INDEX ON CENSORSHIP | VOL.50 | NO.2 16 INDEXONCENSORSHIP.ORG index50-2.indb 16 07/07/2021 19:03:04 FEATURES PICTURED: The White Helmets search for survivors among the ruins of a building in Amirah, Syria. The building collapsed after an alleged regime air strike in July, 2019 Spinning bomb NERMA JELACIC argues dangerous revisionists are manipulating free speech defenders CREDIT: Anas Alkharboutli/DPA/Alamy INDEXONCENSORSHIP.ORG 17 index50-2.indb 17 07/07/2021 19:03:05 INDEX ON CENSORSHIP | VOL.50 | NO.2 HIRTY YEARS for facts completes the postmodernist extremist Islamist groups sit in CIJA’s SEPARATE the assault on the truth. But more important vaults and inform criminal investigations Tbeginnings of than the philosophical effect is the fact by European and American law conflicts in Bosnia- that disinformation campaigns have enforcement and UN bodies. These Herzegovina, where I been politically weaponised by Russia. documents tell, in the organisers’ and come from, and Syria, Under the flag of freedom of expression, perpetrators’ own words, a deplorable ABOVE: Nerma Jelacic where I work now. they have become a dangerous tool in story of a pre-planned campaign of Bosnia and Syria are information warfare. murder, torture and persecution, a story the bookends that encompass the three I know this, because I am one of that started in 2011 when the Syrian decades when we lived in a world where their targets. regime began its systematic and violent our collective conscience, eventually, Earlier this year, the Commission for crackdown on protesters. recognised we had a responsibility to International Justice and Accountability CIJA’s work is pioneering and protect the innocent, to bring those (CIJA), an NGO of which I am one of the painfully necessary as it ensures responsible for war crimes to justice, directors, flung itself into the eye of the crucial evidence is secured, analysed and to fight against revisionism and Syria disinformation storm by exposing and properly stored when there is no denial. Whereas the Bosnian tragedy of the nefarious nature of the Working political will or ability to engage official the 1990s marked the (re)birth of these Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media public bodies to investigate the crimes. values, the Syrian carnage has all but put (WGSPM), an outfit comprising mainly Our evidence has been described by an end to them. UK academics and bloggers. international criminal justice experts to Nowhere is this sad fact more The CIJA investigation revealed that, be stronger than that available to Allied apparent than in the expansion of far from being fringe conspiracists, these powers holding the Nazi leadership to disinformation, revisionism and denial revisionists, employed by some of the account during the Nuremberg trials. about the crimes perpetrated by the UK’s top universities, were collaborating This makes us dangerous and this makes Syrian regime against its own people. As with Russian diplomats in four us a target – both in the theatre of war a result, disinformation campaigns have countries; were willing to co-operate and in the war on the truth. become increasingly vicious, targeting with presumed Russian security agents Before long, we were in the survivors, individuals and organisations to advance their agenda and to attack crosshairs of apologists for Syrian working in conflict zones. Coddled their opponents; were co-ordinating president Bashar al-Assad and, soon by the ever-expanding parachute of dissemination of disinformation with after that, in those of the Russian- academic freedom and freedom of bloggers, alternative media and Russian sponsored disinformation networks. expression, these unrelenting smear state media; appeared to be planning Propaganda has been the key campaigns have ruined, endangered the doxxing of survivors of chemical ingredient of every war since the and taken lives. They have eroded trust attacks; and admitted to making up beginning of time. But its unrelenting in institutions, democratic processes sources and facts when necessary to advance in the midst of the Syrian war and the media and sown division in advance their cause. is unprecedented. The beginnings of fragmenting democratic societies. The investigation was a step out its weaponisation can be traced back Their destabilising effect on democratic of my organisation’s usual focus. For to 2015 when the wheels of fortune principles has already led to incitement almost a decade, CIJA has been working turned for Syria as Russia got militarily to violence. Left unchecked, it can only (quietly and covertly) inside Syria to involved in the conflict. Assad was get worse. collect evidence necessary to establish on the way to winning on the ground The disinformation movement has the responsibility of high-ranking but the battle to own the narrative of brought together a diverse coalition of officials for the plethora of crimes that the war was only just beginning. In leftists, communists, racists, ideologues, have become a staple of daily news. More its advance, Moscow’s disinformation anti-Semites and fascists. Amplified by than one million pages of documents machinery swept up Western academics, social media, their Nietzschean contempt produced by the Syrian regime and former diplomats, Hollywood stars and punk-rock legends. New outfits and personalities mushroomed, bringing These revisionists, employed by some of the a breath of fresh air to the stale and steady group of woo-woo pedlars and UK’s top universities, were collaborating conspiracy theorists from the 1990s. The WGSPM is one such outfit. with Russian diplomats Founded in 2017, its most prominent 18 INDEXONCENSORSHIP.ORG index50-2.indb 18 07/07/2021 19:03:05 FEATURES members are Piers Robinson, formerly Propaganda has been the key ingredient of of Sheffield University; Paul McKeigue and Tim Hayward, of the University every war since the beginning of time of Edinburgh; David Miller, of the University of Bristol; and Tara McCormack, of the University of torture-camp footage was faked and the more on tearing down individuals and Leicester. Apart from their shared number of Srebrenica genocide victims organisations working in or reporting interest in proliferating pro-Assad, was inflated. In Syria, according to on the war. In order to make a lie pro-Russian Syria propaganda, between disinformationists, the Syrian regime’s believable, one must discredit those who them these professors cover 9/11 chemical weapon attacks were staged endeavour to test the truth. truthism, Skripal poisoning conspiracies, or committed by opposition groups, The WGSPM started by disputing Covid-19 scepticism, anti-Semitism and footage of children and other civilian that chemical weapons attacks were Bosnian war crimes denial. victims was faked and the number of conducted by the Assad regime, The modus operandi of those who went through the archipelago proffering instead pseudoscientific disinformation in Syria is simple and of torture camps was inflated. arguments that the attacks either did not borrows from how it was done in Syria disinformationists make great happen, or were staged or committed Bosnia: sow seeds of doubt regarding use of the postmodernist scepticism by opposition groups, potentially with two or three out of myriad atrocities about evidence and truth in order to the support of Western imperialist committed by the Syrian regime in order advance their theories. They resort to governments. They zoned in on two out to put a question mark over the whole obfuscation, distortion and alternative of more than 300 documented chemical opus of criminal acts overseen by Assad evidence. The vision is blurred. weapons attacks. But two was enough to over the past decade. Questions are important, answers not so start sowing the seeds of doubt among much. Context is irrelevant. wider audiences. IN BOSNIA, ACCORDING to There is not much of a change there The Organisation for the Prohibition revisionists, Sarajevo massacres were from the 1990s. The only marked of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was in staged or committed by the Bosnian difference is that today’s approach to the crosshairs as its investigative teams army against its own people, Prijedor advancing disinformation focuses much and fact-finding missions returned with findings pointing to the Syrian regime’s responsibility for the attacks over and over again. The OPCW was portrayed to be issuing doctored reports in support of the alleged Western imperialist agenda to overthrow the regime, including by the use of military intervention for which chemical weapons attacks would be a pretext. The disinformationists parroted Damascus and Moscow in whose view all of the alleged chemical attacks were staged on the orders of the West. A special level of vitriol targeted the White Helmets, a Syrian search and rescue organisation whose cameras record the daily toll of Syrian regime CREDIT: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy SOPA CREDIT: and Russian bombs and chemical weapon attacks on innocent people’s lives as they rush in to pull the victims out of the rubble. They were branded as actors, jihadists and Western intelligence service agents. They were accused with zero evidence of organ-harvesting. The ABOVE: Al-Atareb City Hospital in Aleppo after an attack. An abandoned wheelchair sits on a children they pulled out of the rubble bloodstained floor following artillery fire in which seven civilians were killed in March 2021 were cast as fake or actors. WGSPM → INDEXONCENSORSHIP.ORG 19 index50-2.indb 19 07/07/2021 19:03:06 INDEX ON CENSORSHIP | VOL.50 | NO.2 the organisation, its people and himself that it contributed to the erosion of his psychological wellbeing and, eventually, his death. The fastest way to erode the credibility of an entity is to discredit its leadership. This is what the disinformation network tried to do with the White Helmets and Le Mesurier. When they started shifting focus to CIJA, the messaging and the mode of its delivery did not change much.