopolitical events in the present day.
This book elucidates the seldom explored but central role played by atrocity fabrication in eleven major conflicts from the 1950s to the present day: from Korea, Vietnam and Cuba during the Cold War to Iraq, Libya and the emerging Sino-U.S. cold war more recently. It highlights the many variations of atrocity fabrication, the strong consistencies in how atrocity fabrication is used, and the consequences it has for the populations of the targeted countries and demonstrates the roles played by media and both government and non-governmental organizations in misleading the public as to the actuality of these highly publicized events. The emerging trend towards this mode of action, and the deep implications this has for world order, make an understanding of its history particularly critical.
MATT WITT –
“Whenever the U.S. goes to war, the public is told that the enemy is committing horrible atrocities, in contrast to America’s supposedly pure motives and conduct. In many cases, documents and other evidence come out later showing that these atrocities were exaggerated or didn’t happen at all and that U.S. intentions and tactics were not as clean as portrayed. Examples explored in this book include the Vietnam War, Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the war on Libya, and more.” MATT WITT, New Labor Forum, City University of New York.
JAN NEDERVEEN PIETERSE –
“Abrams’ book, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences (2023) is a comprehensive cogent overview of US propaganda operations, black ops from the Korean war and Vietnam war onward. Seeing them together is a formidable read. Fabricated or inflated security threats have been a key entry point of American influence.”
JAN NEDERVEEN PIETERSE, Chair and Distinguished Professor of Global Studies and Sociology at University of California Santa Barbara.
AL MAYADEEN/MONTHLY REVIEW –
“New book reveals Tiananmen square massacre, others fabricated by U.S. For decades, Western media have been narrating the same story about China being this brutal “dictatorship” whose people are killed at the hands of the criminal communist regime, giving the Tiananmen Square massacre as a prime example of the brutality of the Chinese government, wherein supposedly scores of students were killed at the hands of the People’s Liberation Army. However, a new book emerged proving that these claims are false and have no foundation to them except for Washington’s aspirations to tarnish the image of the Chinese Communist Party.
Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order, a new book by A. B. Abrams, highlights that there never were any killings in the infamous Tiananmen Square back in 1989 as had been spread by Western propaganda for decades, and it was revealed that the entire affair was but a mere attempt at showing China as the villain in the geopolitical arena. The book underlines that no killings, let alone a massacre as is proclaimed, took place in Tiananmen Square…” AL MAYADEEN, republished by MONTHLY REVIEW
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW –
“An impressively timely study given the contemporary assaults on American Democracy by authoritarian elements of local, state, and federal office holders whose boldest attempt was the effort to overthrow a freely and fairly elected Presidential election, and foreign national efforts to mislead and adversely affect the American citizenry, and the struggles between the democracies of the world against the authoritarian nations seeking domination over them in a cyber war based conflict, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order is an exceptionally well written study that is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, college, and university library Contemporary Political Science collections. Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order will have a very special relevance and value to students, academia, political activists, state and federal government officials, as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject of ‘Fake News” with respect ot Human Rights, Journalism, Democracy and Social Media Communications.” MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
KIM PETERSEN –
“Atrocity Fabrication arms the reader with information to ponder and to think past mind-numbing patriotism. This is the third book that I have read by AB Abrams, so I am aware of the depth of research, the substantiated factuality, the logic, and the implicit morality that led to these books being written. Books by Abrams are critical reading.” KIM PETERSEN, Dissident Voice
CARLA STEA –
“In a phenomenally well documented study of the fraudulent accusations of atrocities leveled against countries targeted for military intervention by US NATO, fraudulent accusations then used as “justifications” or rationalizations for “humanitarian military intervention” which devastates the targeted country, ravaging the “infrastructure necessary for sustaining human life” and plundering that country’s opulent resources, A.B. Abrams describes savage US-Nato military interventions that trivialize the scourges of Attilla the Hun. … Abrams book, Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences, is a masterpiece, deciphering modern history, and identifying the facts underlying the theatrical obfuscation by Western media. It should be absolutely required reading in all schools and universities in the West, and elsewhere, but it is perhaps too truthful to be tolerated by the Deep State and Establishment, as Galileo’s heresy was intolerable to the Vatican during the Inquisition.
It must be read by everyone who seeks the truth in order to restore sanity and genuine humanity to this tormented world, on the verge of incineration, as Daniel Ellsberg and Scott Ritter (and innumerable other experts) fear that the nuclear clock approaches midnight and the extermination of life on earth.” CARLA STEA, GlobalResearch.ca
DAVID SWANSON –
“I can’t recommend highly enough a new book by A.B. Abrams called Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order. Despite using the term “fake news” there is not the slightest speck of a hint of Trumpism. Despite reporting on atrocity fabrication, there is not the slightest glimmer of a reference to nonsense claims that school shootings are staged, or any mention of anything at all that is not well documented. Most of the fabricated atrocities recounted here have been admitted to by their fabricators and recanted by the media outlets that had promoted them.
I’m talking about such fabricated atrocities as #German public mass rapes and child killings in#Belgium in World War I as concocted by British propagandists, Spanish horrors in Cuba invented by yellow journalists to start the Spanish American War, the fictional massacre in Tiananmen Square, the imaginary babies taken out of incubators in Kuwait, mass rapes in Serbia and Libya, Nazi-like death camps in Serbia and China, or the tales of defectors from North Korea who gradually learn to completely alter their stories…” DAVID SWANSON, World Without War
NURI VITTACHI –
…Abrams is a highly respected scholar, known for his superb research-led work into geopolitical relations, and his ability to see through the thick fog of media noise. In painstaking detail, with sources carefully cited, this new book tells precisely how the western world uses the media to shape global thinking by creating false narratives and weaponizing concepts such as human rights to demonize rivals….” NURY VITTACHI, Fridayeveryday, Hong Kong
PETER FORD –
“A B Abrams has provided a signal service by taking ‘fake news’ about alleged atrocities out of the current affairs arena in which it is mainly discussed and into a much broader, deeper and in fact even more disturbing context. He perceptively traces the evolution of the use of fabricated atrocity narratives back to the first days of Western warfare and colonial expansion through to eleven more recent case studies. Chillingly, he chronicles how domination of the information space by Western powers through atrocity narratives has driven conflicts far worse in their outcomes than the atrocities alleged. Scholars, journalists and others with a serious interest in understanding international affairs will find this thought-provoking, ground-breaking analysis highly rewarding.” PETER FORD, Former British Ambassador to Syria