False Flags: Origins, Pirates, Hate Crimes, and Wars
What is the origin of the phrase "False Flag"? What are some of the examples in history and today?
The Origin of False Flags: It Might Have Been Pirates
In 1569, the phrase "False Flag" appeared in A Warning Agaynst the Dangerous Practises of Papistes. (Ignore the spelling. This is how they wrote back then.)
"Of this sort was Gardiner that abused K. Henry with a false flagge of religion, when he made hys booke of true obedience."
In this context the phrase "False Flag" was meant to be taken figuratively. The Oxford English Dictionary defined it as “a deliberate misrepresentation of someone’s affiliation or motives; something used deliberately to misrepresent in this way.”
"False Flag" wasn't meant literally until hundreds of years later in 1824. If you suspected it might have something to do with pirates, you would be right. Yarrrr.
The earliest literal usage of the phrase "False Flag" appears in a May 29, 1824 article in the Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, DC.
“The boarding officers must, in their discretion, decide, whether this be a true or false flag, and of the character of the vessel."
In this context it meant "a flag used to disguise a ship by misrepresenting its nationality, allegiance, intent, etc." A sailing ship would run colors of another allegiance or country in order to either disguise itself or put itself in a strategic position for attack.
Grammaphobia: The History of False Flag
Elements of A False Flag
I'm going to start by saying False Flags are very real events. They do happen. Very often lives are tragically lost and property damage does occur during such events.
So what makes an event a False Flag event?
The event was designed with a particular political goal in mind.
The planners place blame on another party. They are designed to seem as the event was carried out by someone else.
The event is meant to deceive the masses in order to sway opinions, evoke emotions, and create a certain narrative to achieve an end goal.
If I were to sum this up for a bumper sticker, I would say that a False Flag is an event which employs a deceipt or lie and was created to advance an agenda.
Things that may be utilized during a False Flag event include:
Crisis actors
Staged sites for news reporting (like a movie set)
News reporting overly focusing on or sensationalizing the event
Dark psychology or psyops in order to heighten public fear, terror, paranoia, opinion, etc
Infiltration within political groups in order to sway opinions
Remember, the end goal or advancement of an agenda is what is important here. In these events, the ends justify the means.
The Boston Tea Party, 1773 - Boston, Massachusetts
Who hasn't studied the Boston Tea Party in school? But very few people realize that this was a false flag event. American colonists, who called themselves the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians and destroyed an entire shipment of tea by throwing it into the Boston Harbor. The goal here was to get the Townshend Act appealed. It didn't really go the way original planners intended, one of which might have been Samuel Adams. But it did lead to the American Revolution. So there is that.
Q Ships, World War I and World War II (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) - The Oceans
This is probably the most classic example of the original definition of a False Flag.
During both World Wars, both the British and German navy would disguise their ships as merchant ships or as ships from neutral countries. The reality was that these were heavily armored decoy ships. When an enemy ship would get in range to sink or destroy the "merchant" ship, the Q Ship's guns would rain down fire upon the enemy.
As stated in this article,
This false flag technique was pioneered by pirate ships that would fly a friendly flag in order to get close to their prey, and only when too close for the victim ship to escape would reveal their pirate banner.
10 Examples of “False Flag” Attacks
The United States conversely didn't have huge success with this technique. One of their five Q Ships sank on its maiden voyage.
Manchurian (Mukden) Incident, 1931 - Manchuria, China
Japanese soldiers planned and carried out an attack on a railway line owned by a Japanese company. They failed horribly in destroying the railway track or doing any real damage, stopping the train, or killing anyone. However, they still managed to blame the incident on China and advance the war. The invasion over Mukden did happen and the Imperial Japanese Army was victorious. So I guess even botched false flags can be successful false flags.
Reichstag Fire, 1933 - Berlin, Germany
A fire was set in Berlin's Parliament called the Reichstag. Up until this point, Hitler couldn't get a majority vote in Germany. Hitler used the event to invoke Article 48 and the cabinet drew up the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State" a few hours after the fire was set. That same night, 4,000 of Hitler's political enemies were arrested. This was the chain of events that led to Hitler's rise to power.
It was obviously a false flag event since everything from the Stormtroopers who made the arrests to the decree was set up within a week of the fire. The goal was to ensure the success of Hitler's power grab.
Operation Himmler, 1939 - Gleiwitz, Germany
In order to justify Hitler's invasion of Poland and to break Germany's nonaggression pact with Poland, SS troops disguised as Polish saboteurs launched an attack on a radio station in a German city. The plan was created by German's military service, the Abwehr. The troops broadcasted a short message after taking over the radio station. "Attention! This is Gliwice. The broadcasting station is in Polish hands." To make the incident seem more real, crisis actors in the form of German concentration camp prisoners were dressed in Polish army uniforms. They were given lethal injections and then shot in the face to avoid any kind of identification.
The story spread through the news agencies like wildfire. First in Germany and then later by BBC and Reuters. Within a few hours, Germany launched air force and naval attacks against Poland. Within two days of the incident, Britain declared war against Germany.
Remember, sometimes the death toll during a false flag event is very real.
How 'Operation Himmler' Sparked WWII
The Shelling of Mainila, 1939 - Mainila, USSR
The USSR wanted to get out of its nonaggression pact with Finland. So seven shells were dropped on Mainila, a village located on the Russo-Finland border. The Soviet Union immediately broke diplomatic relations with Finland. Soviet news agencies further sensationalized the incident.
Unbeknownst to the Soviet Union, Finland had no artillery guns or mortars that could have actually reached Mainila. Years later after the incident, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, wrote that the shelling was indeed a plot devised by Grigory Kulik, a Soviet military commander and Marshal of Artillery.
Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, 2020 - Michigan, USA
In 2020, the FBI arrested 13 men suspected of orchestrating a plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, an American politician, in order to overthrow the state government of Michigan. This plot was discovered by undercover agents and informants embedded in a militia group called the Wolverine Watchmen.
Further investigation shows that the undercover FBI agents might not have just been spectators in this plan. I like left leaning Yahoo News description the best.
But a closer look into the foiled kidnapping by BuzzFeed revealed that some of the informants the government used appeared to play a far greater role in the plot than had been previously reported. In fact, the informants had a hand in nearly every aspect of the twisted machination, including its inception.
New information on the extent of the FBI's involvement has raised questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy to take down the Democratic governor without their help.
One Wisconsin-based government informant, for example, helped organize a series of cross-country meetings with extremists. Those meetings allegedly laid the groundwork for the multi-part plot. That same informant also paid for hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come, Buzzfeed reported.
Another informant, an Iraq War veteran, was so deeply involved in the militant group that he rose in the ranks to become the second in command. He also encouraged members to work with other suspects and even offered to foot the bill to get people to and from meetings. He is also accused of urging the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping plot to carry it out before laying the trap for him to be arrested.
FBI Informants Had Bigger Role in Whitmer Kidnap Plot than Thought: Report
Hmmm....