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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Xowets (talk | contribs) at 21:34, 27 December 2014 (→This article is doesn't cover much of the examples.: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


Spanish American War

This is a conspiracy theory. It is WP:fringe history. Since there are plenty of actual "false flag" incidents, it is not necessary or helpful to add imaginary or potential incidents to the article. Capitalismojo (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Moreover, this was discussed as far back as 2008 and the consensus was to remove. (Something no one bothered to do) Capitalismojo (talk) 17:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it'd be useful to have another discussion to see if the same consensus exists? It is 6 years old at this point. It's not totally WP:fringe as it's the official viewpoint of the Cuban government. (Also don't see a consensus agreed in the archives). --Connelly90 12:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Does it improve the article to put a controversial CT in? I suspect not. It seems Orwellian to rely on Castro's government pronouncements as opposed to notable mainstream historians. Is it neccesary to illuminate the concept of "false flag"? No, we have plenty of legitimate examples. This is not a list of every "false flag" operation in recorded history. It is an encyclopedia article designed to explain the concept. This controversial conspiracy theory is not neccesary and does not improve the article in my opinion. Capitalismojo (talk) 14:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm playing Devil's Advocate slightly here as nobody seems to be engaging this in debate or discussion, and we can't really gain a consensus without one.
I agree there are quite clear reasons as to why the Cuban government would like to see a certain version of events, but there is a good argument that their acceptance of this alternative to the official story makes it more than a "fringe theory".
I think adding a few of these "controversial conspiracy theories" has the potential to add some value to the article, but only by restricting their inclusion to the more well-known or talked-about ones (Pearl Harbour, 9/11 etc) as opposed to turning it into, as you say, a list. These more "controversial" topics are the main reason people are looking at this article in the first place --Connelly90 15:41, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You were going so well until you said Pearl Harbor. The explosion of the Maine is much more appropriate to this article because of the serious lack of evidence which allows so much conjecture. Pearl Harbor was truly an attack by the Japanese, so it does not qualify at all as false flag. The question of whether FDR led the Japanese to engage in a course of warfare is not a question of false flag. Conspiracy by one side resulting in an attack by the other side does not equal false flag.
The Maine blowing up in Havana harbor has a lot of false flag conjecture written about it, both historically and recently. It's entirely possible that an agent of the US government caused the explosion, though it is very doubtful. That's why I wanted to put that section into the article: so that the conjecture could be described and countered with the official version. Binksternet (talk) 17:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have not done my own digging into Pearl Harbour, so I wouldn't know. I've only heard of it mentioned as a "false flag" in many discussions on the subject of such operations, so I included it here as an example of a controversial event. What I'm saying is that we take these suggested or suspected "false flags" and run them past WP:FRINGE; if there's enough debate on the subject from credible sources, then I think it would improve the article to mention the debate within it. If Pearl Harbour doesn't meet those criteria (and from what you've said, I suspect it wouldn't) then with what I'm suggesting, we don't include it. --Connelly90 09:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is no source anywhere (reliable or otherwise) which refers to Pearl Harbor as a "false flag" operation. Thus we can not include it in this article. There is no consensus to include the conspiracy theory about the Maine in the article. Capitalismojo (talk) 16:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for Maine in Havana Harbor exploded by American agent

Here are some useful sources describing the explosion of the Maine in the context of false flag operations. Binksternet (talk) 19:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Official US Navy position: Explosion was most likely spontaneous combustion of a coal bunker. Evidence of an external mine "remains thin". "Despite the best efforts of experts and historians in investigating this complex and technical subject, a definitive explanation for the destruction of Maine remains elusive."
  • Hall, Anthony (2010). Earth Into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism. McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series. Vol. 62. McGill-Queen's Press. p. 642. ISBN 0773531211. Like the Reichstag fire of 1933, the sinking of the Maine is widely seen as a classic false-flag operation... Page 547: "The intent of this classic false-flag operation was to whip up public hostility towards the designated enemy."
  • Lynn Margulis says the Maine was likely a false-flag operation. Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel, page 160.
  • Peter Dale Scott writes that the Maine is often portrayed as false-flag, but without solid evidence. American War Machine: Deep Politics...
  • Popular author Andy Thomas writes that "some say it was a simple accident, others that it was sunk by Spain, and, of course, there is the popular view that the USA sank it itself as a pretext for war. Yet again, confusing evidence supports more than one of the possibilities, which remain unsettled to this day..."
  • Expansionism: Its Effects on Cuba's Independence, page 134: US officials blame an external mine, Cuban officials blame accidental internal explosion, then finally Spanish journalists blame the US itself, blowing up the Maine as a pretext for war.
  • Professor Thomas E. Morrissey writes that, since 1959, popular sentiment in Cuba is that "the United States intentionally blew up the Maine to justify its intervention..." This position is stated in Cuban textbooks. (Donegan and the Splendid Little War, page 416.)
  • The Yellow Kids, page 172: "Another vein of speculation, seldom argued in print but believed by many in both Cuba and the United States, is that William Randolph Hearst was somehow the instigator of a plot to blow up the Maine."
  • William A. Chanler was said to be the cause of the explosion, according to one conspiracy theory which says Chanler acted after a suggestion by Teddy Roosevelt. Another theory was that some US citizen such as Hearst planned the explosion. Historian Hugh Thomas writes of this false flag speculation in Cuba, Or, The Pursuit of Freedom, page 364.
  • In 1960 after the the La Coubre explosion, Fidel Castro said that the US had caused the explosion as a pretext for war, just as they had in the case of the Maine explosion. See The Brilliant Disaster, page 53.
  • The major Communist Cuban newspaper Granma says that the US blew up the Maine on purpose. See Tom Miller in "Remember the Maine?", a chapter in Cuba: True Stories.
  • Mark Falcoff writes in A Culture of Its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously, page 195, that "many Spanish and Cuban historians still maintain—that the United States purposely exploded its own battleship Maine to provide an excuse for intervention."
  • Cuban politician and former director of the national library Eliades Acosta claims that "powerful economic interests" in the United States were probably responsible not only for the sinking of the Maine but for the assassination of three 19th-century U.S. presidents, beginning with Abraham Lincoln.
Wonderful stuff. Drinks deeply of the waters of debunked conspiracy theory and Castro regime propaganda. Twofer! Capitalismojo (talk) 21:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Include text about the Maine explosion?

The consensus of this RFC shows a large desire to not include the explosion of the USS Maine in this article and the article largely only includes veritably true false flag operations. Cheers, TLSuda (talk) 18:17, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should this article briefly describe the various published points of view about what caused the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana? Binksternet (talk) 16:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

  • Support something like this version, perhaps with more or less text. (There is a lot more that can be added.) The sources in the section above show the prevalence of the explosion being explained by some people as a false flag operation, and the degree of uncertainty found in the official conclusion. Binksternet (talk) 16:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is an article about "false flag" attacks. There are plenty of actual such things without adding events that were not such events. It does not help or add clarity to this article. Indeed this is considered fringe and conspiracy theory. Capitalismojo (talk) 21:40, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose For a couple of reasons.
As Capitalismojo has kindly listed a number of sources for the theory that the Maine explosion was a False Flag operation, it can be seen that they fall into one of two categories:
Post-1959 Cuban theories advanced by an anti-US government, or sources ultimately based on those theories. Any support for these as reliable sources would have to explain why Cuban governments prior to Castro made no such assertions or show that they exist/
The remaining sources are weasel-worded "people say" statements. With no basis for what people say these are worthless. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - basically per Capitalismojo - this article should include things that were actual false flag operations (like the Gleiwitz incident), not incidents that have fairly conclusively been proved to have been something else (an accident, malfunctioning radar equipment, whatever). On that basis, I think the Gulf of Tonkin incident needs to be removed also, along with the fact that whoever calls it a false flag operation apparently doesn't know what a false flag operation means (which is to say, lying about a false report of a torpedo boat attack is not the same thing as blowing up your own ship and pretending it was the North Vietnamese). At some point, we have to make the right editorial judgement and conclude that though plenty of conspiracy-theorists say that something was a false flag operation, they are wrong and we shouldn't be propagating false information. Parsecboy (talk) 13:57, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that here is where we tell the reader why the false information is false. The bad information is out there, and Wikipedia needs to address it rather than hope it goes away. Binksternet (talk) 14:22, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, that's not how it's being treated in the article - they're being presented as basically equal viewpoints when they are clearly not. Being included in the main section of the list (as opposed to a separate "alleged/conspiracy theory/etc." section) doesn't help either. Parsecboy (talk) 13:24, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion

  • Despite the official US government stance that the explosion was accidental, the idea is still "widely" held that it was caused by an American agent. Binksternet (talk) 16:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd be careful using that book to support your claim - it appears to be filled with 9/11 "truther" nonsense, conspiracy theories about the non-involvement of the US and UK in the Rwandan Genocide, and other such garbage. Parsecboy (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • And yet the author is an academic, and the publisher is the respected McGill-Queen's University Press. So the unlikely contents of the book are acceptably reliable for the statements made. Binksternet (talk) 18:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Neither of those facts mean that Anthony James Hall isn't a nutjob 9/11 truther, whose views are, at least in this area, biased garbage. Please note that his article notes he has been described as a conspiracy theorist. And what's more, this isn't even his area of expertise; if you want to cite Hall on globalization, fine (though even still do so with care) but he is in no way an expert on why Maine sank or even whether conspiracy theories about her loss are "widely" held. Parsecboy (talk) 19:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • I agree with Binksternet's assertion. It would appear that the consensus wants to keep this article focused on demonstrably true false flag operations ignoring the multitude of whackadoodle claims. Is there a good place to mention and dismiss those claims, or does that lean too far to the fringe? One review says Hall is a conspiracy nut and that ought to be mentioned. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • Which one, that Hall is an academic and his book was published by a reputable press and is therefore a good source? Or that he is a credible authority on whether the sinking of Maine was a false flag operation (or that it is "widely perceived" as one)? I'd only agree to the latter in limited cases (and this isn't one of them) and I'd reject the second outright. If one buys into the truther garbage, one has lost all credibility as far as other conspiracy issues are concerned. And frankly, it calls his serious scholarship into question as well - much like David Irving's The Mare's Nest, long the definitive work on Germany's V-weapons programs during WWII, which has since been tarnished by his later Holocaust denial and other, miscellaneous stupidity. For what it's worth, the fact that Hall has been called a conspiracy theorist is included in his article.
            • I don't think we need a section on conspiracy theories, since they are by definition, fringe theories, and presenting them, even if only to discredit them, probably gives them undue weight. Parsecboy (talk) 00:58, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • With how infowars and the crazies throw this term around, I think it makes more sense to address and dismiss than to categorically ignore. I think the consensus is wrong on this, especially considering issues like the sinking of the Maine have been debunked. Have fun fighting the vandals and POV pushers because I'm bailing on this article. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                • Do you honestly think that having a section that explicitly debunks the conspiracy theories will make the crazies any less likely to try to push their POV? And what's worse about this line of argument is that Binksternet's version doesn't even reject them. The assertion that the sinking was an act of a US agent (and that US economic interests were responsible for assassinating Abraham Lincoln and 2 other presidents) is presented uncritically, as if it has equal weight with Rickover's investigation. Not to mention that using Hall's conspiracy-filled garbage to support the assertion that the false flag theory is "widely held" is completely unacceptable.
                • The central issue here is WP:VALID, which states that "Conspiracy theories...should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit them where including them would unduly legitimize them..." Parsecboy (talk) 12:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's been a month since discussion has petered out - I think we can safely call this a fairly firm consensus to exclude the sinking of Maine from the article. Parsecboy (talk) 18:55, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reichstag Fire refs

The refs for the Reichstag fire don't mention false flag. Capitalismojo (talk) 21:14, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's your point? They do mention the possibility that the Nazis set the fire to frame the communists, and applying a dictionary definition (or a thesaurus, for that matter) to an event does not constitute WP:SYNTH. Parsecboy (talk) 19:15, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Entry name

Would it be reasonable to move this entry to False flag operation? It's not about the use of the term false flag. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MH-17

It looks like MH-17 disaster could be a false flag. Perhaps it should be added to this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.2.9.254 (talk) 23:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have sources that document this as the pervasive view in mainstream media and scholarship? Otherwise, you are abusing this talkpage as a forum for personal points of view. Acroterion (talk) 15:34, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have sources that document this is as one of the views, it may not be the mainstream view. If it is truly a false flag then it will not be the mainstream view since the people who created the event are also the ones controlling most of the media. Anyway, here are my sources:[1][2][3] If it is ok with you I would like to add some information about MH-17 to the main article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.54.92 (talk) 22:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Inclusion here can't be justified by the circular reason prevalent among such theories : it needs to be substantial consensus among mainstream academic historical sources. Acroterion (talk) 22:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

These are far from mainstream sources. Perhaps you could try adding this info on the main entry at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which appears to be monitored by many with detailed knowledge, and see what luck you have. Anything in an entry for Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in this WP entry for False flag operations should reflect the consensus established there. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 22:34, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would advise treading with care at the main article, which has been the subject of overt efforts by nationalist partisans to skew the content away from mainstream reports. Acroterion (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mainstream reports = Western propaganda. And the fact that you won't allow reports other than mainstream ones shows how corrupt and defunct Wikipedia is, and should show the world not the trust this western wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:470:6CC2:0:0:0:1337:C0DE (talk) 09:24, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Acroterion's defense of so-called "mainstream" views is deeply troubling: referencing a "mainstream" viewpoint should not be a substitute for critical thinking nor an excuse for censorship. For example, there are far more published references to 9/11 as a possible inside job (i.e. a false flag) than the conspiracies about the FSB appartment bombings. Yet we see the latter on this page and not the former. I also note that a published, verifiable source is no longer sufficient for Wikipedia - now it must be a "mainstream" view. I will label this the "Phlogiston Rule" considering that fantasy was once a mainstream view, just like WMDs in Iraq. "Mainstream media" is now a term of derision, methinks that Wikipedia is moving into the realm of irrelevancy, like other mainstream media. I'll not bother with this site ever again. -- 20:07, 29 November 2014 79.65.157.98

Your phrasing "published, verifiable source" left out the word "reliable"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 13:58, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good point — "mainstream" has no correlation with "reliability". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.65.157.89 (talk) 00:12, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is doesn't cover much of the examples.

This article lacks the following events: 

 - September 11 2001
 - Boston Marathon 2013
 - Sandy Hook 
 - Batman Shooting
 - Gulf Of Tonkin
 - Remember The Maine
 - USS Liberty
 - Pearl Harbor
 - War on Terror
 - War on Drugs
 - Oklahoma City Bombing
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