Talk:False flag

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the False flag article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 3 months

Military history: Maritime / Technology

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	Maritime warfare task force
	Military science, technology, and theory task force

Law Mid‑importance

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Crime and Criminal Biography: Terrorism High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Terrorism task force (assessed as High-importance).

Scientology Low‑importance

	This article is supported by WikiProject Scientology, a collaborative effort to help develop and improve Wikipedia's coverage of Scientology. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on Scientology-related topics. See WikiProject Scientology and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.ScientologyWikipedia:WikiProject ScientologyTemplate:WikiProject ScientologyScientology articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Andrew Villeneuve (July 14, 2024). "Be extremely wary of misinformation and bad takes in wake of attempted assassination of Donald Trump". Northwest Progressive Institute. Retrieved July 15, 2024. If you've never heard the term, you might wonder what it means. Wikipedia contributors have developed an article devoted to the term, which began with these passages as of when this post was written and published:

Add more examples, change the format, or create a new page exclusively for a list of examples.

I think the page could improve greatly, by having at least a couple sections that mimic the "examples" section that are in the spanish version of this page.

There there is a list of examples like this: 1930 - USA did a false flag operation in vietnam. 1940 - Rusia did a false flag operation on England.

Etc etc....

No NATO or US false flags?

There's so many US & NATO false flags. Why the silence? Silence that verges on censorship? I mean, if an editor adds US/NATO false flags, like:

Kermit Roosevelt's CIA used terror-false flag ops to topple Mossadegh's Iranian government. Heck, the CIA admitted it paid Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

Gulf of Tonkin. NSA admits it lied about the North Vietnamese firing on US vessels to facilitate war: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm

Would these get scrubbed by overly sensitive US editors? I hope not Pounamuknight (talk) 05:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to get WP:CONSENSUS on the Talk pages of CIA activities in Iran and Gulf of Tonkin incident for calling them 'false flag attacks'. If a preponderance of reliable sources explicitly refer to them as false flag attacks and agree on this point, we'd be obliged to summarize that agreement in those articles, as well as this one. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:57, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those NSA & CIA docs is the closest we'll get to a confession of guilt. Do u really expect the CIA & NSA to explicit reference their manipulations as "false flags?" Pounamuknight (talk) 07:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, not the agencies themselves. I was referring to 3rd party WP:SECONDARY reliable sources. Historical analysis of those topics would have to explicitly identify the term "false flag" and how it applied. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:54, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pounamuknight -- "False flag" would mean that the U.S. arranged for someone else to attack U.S. ships, then blamed it on the Vietnamese, but that did not happen. Instead, relatively brief military confusion was made into a pretext by the LBJ administration... AnonMoos (talk) 03:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Read the NSA docs in the link provided. They make clear their was deliberate manipulation of the SIGINT

I mean, there's waaaaaaaay more evidence that the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag than the sketchy "Russian invasion of Ukraine" segment Pounamuknight (talk) 07:33, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're kind of missing the main point -- no matter how much relentless lying there was to inflate something which originated as a brief moment of military confusion into a phony major incident, if there was not an attack actually by entity A which was claimed to be by entity B, then there can be no "false flag" in the usual meaning of the phrase. Thoroughly dishonest war propaganda can be immoral and hypocritical, but without certain other necessary accompanying elements, it is not automatically a false flag in itself. AnonMoos (talk) 16:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disproportionate amplification of a pretext is not a false flag. Please read the definition. Acroterion (talk) 04:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's no "disproportionate amplification of a pretext" anywhere in the CIA & NSA docs. Please read them Pounamuknight (talk) 07:37, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Pounamuknight, a reading of WP:NOR and WP:AGF would be in order. WP:PRIMARY too. Acroterion (talk) 16:57, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Green Flag

Perhaps a section on the new-ish idea of a green flag operation. A state knows that an enemy is about to attack, but lets it happen in order to influence the public. 203.13.3.94 (talk) 04:40, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]