title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2006, he was featured in "The Vice Guide to Travel" with actor and comedian David Cross in China. He left "Vice" in 2008 due to what he described as "creative differences". In a 2013 interview with "The New Yorker", McInnes said his split with "Vice" was about the increasing influence of corporate advertising on "Vice's" content, stating that "Marketing and editorial being enemies had been the business plan".


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2008, McInnes created the website "StreetCarnage.com". He also co-founded an advertising agency called Rooster where he served as creative director.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes was featured in Season 3 of the Canadian reality TV show "Kenny vs. Spenny", as a judge in the "Who is Cooler?" episode. In 2010, McInnes was approached by Adult Swim and asked to play the part of Mick, an anthropomorphic Scottish soccer ball, in the short-lived "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" spin-off "Soul Quest Overdrive". After losing a 2010 pilot contest to "Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge", six episodes of "Soul Quest Overdrive" were ordered, with four airing in Adult Swim's 4 AM DVR Theater block on 25 May 2011 before quickly being cancelled. McInnes jokingly blamed the show's cancellation on the other cast members (Kristen Schaal, David Cross, and H. Jon Benjamin) not being "as funny" as him.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes wrote a column for "Taki's Magazine", beginning around 2011, that made casual use of racial and anti-gay slurs, as described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2012, McInnes wrote a book called "How to Piss in Public". In 2013 he directed "The Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants", a documentary on his tour as an occasional standup comedian. For the film, he faked a serious car accident. Also that year, McInnes starred in the independent film "How to Be a Man", which premiered at Sundance Next Weekend. He has also played supporting roles in other films including "Soul Quest Overdrive" (2010), "Creative Control" (2015) and "One More Time" (2015).


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In August 2014, McInnes was asked to take an indefinite leave of absence as chief creative officer of Rooster, following online publication at Thought Catalog of an essay about transphobia titled "Transphobia is Perfectly Natural" that sparked a call to boycott the company. In response, Rooster issued a statement, saying in part: "We are extremely disappointed with his actions and have asked that he take a leave of absence while we determine the most appropriate course of action."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In June 2015, broadcaster Anthony Cumia announced that McInnes would be hosting a show on his network, therefore retiring the Free Speech podcast that he had started in March. "The Gavin McInnes Show" premiered on Compound Media on 15 June. McInnes is a former contributor to Canadian far-right portal The Rebel Media and a regular on conspiracy theorist media platform Infowars' "The Alex Jones Show", and Fox News' "Red Eye", "The Greg Gutfeld Show", and "The Sean Hannity Show". In 2016, McInnes referred to Jada Pinkett Smith as a "monkey actress" on his radio show.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2016, he founded the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist, men's rights and male-only organisation classified as a "general hate" organization by the SPLC. He has rejected this classification, claiming that the group is "not an extremist group and [does] not have ties with white nationalists".


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes left Rebel Media in August 2017, declaring that he was going to be "a multi-media Howard Stern–meets–Tucker Carlson". He later joined CRTV, an online television network launched by Conservative Review. The debut episode of his new show "Get Off My Lawn" aired on 22 September 2017.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: On 10 August 2018, McInnes's Twitter account, as well as the account for the Proud Boys, was permanently suspended by Twitter due to their rules against violent extremist groups. The suspension was ahead of the first anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the small Unite the Right 2 Washington protest in August 2018 in which the Proud Boys participated.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: On 12 October 2018, McInnes participated in a reenactment of the 1960 assassination of socialist politician Inejiro Asanuma by Otoya Yamaguchi at the Metropolitan Republican Club. After the event, a contingent of Proud Boys were caught on tape beating a protester outside the venue, after a leftist protester threw a plastic bottle at them.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: On 21 November 2018, shortly after news broke that the FBI had reportedly classified the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalists, McInnes said that his lawyers had advised him that quitting might help the nine members being prosecuted for the incidents in October and he said "this is 100% a legal gesture, and it is 100% about alleviating sentencing", and said it was a "'stepping down gesture', in quotation marks". Two weeks later the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Oregon office said that it had not been their intent to label the entire group as "extremist", only to characterize the possible threat from certain members of the group that way.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Later that month, McInnes was planning on travelling to Australia for a speaking tour with Milo Yiannopoulos and Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's pseudonym), but was informed by Australian immigration authorities that "he was judged to be of bad character" and would be denied a visa to enter the country. Issuing a visa to McInnes was opposed by an online campaign called "#BanGavin", which collected 81,000 signatures.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: On 3 December 2018, Conservative Review Television (CRTV), on which McInnes had hosted the "Get Off My Lawn" program, merged with BlazeTV, the television arm of Glenn Beck's TheBlaze, to become Blaze Media. McInnes was expected to host his program for the new company, whose co-president called McInnes "a comedian and provocateur, one of the many varied voices and viewpoints on Blaze Media platforms." Less than a week later, on 8 December, it was announced that McInnes was no longer associated with Blaze Media, with no details given as to why.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Two days later, on 10 December, McInnes, who had previously been banned by Amazon, PayPal, Twitter, and Facebook, was banned from YouTube for "multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement." Asked to comment about his firing and bannings, McInnes said that he had been victimized by "lies and propaganda", and that "there has been a concerted effort to de-platform me." In his e-mail to "Huffington Post", McInnes stated that "Someone very powerful decided long ago that I shouldn't have a voice ... I'm finally out of platforms and unable to defend myself. ... We are no longer living in a free country." McInnes also indicated some personal responsibility for the situation in an interview on the ABC News program "Nightline", saying. "I'm not guilt free in this. There’s culpability there. I shouldn't have said, you know, violence solves everything or something like that without making the context clear and I regret saying things like that." McInnes stopped short of apologizing or actually retracting his past statements, saying, "That ship has sailed."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In reaction to the Proud Boys fight in October 2018, residents of the suburban Westchester community of Larchmont, where McInnes lives, began a "Hate Has No Home Here" campaign, which involved displaying that slogan on lawn signs around the community. One resident said "We stand together as a community, and violence and hate are not tolerated here." Several days after the signs began appearing, McInnes' wife sent emails to their neighbours saying that the media had misrepresented McInnes.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Amy Siskind, an activist and writer who lives in nearby Mamaroneck, posted on Facebook that she was planning an anti-hate vigil. After a local newspaper ran a story about it, McInnes and his family appeared at the Siskind's door without invitation or forewarning; she called the police.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: At the end of December, with the lawn sign campaign still ongoing, McInnes wrote a letter which was dropped off at the homes of his neighbours. In it, he asked them to take down their signs, and described himself as "a pro-gay, pro-Israel, virulently anti-racist libertarian," saying that there was nothing "hateful, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or intolerant" in "any of my expressions of my worldview," contrary to his past remarks, such as saying he was "becoming anti-Semitic" after a trip to Israel, or referring to transgender people as "gender niggers". McInnes said that the Proud Boys was a "drinking club [he] started several years ago as a joke". Despite the letter's formality, in a podcast on 4 January 2019, McInnes called the neighbours "assholes", described their behaviour as "cunty" and said "If you have that sign on your lawn, you’re a fucking retard."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: One Larchmont resident said about him: "I don't care what Gavin says, I've done my research ... He incites violence. He spouts divisive, racist language. And while he may try to say he disowns his followers, he's a part of the problem. So when I read his letter, I was like, yeah, right, this is ridiculous."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Several days after the letter was sent out, "HuffPost" reported that they had viewed evidence provided by some neighbours that McInnes' wife, Emily – who identifies as a liberal Democrat – had harassed and intimidated them, including with the threat of legal action. Her threats were such that several neighbours notified the police.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Although McInnes cut ties with the Proud Boys publicly in November 2018, stepping down as chairman, in February 2019 he filed suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center over their designation of the Proud Boys as a "general hate" group. The defamation suit was filed in federal court in Alabama. In the papers filed, McInnes claimed that the hate group designation is false and motivated by fund-raising concerns, and that his career has been damaged by it. He claimed that SPLC contributed to his or the Proud Boys' being deplatformed by Twitter, PayPal, Mailchimp, and iTunes.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: The SPLC says on its website that "McInnes plays a duplicitous rhetorical game: rejecting white nationalism and, in particular, the term 'alt-right' while espousing some of its central tenets," and that the group's "rank-and-file [members] and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville." In response to the suit, Richard Cohen, the president of SPLC, wrote "Gavin McInnes has a history of making inflammatory statements about Muslims, women, and the transgender community. The fact that he's upset with SPLC tells us that we're doing our job exposing hate and extremism."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2019, McInnes launched Censored.TV, an online video platform. The platform was originally named "FreeSpeech.TV", but was changed to its current title for copyright purposes. The platform features McInnes' primary show, Get Off My Lawn (GOML). GOML is a pre-recorded, daily show which airs on weekdays with Thursdays as an exception, in which the show airs live under the alternative title Get Off My Lawn Live.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In May 2021, Milo Yiannopoulos wrote on Telegram that "Censored.TV" is "laying off all its staff" and lacked enough funding to sustain production of Yiannopoulous' show on the platform. McInnes later dismissed these allegation whilst announcing the arrival of several new shows on his platform.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In December 2022, McInnes interviewed Kanye West and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. In the interview, McInnes claimed to be trying to save West from his own antisemitism; McInnes faulted not Jews but "liberal elites of all races", while West said Jews should forgive Adolf Hitler and predicted that antisemitism would be "awesome for a presidential campaign".


title: Gavin McInnes

text: Although McInnes was not a defendant in the August 2019 trial of members of the Proud Boys for their part in the violence that occurred after a meeting of the Metropolitan Republican Club in October 2018, prosecutors repeatedly invoked his name, his words and his views in their questioning of the defendants, after testimony by the defendants and other Proud Boys opened the door to that line of questioning. During closing arguments, a prosecutor said that "Gavin McInnes is not a harmless satirist. He is a hatemonger," while the defense said that McInnes was being "demonized."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes describes himself as "a fiscal conservative and libertarian" and part of the New Right, a term that he prefers rather than alt-right. "The New York Times" has described McInnes as a far-right provocateur. He has referred to himself as a "western chauvinist" and started a men's organization called Proud Boys who swear their allegiance to this cause.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In November 2018 it was reported on the basis of an internal memo of the Clark County, Washington Sheriff's Office – based on an FBI briefing – that the Bureau classified the Proud Boys "an extremist group with ties to white nationalism". Two weeks later, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Oregon office denied that the FBI had made that designation about the entire group, ascribing it to a misunderstanding on the part of the Sheriff's Office. The SAIC, Renn Cannon, said that their intent was simply to characterize the possible threat from certain members of the group, not to classify the entire group. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies them as a "general hate group". McInnes has said his group is not a white nationalist group.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2003, McInnes said, "I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of. I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In a speech given at New York University in February 2017, after a clash between the Proud Boys and antifa protestors, McInnes said: "Violence doesn't feel good, justified violence feels great, and fighting solves everything. ... I want violence. I want punching in the face." He says that he has only advocated for acting in self-defense.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes has been accused of racism and of promoting white supremacist rhetoric. He has made slurs against Susan Rice and Jada Pinkett Smith personally, and more widely against Palestinians and Asians. In September 2004, he told a reporter for the "Chicago Reader" at a party that he "wanted to fuck the shit out of [a young Asian lady] until she started talking." The reporter, Liz Armstrong, wrote: "He went on to posit that since Asians' eyes don't work so good in terms of facial expressions they have no choice but to emote with their mouths."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes has said that there is a "mass conformity that black people push on each other". He is also listed as a contributor to the 2016 book "Black Lies Matter" which criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement. He said that New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Booker, who is Black, is "kind of like Sambo."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes, who grew up as an athiest, is a Roman Catholic convert and member of the Knights of Columbus.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In March 2017, during a trip to Israel with The Rebel Media, McInnes made comments defending Holocaust deniers, accused the Jews of being responsible for the Holodomor and the Treaty of Versailles, and said he was "becoming anti-Semitic". He later said his comments were taken out of context. McInnes also produced a comedic video for Rebel called "Ten Things I Hate about Jews", later retitled "Ten Things I Hate About Israel". In response to the controversy, McInnes said: "I landed, and I've got tons of Nazi friends. David Duke and all the Nazis totally think I rock... No offence, Nazis, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't like you. I like Jews." In a December 2022 interview for "Censored.TV" with Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, he claimed to be trying to save West from antisemitism and said that "every individual I meet starts off with a clean slate".


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes is anti-Islam. He has said that "Muslims are stupid... the only thing they really respect is violence and being tough." He also has equated Islam with fascism, stating "Nazis are not a thing. Islam is a thing." In April 2018, McInnes labelled a significant section of Muslims as both mentally ill and incestuous, claiming that "Muslims have a problem with inbreeding. They tend to marry their first cousins... and that is a major problem [in the U.S.] because when you have mentally damaged inbreds – which not all Muslims are, but a disproportionate number are – and you have a hate book called the Koran [sic]... you end up with a perfect recipe for mass murder."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes has described himself as "an Archie Bunker sexist," and has said that "95 percent of women would be happier at home". On the topic of female police officers, he said, "I understand [women] are good for domestics, but I don't understand why there are so many female police officers. They're not strong, they're like super fat police officers. It doesn't make any sense to me."


title: Gavin McInnes

text: In 2003, Vanessa Grigoriadis in "The New York Times" quoted McInnes saying, "'No means no' is puritanism. I think Steinem-era feminism did women a lot of injustices, but one of the worst ones was convincing all these indie norts that women don't want to be dominated." McInnes has been accused of sexism by various media outlets including "Chicago Sun-Times", "Independent Journal Review", "Salon", "Jezebel", "The Hollywood Reporter", and "Slate". In October 2013, McInnes said during a panel interview that "people would be happier if women would stop pretending to be men" and that feminism "has made women less happy". He said, "We've trivialized childbirth and being domestic so much that women are forced to pretend to be men. They're feigning this toughness, they're miserable." A heated argument ensued with University of Miami School of Law professor Mary Anne Franks.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes has espoused the white genocide conspiracy theory saying that white women having abortions and immigration is "leading to white genocide in the West". In 2018, regarding South African farm attacks and land reform proposals, he said that black South Africans were not "trying to get their land back – they never had that land", instead stating there were "ethnic cleansing" efforts against white South Africans.


title: Gavin McInnes

text: McInnes resides in the U.S. on a green card. In 2005, he married Manhattan-based publicist and consultant Emily Jendrisak, the daughter of Native American activist Christine Whiterabbit Jendrisak who describes herself as a liberal Democrat. About his wife's ethnicity and their children together, McInnes said, "I've made my views on Indians very clear. I like them. I actually like them so much, I made three." They live in Larchmont, New York. He is a Roman Catholic convert and member of the Knights of Columbus. He grew up as an atheist, but converted after having his first child, stating that “It made me religious. I was an atheist most of my life and now I am a God-fearing Catholic, because of the miracle of life. And I’m pro-life”.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. Propaganda can be found in news and journalism, government, advertising, entertainment, education, and activism and is often associated with material which is prepared by governments as part of war efforts, political campaigns, health campaigns, revolutionaries, big businesses, ultra-religious organizations, the media, and certain individuals such as soapboxers.


title: Propaganda

text: In the 20th century, the English term "propaganda" was often associated with a manipulative approach, but historically, propaganda has been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or ideologies. Equivalent non-English terms have also largely retained the original neutral connotation.


title: Propaganda

text: A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, TV shows, and websites. More recently, the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, bots and algorithms are currently being used to create computational propaganda and fake or biased news and spread it on social media.


title: Propaganda

text: "Propaganda" is a modern Latin word, ablative singular feminine of the gerundive form of , meaning 'to spread' or 'to propagate', thus "propaganda" means "for that which is to be propagated". Originally this word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic Church (congregation) created in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, called the "Congregatio de Propaganda Fide" ("Congregation for Propagating the Faith"), or informally simply "Propaganda". Its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries.


title: Propaganda

text: From the 1790s, the term began being used also to refer to "propaganda" in secular activities. The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda was conceptualized as a form of influence designed to build social consensus. In the 20th century, the term propaganda emerged along with the rise of mass media, including newspapers and radio. As researchers began studying the effects of media, they used suggestion theory to explain how people could be influenced by emotionally-resonant persuasive messages. Harold Lasswell provided a broad definition of the term propaganda, writing it as: “the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.” Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell theorize that propaganda


title: Propaganda

text: and persuasion are linked as humans use communication as a form of soft power through the development and cultivation of propaganda materials. In a 1929 literary debate with Edward Bernays, Everett Dean Martin argues that, "Propaganda is making puppets of us. We are moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates." In the 1920s and 1930s, propaganda was sometimes described as all-powerful. For example, Bernays acknowledged in his book "Propaganda" that "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."


title: Propaganda

text: Primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The Behistun Inscription ( BCE) detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda. Another striking example of propaganda during ancient history is the last Roman civil wars (44–30 BCE) during which Octavian and Mark Antony blamed each other for obscure and degrading origins, cruelty, cowardice, oratorical and literary incompetence, debaucheries, luxury, drunkenness and other slanders. This defamation took the form of "uituperatio" (Roman rhetorical genre of the invective) which was decisive for shaping the Roman public opinion at this time. Another early example of propaganda was from Genghis Khan. The emperor would send some of his men ahead of his army to spread rumors to the enemy. In many cases, his army was actually smaller than his opponents'.


title: Propaganda

text: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I was the first ruler to utilize the power of the printing press for propaganda – in order to build his image, stir up patriotic feelings in the population of his empire (he was the first ruler who utilized one-sided battle reports – the early predecessors of modern newspapers or "neue zeitungen" – targeting the mass.) and influence the population of his enemies. Propaganda during the Reformation, helped by the spread of the printing press throughout Europe, and in particular within Germany, caused new ideas, thoughts, and doctrine to be made available to the public in ways that had never been seen before the 16th century. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots (and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Loyalists). Academic Barbara Diggs-Brown conceives that the negative connotations of the term “propaganda” are associated with the earlier social and political transformations that occurred during the French Revolutionary period movement of 1789 to 1799 between the start and the middle portion of the 19th century, in a time where the word started to be used in a nonclerical and political context.


title: Propaganda

text: The first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. After the defeat of Germany, military officials such as General Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918 (see also: Dolchstoßlegende). In "Mein Kampf" (1925) Hitler expounded his theory of propaganda, which provided a powerful base for his rise to power in 1933. Historian Robert Ensor explains that "Hitler...puts no limit on what can be done by propaganda; people will believe anything, provided they are told it often enough and emphatically enough, and that contradicters are either silenced or smothered in calumny." This was to be true in Germany and backed up with their army making it difficult to allow other propaganda to flow in. Most propaganda in Nazi Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels mentions propaganda as a way to see through the masses. Symbols are used towards propaganda such as justice, liberty and one's devotion to one's country. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, building on the experience of WWI, by Goebbels and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information.


title: Propaganda

text: In the early 20th century, the invention of motion pictures (as in movies, diafilms) gave propaganda-creators a powerful tool for advancing political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy. In the years following the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with the purpose of making propaganda films (e.g., the 1925 film "The Battleship Potemkin" glorifies Communist ideals). In WWII, Nazi filmmakers produced highly emotional films to create popular support for occupying the Sudetenland and attacking Poland. The 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the "Golden Age of Propaganda". Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the best-known propaganda movies, "Triumph of the Will". In 1942, the propaganda song "Niet Molotoff" was made in Finland during the Continuation War, making fun of the Red Army's failure in the Winter War, referring the song's name to the Soviet's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov. In the US, animation became popular, especially for winning over youthful audiences and aiding the U.S. war effort, e.g., "Der Fuehrer's Face" (1942), which ridicules Hitler and advocates the value of freedom. Some American war films in the early 1940s were designed to create a patriotic mindset and convince viewers that sacrifices needed to be made to defeat the Axis Powers. Others were intended to help Americans understand their Allies in general, as in films like "Know Your Ally: Britain" and "Our Greek Allies". Apart from its war films, Hollywood did its part to boost American morale in a film intended to show how stars of stage and screen who remained on the home front were doing their part not just in their labors, but also in their understanding that a variety of peoples worked together against the Axis menace: "Stage Door Canteen" (1943) features one segment meant to dispel Americans' mistrust of the Soviets, and another to dispel their bigotry against the Chinese. Polish filmmakers in Great Britain created the anti-Nazi color film "Calling Mr. Smith" (1943) about Nazi crimes in German-occupied Europe and about lies of Nazi propaganda.


title: Propaganda

text: The West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, and Third World nations. Through a front organization called the Bedford Publishing Company, the CIA through a covert department called the Office of Policy Coordination disseminated over 1 million books to Soviet readers over the span of 15 years, including novels by George Orwell, Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabakov, James Joyce, and Pasternak in an attempt to promote anti-communist sentiment and sympathy of Western values. George Orwell's contemporaneous novels "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" portray the use of propaganda in fictional dystopian societies. During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro stressed the importance of propaganda. Propaganda was used extensively by Communist forces in the Vietnam War as means of controlling people's opinions.


title: Propaganda

text: During the Yugoslav wars, propaganda was used as a military strategy by governments of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia. Propaganda was used to create fear and hatred, and particularly to incite the Serb population against the other ethnicities (Bosniaks, Croats, Albanians and other non-Serbs). Serb media made a great effort in justifying, revising or denying mass war crimes committed by Serb forces during these wars.


title: Propaganda

text: In the early 20th century the term propaganda was used by the founders of the nascent public relations industry to refer to their people. Literally translated from the Latin gerundive as "things that must be disseminated", in some cultures the term is neutral or even positive, while in others the term has acquired a strong negative connotation. The connotations of the term "propaganda" can also vary over time. For example, in Portuguese and some Spanish language speaking countries, particularly in the Southern Cone, the word "propaganda" usually refers to the most common manipulative media – "advertising".


title: Propaganda

text: In English, "propaganda" was originally a neutral term for the dissemination of information in favor of any given cause. During the 20th century, however, the term acquired a thoroughly negative meaning in western countries, representing the intentional dissemination of often false, but certainly "compelling" claims to support or justify political actions or ideologies. According to Harold Lasswell, the term began to fall out of favor due to growing public suspicion of propaganda in the wake of its use during World War I by the Creel Committee in the United States and the Ministry of Information in Britain: Writing in 1928, Lasswell observed, "In democratic countries the official propaganda bureau was looked upon with genuine alarm, for fear that it might be suborned to party and personal ends. The outcry in the United States against Mr. Creel's famous Bureau of Public Information (or 'Inflammation') helped to din into the public mind the fact that propaganda existed. ... The public's discovery of propaganda has led to a great of lamentation over it. Propaganda has become an epithet of contempt and hate, and the propagandists have sought protective coloration in such names as 'public relations council,' 'specialist in public education,' 'public relations adviser.' " In 1949, political science professor Dayton David McKean wrote, "After World War I the word came to be applied to 'what you don’t like of the other fellow’s publicity,' as Edward L. Bernays said..."


title: Propaganda

text: The term is essentially contested and some have argued for a neutral definition, arguing that ethics depend on intent and context, while others define it as necessarily unethical and negative. Emma Briant defines it as "the deliberate manipulation of representations (including text, pictures, video, speech etc.) with the intention of producing any effect in the audience (e.g. action or inaction; reinforcement or transformation of feelings, ideas, attitudes or behaviours) that is desired by the propagandist." The same author explains the importance of consistent terminology across history, particularly as contemporary euphemistic synonyms are used in governments' continual efforts to rebrand their operations such as 'information support' and strategic communication. Other scholars also see benefits to acknowledging that propaganda can be interpreted as beneficial or harmful, depending on the message sender, target audience, message, and context.


title: Propaganda

text: David Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations "Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace" tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged empathetic and neighborly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcast containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to define the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasized the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while free speech advocates warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.


title: Propaganda

text: Identifying propaganda has always been a problem. The main difficulties have involved differentiating propaganda from other types of persuasion, and avoiding a biased approach. Richard Alan Nelson provides a definition of the term: "Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels." The definition focuses on the communicative process involved – or more precisely, on the purpose of the process, and allow "propaganda" to be interpreted as positive or negative behavior depending on the perspective of the viewer or listener.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda can often be recognized by the rhetorical strategies used in its design. In the 1930s, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis identified a variety of propaganda techniques that were commonly used in newspapers and on the radio, which were the mass media of the time period. Propaganda techniques include "name calling" (using derogatory labels), "bandwagon" (expressing the social appeal of a message), or "glittering generalities" (using positive but imprecise language). With the rise of the internet and social media, Renee Hobbs identified four characteristic design features of many forms of contemporary propaganda: (1) it activates strong emotions; (2) it simplifies information; (3) it appeals to the hopes, fears, and dreams of a targeted audience; and (4) it attacks opponents.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda is sometimes evaluated based on the intention and goals of the individual or institution who created it. According to historian Zbyněk Zeman, propaganda is defined as either white, grey or black. White propaganda openly discloses its source and intent. Grey propaganda has an ambiguous or non-disclosed source or intent. Black propaganda purports to be published by the enemy or some organization besides its actual origins (compare with black operation, a type of clandestine operation in which the identity of the sponsoring government is hidden). In scale, these different types of propaganda can also be defined by the potential of true and correct information to compete with the propaganda. For example, opposition to white propaganda is often readily found and may slightly discredit the propaganda source. Opposition to grey propaganda, when revealed (often by an inside source), may create some level of public outcry. Opposition to black propaganda is often unavailable and may be dangerous to reveal, because public cognizance of black propaganda tactics and sources would undermine or backfire the very campaign the black propagandist supported.


title: Propaganda

text: The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group. Propaganda, in this sense, serves as a corollary to censorship in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people's minds with approved information, but by preventing people from being confronted with opposing points of view. What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people's understanding through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue, but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda was often used to influence opinions and beliefs on religious issues, particularly during the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches or during the Crusades.


title: Propaganda

text: More in line with the religious roots of the term, propaganda is also used widely in the debates about new religious movements (NRMs), both by people who defend them and by people who oppose them. The latter pejoratively call these NRMs cults. Anti-cult activists and Christian counter-cult activists accuse the leaders of what they consider cults of using propaganda extensively to recruit followers and keep them. Some social scientists, such as the late Jeffrey Hadden, and CESNUR affiliated scholars accuse ex-members of "cults" and the anti-cult movement of making these unusual religious movements look bad without sufficient reasons.


title: Propaganda

text: In the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians exploited the figures from stories about Troy as well as other mythical images to incite feelings against Sparta. For example, Helen of Troy was even portrayed as an Athenian, whose mother Nemesis would avenge Troy During the Punic Wars, extensive campaigns of propaganda were carried out by both sides. To dissolve the Roman system of socii and the Greek poleis, Hannibal released without conditions Latin prisoners that he had treated generously to their native cities, where they helped to disseminate his propaganda. The Romans on the other hand tried to portray Hannibal as a person devoid of humanity and would soon lose the favour of gods. At the same time, led by Q.Fabius Maximus, they organized elaborate religious rituals to protect Roman morale.


title: Propaganda

text: In the early sixteenth century, Maximilian I invented one kind of psychological warfare targeting the enemies. During his war against Venice, he attached pamphlets to balloons that his archers would shoot down. The content spoke of freedom and equality and provoked the populace to rebel against the tyrants (their Signoria).


title: Propaganda

text: Post–World War II usage of the word "propaganda" more typically refers to political or nationalist uses of these techniques or to the promotion of a set of ideas.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda is a powerful weapon in war; in certain cases, it is used to dehumanize and create hatred toward a supposed enemy, either internal or external, by creating a false image in the mind of soldiers and citizens. This can be done by using derogatory or racist terms (e.g., the racist terms "Jap" and "gook" used during World War II and the Vietnam War, respectively), avoiding some words or language or by making allegations of enemy atrocities. The goal of this was to demoralize the opponent into thinking what was being projected was actually true. Most propaganda efforts in wartime require the home population to feel the enemy has inflicted an injustice, which may be fictitious or may be based on facts (e.g., the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania by the German Navy in World War I). The home population must also believe that the cause of their nation in the war is just. In these efforts it was difficult to determine the accuracy of how propaganda truly impacted the war. In NATO doctrine, propaganda is defined as "Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view." Within this perspective, the information provided does not need to be necessarily false but must be instead relevant to specific goals of the "actor" or "system" that performs it.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare, which may also involve false flag operations in which the identity of the operatives is depicted as those of an enemy nation (e.g., The Bay of Pigs invasion used CIA planes painted in Cuban Air Force markings). The term propaganda may also refer to false information meant to reinforce the mindsets of people who already believe as the propagandist wishes (e.g., During the First World War, the main purpose of British propaganda was to encourage men to join the army, and women to work in the country's industry. The propaganda posters were used because radios and TVs were not very common at that time.). The assumption is that, if people believe something false, they will constantly be assailed by doubts. Since these doubts are unpleasant (see cognitive dissonance), people will be eager to have them extinguished, and are therefore receptive to the reassurances of those in power. For this reason, propaganda is often addressed to people who are already sympathetic to the agenda or views being presented. This process of reinforcement uses an individual's predisposition to self-select "agreeable" information sources as a mechanism for maintaining control over populations.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda may be administered in insidious ways. For instance, disparaging disinformation about the history of certain groups or foreign countries may be encouraged or tolerated in the educational system. Since few people actually double-check what they learn at school, such disinformation will be repeated by journalists as well as parents, thus reinforcing the idea that the disinformation item is really a "well-known fact", even though no one repeating the myth is able to point to an authoritative source. The disinformation is then recycled in the media and in the educational system, without the need for direct governmental intervention on the media. Such permeating propaganda may be used for political goals: by giving citizens a false impression of the quality or policies of their country, they may be incited to reject certain proposals or certain remarks or ignore the experience of others.


title: Propaganda

text: In the Soviet Union during the Second World War, the propaganda designed to encourage civilians was controlled by Stalin, who insisted on a heavy-handed style that educated audiences easily saw was inauthentic. On the other hand, the unofficial rumors about German atrocities were well founded and convincing. Stalin was a Georgian who spoke Russian with a heavy accent. That would not do for a national hero so starting in the 1930s all new visual portraits of Stalin were retouched to erase his and make him a more generalized Soviet hero. Only his eyes and famous moustache remained unaltered. Zhores Medvedev and Roy Medvedev say his "majestic new image was devised appropriately to depict the leader of all times and of all peoples."


title: Propaganda

text: Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits any propaganda for war as well as any advocacy of national or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence by law.


title: Propaganda

text: Simply enough the covenant specifically is not defining the content of propaganda. In simplest terms, an act of propaganda if used in a reply to a wartime act is not prohibited.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda shares techniques with advertising and public relations, each of which can be thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product or shapes the perception of an organization, person, or brand. For example, after claiming victory in the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah campaigned for broader popularity among Arabs by organizing mass rallies where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah combined elements of the local dialect with classical Arabic to reach audiences outside Lebanon. Banners and billboards were commissioned in commemoration of the war, along with various merchandise items with Hezbollah's logo, flag color (yellow), and images of Nasrallah. T-shirts, baseball caps and other war memorabilia were marketed for all ages. The uniformity of messaging helped define Hezbollah's brand.


title: Propaganda

text: Journalistic theory generally holds that news items should be objective, giving the reader an accurate background and analysis of the subject at hand. On the other hand, advertisements evolved from the traditional commercial advertisements to include also a new type in the form of paid articles or broadcasts disguised as news. These generally present an issue in a very subjective and often misleading light, primarily meant to persuade rather than inform. Normally they use only subtle propaganda techniques and not the more obvious ones used in traditional commercial advertisements. If the reader believes that a paid advertisement is in fact a news item, the message the advertiser is trying to communicate will be more easily "believed" or "internalized". Such advertisements are considered obvious examples of "covert" propaganda because they take on the appearance of objective information rather than the appearance of propaganda, which is misleading. Federal law specifically mandates that any advertisement appearing in the format of a news item must state that the item is in fact a paid advertisement.


title: Propaganda

text: Edmund McGarry illustrates that advertising is more than selling to an audience but a type of propaganda that is trying to persuade the public and not to be balanced in judgement.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda has become more common in political contexts, in particular, to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments, political groups, but also often covert interests. In the early 20th century, propaganda was exemplified in the form of party slogans. Propaganda also has much in common with public information campaigns by governments, which are intended to encourage or discourage certain forms of behavior (such as wearing seat belts, not smoking, not littering, and so forth). Again, the emphasis is more political in propaganda. Propaganda can take the form of leaflets, posters, TV, and radio broadcasts and can also extend to any other medium. In the case of the United States, there is also an important legal (imposed by law) distinction between advertising (a type of overt propaganda) and what the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of the United States Congress, refers to as "covert propaganda".


title: Propaganda

text: Roderick Hindery argues that propaganda exists on the political left, and right, and in mainstream centrist parties. Hindery further argues that debates about most social issues can be productively revisited in the context of asking "what is or is not propaganda?" Not to be overlooked is the link between propaganda, indoctrination, and terrorism/counterterrorism. He argues that threats to destroy are often as socially disruptive as physical devastation itself.


title: Propaganda

text: Since 9/11 and the appearance of greater media fluidity, propaganda institutions, practices and legal frameworks have been evolving in the US and Britain. Briant shows how this included expansion and integration of the apparatus cross-government and details attempts to coordinate the forms of propaganda for foreign and domestic audiences, with new efforts in strategic communication. These were subject to contestation within the US Government, resisted by Pentagon Public Affairs and critiqued by some scholars. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (popularly referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act) and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders for the Archivist of the United States. The Smith-Mundt Act, as amended, provided that "the Secretary and the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall make available to the Archivist of the United States, for domestic distribution, motion pictures, films, videotapes, and other material 12 years after the initial dissemination of the material abroad (...) Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program material, or based on a presumption of such exposure." Public concerns were raised upon passage due to the relaxation of prohibitions of domestic propaganda in the United States.


title: Propaganda

text: In the wake of this, the internet has become a prolific method of distributing political propaganda, benefiting from an evolution in coding called bots. Software agents or bots can be used for many things, including populating social media with automated messages and posts with a range of sophistication. During the 2016 U.S. election a cyber-strategy was implemented using bots to direct US voters to Russian political news and information sources, and to spread politically motivated rumors and false news stories. At this point it is considered commonplace contemporary political strategy around the world to implement bots in achieving political goals.


title: Propaganda

text: Common media for transmitting propaganda messages include news reports, government reports, historical revision, junk science, books, leaflets, movies, radio, television, and posters. Some propaganda campaigns follow a strategic transmission pattern to indoctrinate the target group. This may begin with a simple transmission, such as a leaflet or advertisement dropped from a plane or an advertisement. Generally, these messages will contain directions on how to obtain more information, via a website, hotline, radio program, etc. (as it is seen also for selling purposes among other goals). The strategy intends to initiate the individual from information recipient to information seeker through reinforcement, and then from information seeker to opinion leader through indoctrination.


title: Propaganda

text: A number of techniques based in social psychological research are used to generate propaganda. Many of these same techniques can be found under logical fallacies, since propagandists use arguments that, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.


title: Propaganda

text: Some time has been spent analyzing the means by which the propaganda messages are transmitted. That work is important but it is clear that information dissemination strategies become propaganda strategies only when coupled with "propagandistic messages". Identifying these messages is a necessary prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread.


title: Propaganda

text: Propaganda can also be turned on its makers. For example, postage stamps have frequently been tools for government advertising, such as North Korea's extensive issues. The presence of Stalin on numerous Soviet stamps is another example. In Nazi Germany, Hitler frequently appeared on postage stamps in Germany and some of the occupied nations. A British program to parody these, and other Nazi-inspired stamps, involved airdropping them into Germany on letters containing anti-Nazi literature.


title: Propaganda

text: In 2018 a scandal broke in which the journalist Carole Cadwalladr, several whistleblowers and the academic Dr Emma Briant revealed advances in digital propaganda techniques showing that online human intelligence techniques used in psychological warfare had been coupled with psychological profiling using illegally obtained social media data for political campaigns in the United States in 2016 to aid Donald Trump by the firm Cambridge Analytica. The company initially denied breaking laws but later admitted breaking UK law, the scandal provoking a worldwide debate on acceptable use of data for propaganda and influence.


title: Propaganda

text: The field of social psychology includes the study of persuasion. Social psychologists can be sociologists or psychologists. The field includes many theories and approaches to understanding persuasion. For example, communication theory points out that people can be persuaded by the communicator's credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. The elaboration likelihood model, as well as heuristic models of persuasion, suggest that a number of factors (e.g., the degree of interest of the recipient of the communication), influence the degree to which people allow superficial factors to persuade them. Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Herbert A. Simon won the Nobel prize for his theory that people are cognitive misers. That is, in a society of mass information, people are forced to make decisions quickly and often superficially, as opposed to logically.


title: Propaganda

text: According to William W. Biddle's 1931 article "A psychological definition of propaganda", "[t]he four principles followed in propaganda are: (1) rely on emotions, never argue; (2) cast propaganda into the pattern of "we" versus an "enemy"; (3) reach groups as well as individuals; (4) hide the propagandist as much as possible."


title: Propaganda

text: More recently, studies from behavioral science have become significant in understanding and planning propaganda campaigns, these include for example nudge theory which was used by the Obama Campaign in 2008 then adopted by the UK Government Behavioural Insights Team. Behavioural methodologies then became subject to great controversy in 2016 after the company Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have applied them with millions of people's breached Facebook data to encourage them to vote for Donald Trump.


title: Propaganda

text: Haifeng Huang argues that propaganda is not always necessarily about convincing a populace of its message (and may actually fail to do this) but instead can also function as a means of intimidating the citizenry and signalling the regime's strength and ability to maintain its control and power over society; by investing significant resources into propaganda, the regime can forewarn its citizens of its strength and deterring them from attempting to challenge it.


title: Propaganda

text: During the 1930s, educators in the United States and around the world became concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism and other forms of violent extremism. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was formed to introduce methods of instruction for high school and college students, helping learners to recognize and desist propaganda by identifying persuasive techniques. This work built upon classical rhetoric and it was informed by suggestion theory and social scientific studies of propaganda and persuasion. In the 1950s, propaganda theory and education examined the rise of American consumer culture, and this work was popularized by Vance Packard in his 1957 book, "The Hidden Persuaders." European theologian Jacques Ellul's landmark work, "" framed propaganda in relation to larger themes about the relationship between humans and technology. Media messages did not serve to enlighten or inspire, he argued. They merely overwhelm by arousing emotions and oversimplifying ideas, limiting human reasoning and judgement.


title: Propaganda

text: In the 1980s, academics recognized that news and journalism could function as propaganda when business and government interests were amplified by mass media. The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky which argues systemic biases exist in mass media that are shaped by structural economic causes. It argues that the way in which commercial media institutions are structured and operate (e.g. through advertising revenue, concentration of media ownership, or access to sources) creates an inherent conflict of interest that make them act as propaganda for powerful political and commercial interests:


title: Propaganda

text: First presented in their book "" (1988), the propaganda model analyses commercial mass media as businesses that sell a product – access to readers and audiences – to other businesses (advertisers) and that benefit from access to information from government and corporate sources to produce their content. The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that shape the content that is presented in news media: ownership of the medium, reliance on advertising revenue, access to news sources, threat of litigation and commercial backlash (flak), and anti-communism and "fear ideology". The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic political economic structure, and the model has subsequently been applied by other scholars to study media bias in other countries.


title: Propaganda

text: By the 1990s, the topic of propaganda was no longer a part of public education, having been relegated to a specialist subject. Secondary English educators grew fearful of the study of propaganda genres, choosing to focus on argumentation and reasoning instead of the highly emotional forms of propaganda found in advertising and political campaigns. In 2015, the European Commission funded Mind Over Media, a digital learning platform for teaching and learning about contemporary propaganda. The study of contemporary propaganda is growing in secondary education, where it is seen as a part of language arts and social studies education.


title: Propaganda

text: Self-propaganda is a form of propaganda that refers to the act of an individual convincing themself of something, no matter how irrational that idea may be. Self propaganda makes it easier for individuals to justify their own actions as well as the actions of others. Self-propaganda works oftentimes to lessen the cognitive dissonance felt by individuals when their personal actions or the actions of their government do not line up with their moral beliefs. Self-propaganda is a type of self deception. Self-propaganda can have a negative impact on those who perpetuate the beliefs created by using self-propaganda.


title: Propaganda

text: Of all the potential targets for propaganda, children are the most vulnerable because they are the least prepared with the critical reasoning and contextual comprehension they need to determine whether a message is a propaganda or not. The attention children give their environment during development, due to the process of developing their understanding of the world, causes them to absorb propaganda indiscriminately. Also, children are highly imitative: studies by Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross and Sheila A. Ross in the 1960s indicated that, to a degree, socialization, formal education and standardized television programming can be seen as using propaganda for the purpose of indoctrination. The use of propaganda in schools was highly prevalent during the 1930s and 1940s in Germany in the form of the Hitler Youth.


title: Propaganda

text: In Nazi Germany, the education system was thoroughly co-opted to indoctrinate the German youth with anti-Semitic ideology. From the 1920s on, the Nazi Party targeted German youth as one of their special audience for its propaganda messages. Schools and texts mirrored what the Nazis aimed of instilling in German youth through the use and promotion of racial theory. Julius Streicher, the editor of "Der Sturmer", headed a publishing house that disseminated anti-Semitic propaganda picture books in schools during the Nazi dictatorship. This was accomplished through the National Socialist Teachers League, of which 97% of all German teachers were members in 1937.


title: Propaganda

text: The League encouraged the teaching of racial theory. Picture books for children such as "Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath", "Der Giftpilz" (translated into English as "The Poisonous Mushroom") and "The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pinscher" were widely circulated (over 100,000 copies of "Trust No Fox"... were circulated during the late 1930s) and contained depictions of Jews as devils, child molesters and other morally charged figures. Slogans such as "Judas the Jew betrayed Jesus the German to the Jews" were recited in class. During the Nuremberg Trial, "Trust No Fox on his Green Heath and No Jew on his Oath", and "Der Giftpilz" were received as documents in evidence because they document the practices of the Nazis The following is an example of a propagandistic math problem recommended by the National Socialist Essence of Education: "The Jews are aliens in Germany—in 1933 there were 66,606,000 inhabitants in the German Reich, of whom 499,682 (.75%) were Jews."


title: Minsk agreements

text: The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Russian regular forces playing a central part. The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.


title: Minsk agreements

text: The agreement failed to stop fighting, and was thus followed with a revised and updated agreement, Minsk II, which was signed on 12 February 2015. This agreement consisted of a package of measures, including a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government. While fighting subsided following the agreement's signing, it never ended completely, and the agreement's provisions were never fully implemented.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Amid rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine in early 2022, Russia officially recognised the DFR and LPR on 21 February 2022. Following that decision, on 22 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the Minsk agreements "no longer existed", and that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame for their collapse. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.


title: Minsk agreements

text: The Minsk Protocol was drawn up by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, which consisted of representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and the OSCE. The group was established in June 2014 as a way to facilitate dialogue and resolution of the strife across eastern and southern Ukraine. Meetings of the group, along with informal representatives of the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, took place on 31 July, 26 August, 1 September, and 5 September 2014. The details of the agreement, signed on 5 September 2014, largely resembled Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko's 20 June "fifteen-point peace plan".


title: Minsk agreements

text: In the two weeks after the Minsk Protocol was signed, there were frequent violations of the ceasefire by both parties to the conflict. Talks continued in Minsk, and a follow-up to the Minsk Protocol was agreed to on 19 September 2014. This memorandum clarified the implementation of the Protocol. Amongst some of the peacemaking measures agreed to were:


title: Minsk agreements

text: After the follow-up memorandum, the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport broke out, and both parties continued to accuse each other of ceasefire violations. In late October, DPR prime minister and Minsk Protocol signatory Alexander Zakharchenko said that his forces would retake the territory they had lost to Ukrainian forces during a July 2014 offensive, and that DPR forces would be willing to wage "heavy battles" to do so. Subsequently, Zakharchenko said that he had been misquoted, and that he had meant to say that these areas would be taken through "peaceful means".


title: Minsk agreements

text: While campaigning in the lead-up to the 2 November elections held by the DPR and LPR in violation of the Protocol, Zakharchenko said "These are historical times. We are creating a new country! It's an insane goal". OSCE chairman Didier Burkhalter confirmed that the elections ran "counter to the letter and spirit of the Minsk Protocol", and said that they would "further complicate its implementation".


title: Minsk agreements

text: Speaking on 5 December, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that the 2 November DPR and LPR elections were "exactly within the range in which they had been negotiated in Minsk", and that the Ukrainian parliament was supposed to pass an amnesty bill for DPR and LPR leaders after the Ukrainian parliamentary election in late October. According to Lavrov, closer monitoring of the Russo-Ukrainian border, as specified by the Minsk Protocol, could only take place after such an amnesty law was approved. He noted that he thought that a Ukrainian presidential decree banning prosecution of Donbas separatist combatants was issued on 16 September, but said that "a bill has now been filed proposing to overturn" the decree.


title: Minsk agreements

text: By January 2015, the Minsk Protocol ceasefire had completely collapsed. Following the separatist victory at Donetsk International Airport in defiance of the Protocol, DPR spokesman Eduard Basurin said that "the Minsk Memorandum will not be considered in the form it was adopted". Later in the day, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that the DPR "will not make any attempts at ceasefire talks any more", and that his forces were going to "attack right up to the borders of Donetsk region". "The New York Times" said that the ceasefire had "all but vanished".


title: Minsk agreements

text: Amidst increasing violence in the combat zone, another round of Minsk talks was scheduled for 31 January. Members of the Trilateral Contact Group travelled to Minsk to meet representatives of the DPR and LPR. The DPR and LPR signatories of the Protocol did not attend, and those representatives that did attend were not able to discuss the implementation of the Protocol or memorandum. These representatives asked for the revision of the Protocol and the memorandum. The meeting was adjourned with no result.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Successive attempts to resolve the ongoing war in the Donbas region of Ukraine had seen no result by the start of February 2015. While the Minsk Protocol of 5 September 2014 did significantly reduce fighting in the conflict zone for many months, minor skirmishes continued. At the start of January 2015, the separatist forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) began a new offensive on Ukrainian-controlled areas, resulting in the complete collapse of the Minsk Protocol ceasefire.


title: Minsk agreements

text: After heavy fighting, DPR forces captured the symbolically important Donetsk International Airport on 21 January, the last part of the city of Donetsk that had been under Ukrainian control. Following this victory, separatist forces pressed their offensive on the important railway and road junction of Debaltseve in late January. This renewed heavy fighting caused significant concern in the international community. French president François Hollande and German chancellor Angela Merkel put forth a new peace plan on 7 February.


title: Minsk agreements

text: The Franco-German plan, drawn up after talks with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and Russian president Vladimir Putin, was seen as a revival of the Minsk Protocol. President Hollande said that the plan was the "last chance" for resolution of the conflict. The plan was put forth in response to American proposals to send armaments to the Ukrainian government, something that Chancellor Merkel said would only result in a worsening of the crisis.


title: Minsk agreements

text: A summit to discuss the implementation of the Franco-German diplomatic plan was scheduled for 11 February at the Independence Palace in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. It was attended by Russian president Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko, and LPR leader Igor Plotnitsky. Negotiations went on overnight for sixteen hours, and were said to have been "very difficult" by the German foreign minister.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Following the talks, it was announced on 12 February 2015 that the parties to the conflict had agreed to a new package of peacemaking measures, the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, which is commonly called Minsk II. Some of the measures agreed to were an OSCE-observed unconditional ceasefire from 15 February, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, and constitutional reform in Ukraine.


title: Minsk agreements

text: The new package, commonly referred to as "Minsk II", was criticised for being "highly complicated" and "extremely fragile", and for being very similar to the failed Minsk Protocol. "The New York Times" reported that the plan had "included some tripwires", such as not demarcating control over the city of Debaltseve, which was the site of the most fierce fighting at the time of the plan's drafting. Following the Minsk talks, Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande, and President Poroshenko attended a European Union (EU) summit in Brussels.


title: Minsk agreements

text: At the summit, the Minsk participants briefed EU leaders about the talks. During the briefing, they said that President Putin had tried to delay the implementation of a ceasefire by ten days, so as to force Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve to surrender their positions. For his part, President Putin said that the Debaltseve defenders were encircled, and that the separatists expected them "to lay down their arms and cease resistance".


title: Minsk agreements

text: "Kommersant" reporter Andrey Kolesnikov wrote that implementation of the ceasefire in Debaltseve hinged upon whether or not Ukrainian forces were truly encircled, "Above all, does it exist or not? Vladimir Putin insisted that it [the encirclement] exists and that if a cease-fire agreement is reached, it will be odd if it isn't violated: Those in the kettle will certainly try to get out of there; those who have boiled that kettle will try to collect the foam".


title: Minsk agreements

text: US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on 13 February that the Russian Armed Forces had actively deployed around Debaltseve to assist the separatists in forcing out Ukrainian troops prior to the start of the ceasefire, the 15 February. Russia denied this, and Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia could not assist in the implementation of Minsk II because it was "not a participant" in the conflict.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh said that he reserved the right to continue fighting, and that Minsk II was unconstitutional. He said that his Ukrainian Volunteer Corps would continue fighting "until complete liberation of Ukrainian lands from Russian occupants", and promised "death to Russian terrorist-occupiers". DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that the ceasefire did not apply to Debaltseve, and that fighting would continue there.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Though the fighting generally subsided after the ceasefire came into effect at 0:00 EET on 15 February, skirmishes and shelling continued in several parts of the conflict zone. Shelling and fighting at Debaltseve continued, as DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that the ceasefire did not apply to that area. In the south of Donetsk Oblast, fighting between DPR forces and members of the Azov Battalion continued in villages near Mariupol. By 16 February, Minsk II seemed on the verge of collapse. Separatists continued a heavy assault on Debaltseve. Both sides said that they would not withdraw heavy weaponry as specified by the agreement whilst fighting in Debaltseve was ongoing. Reuters described the ceasefire as "stillborn" in Debaltseve. Ukrainian forces were forced to retreat from Debaltseve on 18 February, leaving separatist forces in control of the city.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In the week after the fall of Debaltseve to pro-Russian forces, fighting in the conflict zone abated. DPR and LPR forces began to withdraw artillery from the front lines as specified by Minsk II on 24 February, and Ukraine did so on 26 February. Ukraine reported that it had suffered no casualties during 24–26 February, something that had not occurred since early January 2015.


title: Minsk agreements

text: The parliament of Ukraine approved a law on "special status" for Donbas on 17 March, as specified by Minsk II. Later, in 2019, Ukraine's parliament voted to extend regulations giving limited self-rule to separatist-controlled eastern regions, a prerequisite for a deal to settle the five-year conflict there. The law was immediately criticised by Ukrainian politicians, separatist leaders, and the Russian government. Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko said that the law was "a vote for de facto recognition of the Russian occupation in Donbas". Vice-parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy said that law was "not for Putin or the occupiers", but to show Europe that Ukraine was willing to adhere to Minsk II. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that the law was a "sharp departure from the Minsk agreements" because it demanded local elections under Ukrainian jurisdiction.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Representatives of the LPR and DPR said that the law was a "one-sided" modification of Minsk II, and that the agreement had been rendered void by this modification. DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that any change to Minsk II that had not been mutually agreed upon was "legally void", and that "nothing that had been agreed upon in Minsk has been carried out". He added that the DPR "must occupy all of the cities in which the referendum took place, and then politically cooperate [with Ukraine] as equal partners". Despite this, representatives of the DPR and LPR continued to forward peace proposals to the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Ukrainian defence minister Stepan Poltorak said on 8 June 2015 that over 100 soldiers and at least 50 civilians had been killed since Minsk II came into effect. According to him, pro-Russian forces had violated the truce more than 4,000 times. Contrary to the agreement, DPR representative Denis Pushilin and LPR representative Vladislav Deinego said on 10 June 2015 that their republics "would like to join the Russian Federation". In addition, they said that they consider Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014, to be part of Russia.


title: Minsk agreements

text: American Defense Department official Michael Carpenter said on 2 March 2016 that at least 430 Ukrainian soldiers had died since the signing of Minsk II, that Russia maintained "command-and-control links" over the DPR and LPR, and that Russia was "pouring heavy weapons" into the Donbas. Deputy head of the OSCE mission in Ukraine Alexander Hug said on 25 March 2016 that the OSCE had observed "armed people with Russian insignia" fighting in Donbas from the beginning of the conflict, that they had talked to prisoners who said they were Russian soldiers, and that they had seen "tire tracks, not the vehicles themselves, but the tracks of vehicles crossing the [Russo-Ukrainian] border".


title: Minsk agreements

text: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on 27 March 2016 that Russia was "not a party to the Minsk agreements", and that the agreements were "devoted to two conflicting sides". The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe however claims that the Minsk Protocol also includes the liberation of those hostages who have been abducted from the Ukrainian territory and are illegally detained in Russia, e.g. Nadiya Savchenko and Oleg Sentsov.


title: Minsk agreements

text: On 27 December 2018, Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported that not a single provision of the Minsk deal had been fully implemented.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In July 2020, Office of The President of Ukraine announced Leonid Kuchma will no longer take part in the work of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on resolving the situation in Ukraine's east. Leonid Kuchma met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on 28 July.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In June 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin "agreed to pursue diplomacy related to the Minsk agreement."


title: Minsk agreements

text: A Normandy Format meeting was planned between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in Paris on 26 January 2022. Ukraine fulfilled Russia's condition for a meeting in Paris and decided to withdraw from Parliament the controversial draft law on the reintegration of the Crimea and Donbas region, because the law was contrary to the Minsk II.


title: Minsk agreements

text: While the 2015 Ukrainian local elections had been scheduled for 25 October, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko issued a decree on 2 July that ordered local DPR elections to be held on 18 October. He said that this action was "in accordance with the Minsk agreements". According to Zakharchenko, this move meant that the DPR had "independently started to implement the Minsk agreements". Zakharchenko said that the elections would "take place 'on the basis of Ukraine's law on temporary self-rule status of individual districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions', in so far as they are not at variance with the constitution and laws of the DPR".


title: Minsk agreements

text: On the same day, President Petro Poroshenko responded that if DPR elections went forward in this unilateral manner, it would be "extremely irresponsible and will have devastating consequences for the process of deescalation of tension in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions". In addition, the OSCE said that it would only send observers to elections in the conflict zone if Ukraine invited it to do so. As specified in Minsk II, local elections in DPR and LPR-held territories must be observed by the OSCE to be deemed legitimate. LPR leader Igor Plotnitsky followed the DPR by scheduling elections in the territory that he controlled for 1 November 2015.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Amidst a great reduction in violence, following an agreement to restart the implementation of Minsk II that was agreed to on 1 September, the Normandy four held a meeting on 2 October. At the meeting, it was agreed that elections in the conflict zone would be held in accordance with Minsk II. In order to do this, French President François Hollande said that the elections would need to be postponed until 2016, as three months were required to prepare for them. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to use his influence to prevent the DPR and LPR from holding early elections.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Accordingly, the DPR and LPR announced on 6 October that their planned elections had been postponed until 21 February 2016. Local elections in the rest of Ukraine went ahead on 25 October 2015. Following the postponement, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that if OSCE observers verified that the planned elections to be held in the separatist areas were in accordance with Ukrainian law and Minsk II, the "law on special status" for these areas would come into immediate effect.


title: Minsk agreements

text: On 18 April 2016 the planned (organised by the DPR and LPR) local elections were postponed from 20 April to 24 July 2016. On 22 July 2016 these DPR and LPR elections were again postponed to 6 November 2016. On 2 October 2016 the DPR and LPR held "primaries" in which voters nominated candidates for the 6 November 2016 elections. Ukraine denounced these "primaries" as illegal. On 4 November 2016 both DPR and LPR postponed their local elections "until further notice"; head of the DPR Zakharchenko added that "In 2017, we will hold elections under the Minsk agreements, or we will hold them independently."


title: Minsk agreements

text: Elections for the People's Council of the Donetsk People's Republic and the People's Council of the Luhansk People's Republic were organised and held by the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics on 11 November 2018.


title: Minsk agreements

text: Following the fall of Debaltseve in February 2015, about one-third of the Donbas region remained in separatist control. A few days before the 2022 Russian invasion, French president Emmanuel Macron and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken opined that the Minsk agreements were "the way forward" to end the conflict in Donbas. Blinken added that it was an incomplete step as there were other outstanding issues. The aim of the Russian intervention in Donbas was to establish pro-Russian governments that, upon reincorporation into Ukraine, would facilitate Russian inference in Ukrainian politics. The agreements were thus highly favourable to the Russian side, as their implementation would accomplish these goals.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In May and June 2021, Mark Galeotti proposed "it is time to recognize that the Minsk process has run its course — and may if anything be blocking any more meaningful dialogue", and suggested that as an external party, the United Kingdom might move diplomacy forward. In a June 2021 interview, Vladislav Surkov, Putin's aide for Ukraine policy from 2013 to 2020, who was removed from his role in February 2020, said that Ukraine "can be reformed as a confederation, with a lot of freedom for the regions to decide things by themselves". He said the country would be severed by the "geopolitical gravity" between Russia and the West, describing the Minsk agreements as an act that "legitimized the first division of Ukraine" in a "reconquest", "the first open geopolitical counter-attack by Russia [against the West]". In October 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "if the Americans are genuinely prepared to support the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, this issue can be settled very quickly."


title: Minsk agreements

text: A dispute emerged over the role of the Russian Federation, with the parties understanding Minsk as an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, but Russian officials claiming the role of mediator, insisted that Ukraine negotiate directly with representatives of the self-proclaimed separatist republics in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has "no intention of talking to terrorists". The Russian side refused high-level talks, and the Kremlin endorsed an October 2021 "Kommersant" article by former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev entitled "Why It Is Senseless to Deal with the Current Ukrainian Leadership", which some have criticized.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In November 2021, the Russian foreign ministry breached diplomatic protocol by releasing confidential correspondence with negotiators Germany and France.


title: Minsk agreements

text: In December 2021, Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that "Kyiv is not fulfilling the Minsk Agreements. The Ukrainian armed forces are touting that they have started to employ US-supplied Javelin anti-tank missile systems in Donbas and are also using Turkish reconnaissance/strike drones. As a result, the already tense situation in the east of that country is further deteriorating."


title: Minsk agreements

text: In January 2022, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that "The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction. When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel — and the German and the French watched — it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement those documents."


title: Minsk agreements

text: In February 2022, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said "the most possible solution (to the current situation) could be the Minsk agreement to be fulfilled or that there would be significant progress in its implementation."


title: Minsk agreements

text: On 15 February 2022, the Russian Duma voted to appeal to President Putin to recognise the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR. The next day, a Russian government spokesman acknowledged that officially recognising the Donbas republics would not be in keeping with the Minsk agreements. However, he also told journalists that Putin's priority in regulating the situation in Donbas is the implementation of mechanisms adopted under those agreements. Russia went on to officially recognise the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics on 21 February 2022. Following that decision, on 22 February 2022, President Putin said that the Minsk agreements "no longer existed", and that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame for their collapse, accusing Ukraine of genocide in Donbas in his comments – a statement largely seen as baseless and factually wrong by the wider world, academics studying genocide, and the United Nations. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.


title: Minsk agreements

text: On 24 August 2022, after a meeting of the Crimea Platform, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated that current front lines in the war would not be frozen. "At the point where we are, we are not ready for a ceasefire. We explained that there will be no Minsk-3, Minsk-5, or Minsk-7. We will not play these games, we have lost part of our territories this way … it is a trap".


title: Minsk agreements

text: Angela Merkel said in 2022 that the agreement had been "an attempt to give Ukraine time" and that Ukraine used it to strengthen its armed forces.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Since the Partition of British India in 1947 and subsequent creation of the dominions of India and Pakistan, the two countries have been involved in a number of wars, conflicts, and military standoffs. A long-running dispute over Kashmir and cross-border terrorism have been the predominant cause of conflict between the two states, with the exception of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which occurred as a direct result of hostilities stemming from the Bangladesh Liberation War in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: The Partition of India came about in the aftermath of World War II, when both Great Britain and British India were dealing with the economic stresses caused by the war and its demobilisation. It was the intention of those who wished for a Muslim state to come from British India to have a clean partition between independent and equal "Pakistan" and "Hindustan" once independence came.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Inter-communal violence between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims resulted in between 200,000 and 2 million casualties leaving 14 million people displaced.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Princely states in India were provided with an Instrument of Accession to accede to either India or Pakistan.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: The war, also called the First Kashmir War, started in October 1947 when Pakistan feared that the Maharaja of the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu would accede to India. Following partition, princely states were left to choose whether to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent. Jammu and Kashmir, the largest of the princely states, had a majority Muslim population and significant fraction of Hindu population, all ruled by the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. Tribal Islamic forces with support from the army of Pakistan attacked and occupied parts of the princely state forcing the Maharaja to sign the Instrument of Accession of the princely state to the Dominion of India to receive Indian military aid. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 on 22 April 1948. The fronts solidified gradually along what came to be known as the Line of Control. A formal cease-fire was declared at 23:59 on the night of 1 January 1949. India gained control of about two-thirds of the state (Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Ladakh) whereas Pakistan gained roughly a third of The Pakistan controlled areas are collectively referred to as Pakistan administered Kashmir.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: This war started following Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against rule by India. India retaliated by launching a full-scale military attack on West Pakistan. The seventeen-day war caused thousands of casualties on both sides and witnessed the largest engagement of armored vehicles and the largest tank battle since World War II. The hostilities between the two countries ended after a ceasefire was declared following diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and USA and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration. India had the upper hand over Pakistan when the ceasefire was declared.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: This war was unique in the way that it did not involve the issue of Kashmir, but was rather precipitated by the crisis created by the political battle brewing in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) between Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Leader of East Pakistan, and Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leaders of West Pakistan. This would culminate in the declaration of Independence of Bangladesh from the state system of Pakistan. Following Operation Searchlight and the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, about 10 million Bengalis in East Pakistan took refuge in neighbouring India.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: India intervened in the ongoing Bangladesh liberation movement. After a large scale pre-emptive strike by Pakistan, full-scale hostilities between the two countries commenced.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Pakistan attacked at several places along India's western border with Pakistan, but the Indian Army successfully held their positions. The Indian Army quickly responded to the Pakistan Army's movements in the west and made some initial gains, including capturing around of Pakistani territory (land gained by India in Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistani Punjab and Sindh sectors but gifted it back to Pakistan in the Simla Agreement of 1972, as a gesture of goodwill). Within two weeks of intense fighting, Pakistani forces in East Pakistan surrendered to the joint command of Indian and Bangladeshi forces following which the People's Republic of Bangladesh was created. This war saw the highest number of casualties in any of the India-Pakistan conflicts, as well as the largest number of prisoners of war since the Second World War after the surrender of more than 90,000 Pakistani Army troops. In the words of one Pakistani author, "Pakistan lost half its navy, a quarter of its air force and a third of its army".


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Commonly known as the Kargil War, this conflict between the two countries was mostly limited. During early 1999, Pakistani troops infiltrated across the Line of Control (LoC) and occupied Indian territory mostly in the Kargil district. India responded by launching a major military and diplomatic offensive to drive out the Pakistani infiltrators. Two months into the conflict, Indian troops had slowly retaken most of the ridges that were encroached by the infiltrators. According to official count, an estimated 75%–80% of the intruded area and nearly all high ground was back under Indian control.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Fearing large-scale escalation in military conflict, the international community, led by the United States, increased diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to withdraw forces from remaining Indian territory.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Faced with the possibility of international isolation, the already fragile Pakistani economy was weakened further. The morale of Pakistani forces after the withdrawal declined as many units of the Northern Light Infantry suffered heavy casualties. The government refused to accept the dead bodies of many officers, an issue that provoked outrage and protests in the Northern Areas. Pakistan initially did not acknowledge many of its casualties, but Nawaz Sharif later said that over 4,000 Pakistani troops were killed in the operation and that Pakistan had lost the conflict. By the end of July 1999, organized hostilities in the Kargil district had ceased.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: Apart from the aforementioned wars, there have been skirmishes between the two nations from time to time. Some have bordered on all-out war, while others were limited in scope. The countries were expected to fight each other in 1955 after warlike posturing on both sides, but full-scale war did not break out.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: The nuclear conflict between both countries is of passive strategic nature with nuclear doctrine of Pakistan stating a first strike policy, although the strike would only be initiated if and only if, the Pakistan Armed Forces are unable to halt an invasion (as for example in 1971 war) or a nuclear strike is launched against Pakistan, whereas India has a declared policy of no first use. According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal "Nature Food" in August 2022, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill more than 2 billion indirectly by starvation during a nuclear winter.


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: The nations of South Asia observe national and armed forces-specific days which originate from conflicts between India and Pakistan as follows:


title: Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

text: These wars have provided source material for both Indian and Pakistani film and television dramatists, who have adapted events of the war for the purposes of drama and to please target audiences in their nations.


title: Patti Harrison

text: Patti Harrison (born October 31, 1990) is an American actress and comedian. She is best known for her roles in comedy series such as "Shrill" (2019–2021) and "I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson" (2019–present), as well as the comedy film "Together Together" (2021), with the latter earning her a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead.


title: Patti Harrison

text: Harrison was born in Orient, Ohio, on October 31, 1990, the youngest of seven children of a Vietnamese mother and an American father. Her father, a native of Detroit, was in the U.S. Army and met her mother during the Vietnam War when she was working as a janitor in his barracks. He died of a heart attack when Harrison was six years old. Her first involvement in comedy came from her participation in an improv team during her time at Ohio University, from which she did not graduate.


title: Patti Harrison

text: Harrison moved to New York City to pursue a comedy career in 2015, but later moved to Los Angeles. She has said that her stand-up comedy style has changed drastically since her early days of performing, having initially felt anxious about making jokes about sex and her sexuality due to internalized transphobia stemming from being a trans woman. In an interview with "Vogue", she described her comedic persona: "I'm a nasty, stupid person—that's my voice. I'm an evil, shitty person on stage, in a very conscious way—the evil is punching up."