Atrocity Propaganda and US Human Rights Violations

Operation Mockingbird

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ‘the reality of the ethical idea’, ‘the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

-Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The state arises out of the antagonisms of class society. So, too, do its discrete mechanisms. A globalized world, while economically fruitful, also presents a growing number of challenges for the capitalist class to manage. Interconnected trade fosters international relations, which in turn fosters a burgeoning awareness of the shared struggles of the global proletariat and other oppressed classes. This awareness is driven further by the evolution of technology – yet another inevitable consequence of capitalist development. 

With information being exchanged across the world at rates never before imagined, how does a hopelessly outnumbered exploiting class protect its interests? How do the capitalists maintain the alienation between workers which keeps us weak and their position unassailable? Simply, it invents new weapons to match the needs of this new age. And so we arrive at the advent of state intelligence. If imperialism is, as Lenin describes, the chains which ensnare the world in bondage, these intelligence networks are the cobwebs which accumulate in every nook and cranny within and between the links. At the heart of this spider’s web resides the CIA.

At the height of the Cold War, the seat of imperial power found itself facing a crisis the likes of which it had never seen. The tremors of the October Revolution were reverberating across the globe, and the spectre of communism haunted the footsteps of the bourgeoisie wherever they went. Word had reached the ears of the global proletariat. Newsprint, radio, and television were delivering straight to the people within the imperial core the tangible prospect of a new world. Control over the flow of information therefore would be the lynchpin to maintaining not only western hegemony, but capitalism at large. And just as the US proletariat was learning from the example of its global comrades, so too were the capitalists. Naked censorship, wielded clumsily like a sledgehammer, would only have disastrous consequences. A new method had to be devised. If objective reality was an inconvenience, then objectivity had to be summarily and continuously distorted and discarded.

One effort to attack the foundations of truth was the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird (not to be confused with Project Mockingbird). The conceit of Mockingbird was simple: infiltrate the media, engage journalists in acts of deception against their audiences (willfully or by coercion), and ready the seedbed for an invasive form of propaganda, a noxious poison wrapped snugly in the appetizing trappings of so-called objectivity. 

Beginning in World War II, journalists worked in tandem with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on how they reported the war’s proceedings. Once the war ended, the OSS was dissolved and replaced with the CIA. Many of its officers continued their services, and, naturally, the relationships they had fostered with the press continued. 

As the USSR presented a growing challenge to the United States on the world stage, the CIA charged its journalist contacts in Western Europe with the express purpose of keeping tabs on Soviet activity. In many cases, journalists simply passed what they’d learned to the CIA, as they were often able to move freely in the interest of reporting the news. More elaborate engagement could involve spreading misinformation or acting as messengers to CIA assets within foreign governments. 

Carl Bernstein, author of the Rolling Stones article “The CIA and the Media”, claimed that as many as “400 American journalists [in] the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency”. In response, the CIA informed The New York Times that the number of journalists on their payroll was somewhere between 40-100. Note the strategic use of the phrase “on their payroll”. When the common practice for journalists at that time was to speak with a CIA expert on a region before travelling there, is there really any question as to the functional difference between intel and advice, or assignments and favors? 

At present, three former high-ranking intelligence officers sit on advisory boards for major news organizations. John Brennan, former Director of the CIA (2013-2017), is the senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC news and MSNBC. James Clapper, former director of the Defensive Intelligence Agency (1991-1995), Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (2001-2006), Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (2007-2010), and 4th Director of National Intelligence (2010-2017), is currently a national security analyst for CNN. Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA (1999-2005), 1st Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (2005-2006), and Director of the CIA (2006-2009) is now on the advisory board of NewsGuard, a rating system on trustworthiness for news and informational websites. 

Of course, it is impossible to even begin to catalogue the number of lies and deceptions laundered by US media hand in hand with the CIA and other national intelligence agencies. This propaganda league is able to deploy counterintelligence and misinformation at a pace that outstrips our ability to parse it. 

Over time, some obvious and well-known fabrications have been confirmed, such as the false claim of WMDs in Iraq. More recently, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was painted as the head of a sprawling drug cartel. The only thing more outrageous than this claim is the speed at which the US government abandoned the lie. But one cannot deny the efficacy of such libel, as it appeals to American citizens’ innate sense of moral authority, instilled within us from the day we are born. Through the große Lüge (big lie) of American Exceptionalism, countless atrocities have been conducted in the name of freedom and prosperity. And indeed, the capitalists have been enormously prosperous. But the cost, the dear cost to humanity, has been obfuscated and misrepresented so that we may continue on in blissful ignorance. 

The time has come for this ignorance to be shattered — for us to shrug off the tattered remains of this blissful blanket. And though we may not be able to elucidate every atrocity or scandal or crime rebranded and reframed as necessary for the preservation of truth, justice, and the American way, it falls to us to at least begin the process, to shed the scales from the eyes of the working class.

Cuba Against Apartheid

When Cuba sent thousands of troops to Angola in 1975, it was depicted in the imperialist media as a Soviet influenced mission. It was claimed that apartheid South African troops were sent in to counter the Cuban invaders, and that the US had no involvement. Later, declassified documents painted a much different picture. The US had colluded with the racist apartheid South African forces, giving them clearance to intervene in the Angolan civil war against the communist forces of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The Cuban government had acted not at the urging of the Soviet Union – which was reluctant to intervene – but out of the Communist Party of Cuba's (PCC) devotion to internationalism. Revolutionary Cuba determined to send troops and resources to Angola with or without the approval of the Soviet Union, as they found the idea of white Afrikaners sending their troops to stop an African socialist revolution in Africa unacceptable.

These facts were deliberately hidden by imperialist media. In a 1983 interview with former CIA officer-turned-whistleblower, John Stockwell stated: 

“[My work was] to disseminate propaganda to influence people’s minds. We had four hundred journalists cooperating with the CIA to consciously introduce stories into the press. For example, in the Angola war… I had propagandists all over the world – principally in London, Kinshasa, and Zambia.”

Stockwell explained how he would use journalists in the employ of the CIA in multiple countries to launder fabricated stories:

“We would take stories that we would write and put them in the Zambia Times and then pull them out and send them to a journalist on our payroll in Europe. But his cover story would be that he’d gotten [it] from his stringer who had gotten them from the Zambia Times. We had the complicity of the government of Zambia… to put these false stories into their newspapers. But after that point the journalists at Reuters and AFP – the management was not witting of it [but] our contact [journalist] in Europe was.”

The CIA hid its influence by planting stories about the Angolan war in newspapers from neighboring Zambia (by bribing the publishers). European journalists who were CIA assets then brought those stories to European media under the pretense that they were pulled from local reporting. Major European publishers would then publish CIA lies without being provably complicit in CIA propaganda schemes. What stories did the CIA invent? Fictional crimes intended to turn global public opinion against communists and national liberation fighters. Stockwell continued: 

“[...] And we pumped just dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists. In one case we had the Cuban rapists caught and tried by the Ovimbundu [ed. an ethnic group in Angola] maidens who had been their victims and then we ran photographs, in every newspaper in the country, of the Cubans being executed by the Ovimbundu women who supposedly had been their victims. [Interviewer: These were fake photos?] Absolutely, we didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false, propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast and that’s our totally false propaganda.”

Here, a central theme of the capitalist propaganda war against communism which has raged for more than a century is stated concisely – capitalist propagandists inventing stories of communist atrocities. If communism and the parties that lead its struggle are so terrible, why invent crimes?

The CIA knew that the real story – of Cuban military advisors and Cuban troops entering Angola after the illegal invasion of South African troops – the story of a small Afro-Caribbean nation rushing to defend an African nation against a racist settler government would arouse great sympathy in the hearts of the global working class. This story had to be replaced with a fiction which cast the heroes as villains. As Malcolm X warned, “If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

In truth, the Cuban intervention led to the defeat of the South African army and the weakening of the military power of the apartheid state. This crack in the power of the settlers created an opening for the resistance against apartheid in South Africa. This is why in a speech given in Cuba in 1998, Nelson Mandela credited the Cuban intervention and the defeat of South African forces in Cuito Cuanavale, Angola as a decisive turning point in the struggle against apartheid:

“Your presence there and the reinforcements sent for the battle of Cuito Cuanavale has a historical meaning. The decisive defeat of the racist army in Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for all Africa. This victory in Cuito Cuanavale is what made it possible for Angola to enjoy peace and establish its own sovereignty. The defeat of the racist army made it possible for the people of Namibia to achieve their independence.

The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor. The defeat of the apartheid army served as an inspiration to the struggling people of South Africa. Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organisations would not have been legalised. The defeat of the racist army in Cuito Cuanavale made it possible for me to be here with you today. Cuito Cuanavale marks the divide in the struggle for the liberation of southern Africa. Cuito Cuanavale marked an important step in the struggle to free the continent and our country of the scourge of apartheid.” 

Kuwait

After fighting a long war with the Republic of Iran (1980 - 1988), Iraq found itself in serious debt to the US – its primary wartime backer. Due to decades of uneven development and colonial extraction, Iraq had to rely on its oil sales to repay its debt or purchase necessary products to feed, clothe, and support its population. However, the US encouraged its client state, the Kuwaiti monarchy, to glut the global market with oil. This action sparked a global decrease in oil prices intended to devalue one of the only export resources Iraq had at its disposal. The August 2nd invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 was therefore a direct retaliation to the actions of US imperialists. 

This backdrop was seldom discussed in the US press. Instead, in an effort to stir popular outrage against Hussein’s government, lurid tales of human rights abuses were spun. The most notorious being what is now known as the Nayirah Testimony and its associated allegations. 

Public opinion was primed by a flurry of reporting. On September 5th, 1990, the Kuwaiti health minister reported that invading Iraqi forces had looted a hospital, stealing incubators from the maternity ward and causing the deaths of the premature babies there. NPR and Reuters reported on the accusation that same day. On September 9th, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday reported that, “Iraqi troops had looted a local hospital. In a ward for premature infants, soldiers had turned off the oxygen on incubators… the report came [from] hospital attendants, who had buried the dead infants.” On September 17th, the US ambassador claimed to have received reports of 22 premature babies dying after their incubators were stolen. On September 25th, the Washington Post reported that Kuwaiti hospitals were being stripped of incubators. On September 30th, US News and World Report reported that it had obtained US diplomatic cables stating, “Iraqi soldiers reportedly entered the Adan Hospital in Fahaheel looking for hospital equipment to steal. They unplugged the oxygen to the incubators supporting 22 premature babies and made off with the incubators. All 22 children died.” The allegations were further reported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. On October 9th, then US president George HW Bush stated, “It's just unbelievable, some of the things at least he reflected. I mean, people on a dialysis machine cut off, the machine sent to Baghdad; babies in incubators heaved out of the incubators and the incubators themselves sent to Baghdad. Now, I don't know how many of these tales can be authenticated, but I do know that when the Amir was here he was speaking from the heart.”

But the capstone to the allegations came on October 10th, when the House of Representatives Human Rights Caucus heard the testimony of a 15 year old girl from Kuwait known only as Nayirah. Crying, the young girl stated:

“What I saw happening to the children of Kuwait and to my country has changed my life forever, has changed the life of all Kuwaitis, young and old, mere children or more…

I stayed behind and wanted to do something for my country. The second week after invasion, I volunteered at the Al-Adan Hospital with 12 other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. The other women were from 20 to 30 years old.

While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying. I could not help but think of my nephew who was born premature and might have died that day as well. After I left the hospital, some of my friends and I distributed flyers condemning the Iraqi invasion until we were warned we might be killed if the Iraqis saw us.”

Nayirah's testimony was carried on national television and cited by seven different senators in their speeches backing the use of force against Iraq. The allegations provoked outrage and disgust in the US and support for military intervention was widespread. 

Nayirah testifies before Congress

In January and February of 1991, the US conducted a military air and ground campaign against Iraq which killed 50,000 people, destroyed 90 percent of Iraq’s energy infrastructure, and destroyed over 100 bridges and roadways. 

After the Killing

In January of 1992, one year after the war, the New York Times published an article revealing the identity of the young girl who had given the impassioned speech in front of congress. Her full name is Nayirah al-Sabah, the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Both she and her father are members of Kuwait's ruling family. 

The Kuwaiti government paid at least 12 million dollars to the US public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which conducted a focus group on the types of stories US citizens would find most sympathetic, drafted Nayirah’s testimony, and coached her for the hearing. The Human Rights Caucus (HRC) which held the hearing was chaired by Democratic congressman Tom Lantos and Republican congressman John Porter. The HRC had prior connections to the PR firm, even leasing office space from Hill & Knowlton at a reduced rate.

Subsequent investigations by the New York Times and ABC, as well as retractions from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, revealed that the incubator story was a complete fiction. It never happened. Nayirah was never a volunteer at the hospital in question (or any other) and no incubators had been removed, nor babies killed. However, the damage had been done. The US government, its public relations apparatus, the press, and prominent human rights organizations, in conjunction with the Kuwaiti monarchy, created an image of inhuman cruelty which inflamed the passions of the US public, paving the way for war.

Xinjiang

The US and Western imperialist intelligence agencies have used religious extremism to recruit people in unimaginably difficult situations to do their bidding and commit acts of violence. US military and intelligence agencies have funded, trained, and even directly created so-called radical Islamist militant groups. 

It is through this lens that we must view the situation in the Xinjiang region of China where a majority Muslim population have lived in peace for centuries. When a rash of terrorist attacks occurred, local officials of the Communist Party of China became concerned. Unlike in the US, Chinese communists recognized the reality of social alienation and poverty, and how those are real drivers of reactionary extremism and violence. Investments by state and local governments in social programs, job training, and infrastructure development brought stability which seriously undermined the ability of US intelligence operatives to stoke reactionary religious sentiment. For this very reason, the religious traditions of the people of Xinjiang have been protected from the violent outside influence peddled by US and other western intelligence agencies. 

Baseless rumors of Mosque demolitions refer to unscrupulous reports from the same "human rights" organizations who lied about WMD’s in Iraq and, later, widespread sexual violence during October 7th. Western media reframes Chinese government improvement projects as nefarious acts of Islamophobia. Projects like renovating mosques with indoor plumbing and electricity are reported in the west as demolishing mosques and replacing them with public toilets. Mosques whose gates were replaced were claimed to have been completely destroyed, only to be found on Google street view later in the day. Of course, the locally administered CPC campaign to combat US influenced "Islamic" extremism is despised by the imperialists in the US media and political institutions. It shows not only ingenuity, but compassion in defeating the nefarious machinations of the capitalists.

US Human Rights Violations

It is common practice for the United States to lecture other countries on their supposed human rights abuses despite the fact that the United States itself is the greatest violator of human sovereignty in the world. Even if one were to ignore the abuses surrounding the genocides of indigenous communities and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, recent US history also presents a record of depraved violations of human dignity, safety, and self-determination. Here, we highlight only four cases in recent memory: the Iran-Contra Affair, Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib prison tortures, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 

The Iran-Contra Affair

When the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front, aka the Sandinistas, ousted Nicaraguan President General Anastasio Somoza Debayle from power in 1979, US President Ronald Reagan sought to reverse the newly won gains of exploited Nicaraguans. He directed the office of the National Security Advisor, as well as some civilian officials, to supply Iran with weapons. In turn, the President, bypassing Congress, would use the profits to fund the contrarrevolucionarios or “Contras”, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. 

Just as they have done with the Israeli occupation, the US shielded the Contras from charges that they frequently committed human rights abuses. For example, the Contras were noted by human rights organizations and the New York Times for their many violations of human rights, including the indiscriminate mass murder of entire villages, a pattern and practice of torture and mutilation of prisoners, grotesque acts of sexual violence, and the kidnapping of young girls. 

None of these recorded instances mattered to President Reagan. Congress attempted to avoid culpability by barring US aid to the Contra rebels, but the Reagan administration was determined to continue their policy. The operation ceased, largely, due to the scheme being discovered, resulting in a massive scandal. Just like the US relationship with the Israeli occupation, wanton violations of human rights had no bearing on the policy decisions of the US ruling class.

Guantanamo Bay 

The Guantanamo Bay area has been leased by the US since 1903, but the detention camp was opened in 2001, shortly after the first US military operations began in Afghanistan. In November 2001, President George W. Bush authorized the camp to be used to house “[...] any current or former member of the al-Qaeda organization as well as anyone who aids or abets its work or harbors its members.” In total, approx. 780 people from 48 countries have been imprisoned at the detention center. 

Those detained at Guantanamo have been subjected to various forms of torture, which attorneys for the Bush administration redefined as “enhanced interrogation”. Examples of documented torture tactics used at Guantanamo include physical assault of limbs and body parts, being subjected to extreme hot and cold temperatures, stress positions, sensory deprivation, stripping, forced shaving, being left in dirty cages without sanitation, sleep deprivation, and more. These tactics were in use even though detainees had been denied a trial and have not, to this day, been convicted of a crime. 

In its statements, the United States professes to abide by international law as laid out by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT), and the Geneva Conventions (specifically in this instance, the Third Geneva Conventions—Treatment of Prisoners of War). However, when we look deeper, we see concerted efforts to violate the very conception of human rights. 

For example, the Bush Administration made the exceptional claim that the Guantanamo Bay detainees, as members of Al Qaeda, were mercenaries, not prisoners of war, and, therefore, not subject to the Geneva Convention. While this was argued against by the ICCPR and CAT, and even the Supreme Court in 2006, these institutions could not deter the US from furthering its torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees (nor others, as we shall see).

Abu Ghraib Prison Torture

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US military began operating a number of overseas detention centers. The Abu Ghraib, located outside of Baghdad, was one of the largest. By 2004, the treatment of prisoners was deemed to be “widespread, harsh, and brutal, and, in some cases, ‘tantamount to torture’.” 

Instances of torture included acts such as punching, slapping, and kicking detainees, videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees, forcing detainees to get into sexually explicit positions for photographing, and forced stripping and standing for days on end, among others. By May 2004, the US had charged seven officers with the physical and sexual abuse of 20 detainees; though, in the same time period, the Army opened cases into 90 instances of potential mistreatment.

This regime of torture was made infamous by a photo of a US soldier pointing at a hooded, Iraqi detainees’ genitals while smiling at the camera. In 2006, control of Abu Ghraib was transferred to the federal government of Iraq. It subsequently reopened in 2009 as the Baghdad Central Prison. 

The Israeli Occupation of Palestine

In 1948, Zionists systematically engaged in the ethnic cleansing of local Palestinian communities. What followed has been decades of apartheid and genocidal machinations in the tradition of the great historical colonizing powers. Israel is a colonial forward operating base for the US Its occupation of Palestine serves US ruling-class interests and, as a result, human rights abuses are supported, protected, and defended on the global stage. 

For example, between 1952 and 2022, the US sent approx. $225.2 billion in military aid, which is 71% of the Israeli occupation’s aid from all sources. Currently there’s a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by the Obama administration in 2014 for FY2018 - FY2028 that provides $3.8 billion/year, or a total of $38 billion in total. We know thatmost of these resources are used by the Zionist entity to commit heinous acts of barbarity and crimes of war. 

All of Gaza’s schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed since October 2023. According to a UN aid agency, 1-in-5 children in Gaza suffer from malnourishment, while the occupying forces obstruct aid deliveries. And the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory declared in 2025 that Israel has committed genocide — with the full backing and support of the US

The Carceral Cartel

“Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. Most US jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement… Conspiracy generally carries a penalty on its own. In addition, conspiracies allow for derivative liability where conspirators can also be punished for the illegal acts carried out by other members, even if they were not directly involved. Thus, where one or more members of the conspiracy committed illegal acts to further the conspiracy's goals, all members of the conspiracy may be held accountable for those acts.”

- Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law. Far from being derided as “crackpots” or “conspiracy theorists”, federal prosecutors have been permitted to use conspiracy charges more often than any other charge – so long as the accused are members of the working class. 

It’s no secret that the United States is the world’s largest consumer of drugs, while at the same time it maintains the world’s largest system of incarceration, with an overwhelming majority of its prison population composed of working class people of color. Far from being a failure of the capitalist legal system, this contradiction speaks to a larger truth: The US is the world’s largest and most dangerous drug cartel, and the presence of a constant supply of heroin and cocaine over the past half century is one of its primary means of social control at home and imperialist control abroad. 

Every day, narcotics smuggled from faraway countries flow into and around the US more or less freely, despite stringent drug laws. Like coffee or tropical fruits, these crops are harvested and cultivated in sites far from their primary European and North American markets, with workers toiling under secretive conditions ideal for labor exploitation. The drugs are processed and distributed through formal and informal economies at steep markups as a result of the labor required to evade anti-drug laws. The state’s cartel controls the drug game like a sports league: it owns the teams, it pays the referees, and it never stops playing.

When the CIA began drug-running operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, some working class organizers in the US recognized the danger posed and set up free rehab clinics. Others adopted more militant responses, including execution orders for street-level dealers. These worker-organizers received no support for the war on drugs from the “anti-drug” capitalist state. Just the opposite, they were treated to a relentless barrage of violence — infiltration, imprisonment, assassination. This is a prime example of how drug policy and media coverage act as a smokescreen to protect the US drug cartel’s monopoly on drug profits. 

Former CIA Director, President George HW Bush holds a bag crack-cocaine.

The ruling class’ cartel and its death squads are responsible for untold casualties abroad and continued suffering of the working class at home. Despite its exorbitant public funding, US military operations have grown more secretive and less accountable to the public. Under the cloak of “classified” operations against peoples’ movements, corruption and depravity have run rampant. Secrecy also allows the capitalists to deny, distract, and discredit allegations of rampant misconduct as “conspiracy theories.” The ruling class uses its media outlets to confuse workers about the nature of international drug running. The goal of these tactics is not to persuade the masses, but to confuse and silence them about the true purpose of the drug trade, so that capitalism’s international foot soldiers can continue their business uninterrupted. Drone strikes of entire bloodlines, kidnappings of internationally recognized leaders, and oil piracy on the high seas prove that no red lines exist for the enemies of proletarian revolution. The accusations that socialist governments are supporting drug-trafficking death squads (which their own internal investigations show have no evidentiary basis) are studies in projection – precise descriptions of its own narco-terrorism.

Afghanistan

After attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan, where opium production had been outlawed, the US installed a CIA puppet to resume heroin production. Under US occupation in the first decades of the millennium, opium production exploded in Afghanistan, accounting for 90% of the world’s total supply of heroin. Military attacks on a nation in the Global South paved the way for a devastating opioid crisis at home, distributing purer, cheaper heroin to the American working class. This was no different than the anti-communist operations in Nicaragua of the 1980s, which ushered in the crack-cocaine epidemic a generation before. 

Workers living under the dictatorship of capital must understand how the spread of drugs into their communities fuels violence at home and is fueled by covert military operations abroad. These are not conspiracy theories, they are conspiracy realties—integral parts of US capitalism. Among the oppressed and colonized people of the world, drugs fuel counter-revolutionary death squads against working class movements in the Global South. To repair our drug-ravaged communities, workers must understand how to wield their labor as a weapon against the ruling class and its imperialist drug cartel.

“Human Rights” as Cover

These instances reveal another purpose of US atrocity propaganda. The accusation of human rights abuses is used to redirect international attention away from the myriad abuses in which the US engages. From Cuba to Palestine to Nicaragua and Iraq, among many others, the United States is the single greatest violator of human sovereignty on the planet. The US must create false stories about its enemies. It must portray itself as the lesser evil. If not, the crimes of the US are so great that its citizens would correctly conclude that their own government was the world’s leading terrorist state.