The Flatbush chemical attack
The following is a true story. However, names and identities have been changed.
Imagine, if you will: The United States Air Force (USAF) shuffles around troops, and assigns a strategic bombing squadron and a helicopter squadron to McGuire Air Force Base in Burlington County, New Jersey. Overnight, F-15 Eagles begin bombing runs on Piscataway, pushing in as far in as Brooklyn, where helicopters hovering high above the buildings push explosive barrels down randomly onto the city streets below.
Entire families run outside. Neighbors huddle close to each other, watching the skies above. Soon, the whole block is full of people. Some of them come outside because a CH-47 Chinook just pushed a bomb from its cargo hold, the bomb happened to hit their Bushwick apartment, and now their roof is at risk of collapse. Others come outside to see what’s going on — to see who’s bombing them. They can hear the turbine engines roaring overhead, and so they run into the streets to catch a glimpse of their assailants.
All of them pull out their cell phones, as is customary. Some begin taking pictures of the USAF helicopters hovering above them. Others begin recording video. Although the United States military had apparently imposed a total internet blackout the day before, everything is working again.
A man in Bed-Stuy hears a ding on his phone. It’s a video sent to him by his cousin in Flatbush. Rubble is strewn everywhere. People are choking on their own spit.
The man watches the video with awe. A noxious cloud fills the air. Brooklynites gasp for breath. He can’t reply back before a helicopter hovering over his section of the city pushes another explosive barrel out the back of its cargo bay, and the whole block shakes.
And then suddenly, the bombings stop. The USAF helicopters hovering overhead finally pull away, and fly off into the distance. Perhaps to refuel, but nobody knows for sure. The man finally gets a chance to upload the videos he took. He posts them to Facebook. He posts them to YouTube. He posts them to Twitter. He sends them to everyone he knows. And everyone else in the neighborhood does the same thing.
International news outlets are astonished, and begin to cover the events taking place. Networks around the world run footage from Brooklyn on their primetime broadcasts.
But then, something happens: thousands of comments begin flooding across social media, alleging that the bombings are fake. That they never existed at all.
The propaganda war has begun. The US National Security Agency (NSA) sets up a troll farm to coordinate disinfo alleging that the footage from Brooklyn is fake — especially the footage showing people choking to death on their own spit. Pro-NATO conspiracy theorists across America and Europe share their content.
And the bombings continue.
Brooklynites keep posting videos showing their homes and streets being bombed by USAF helicopters. But media fatigue sets in. Boris Johnson did something silly again. Another celebrity died. The world moves on — and the bombings continue.
Fazed by the shock and awe of the unrelenting air offensive, firefighters and paramedics from the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) slowly regain their bearings, and begin responding to the bombings. Moments after USAF helicopters push an explosive barrel out onto a farmer’s market in Borough Park, collapsing an adjacent apartment block and killing dozens, the FDNY responds. They begin pulling people out from the rubble.
But suddenly, a jet flies overhead. The United States Air Force has sent in an F-15. It strikes the exact area where FDNY ambulances responded to the scene of the bombing. Six firefighters are killed in the raid.
People are outraged once again. The shameless killing of the FDNY by USAF pilots gains mainstream media traction. So the National Security Agency reorients its information warfare campaign to cover this. It begins smearing the FDNY, calling its firefighters terrorists.
Once again, thousands of trolls and pro-NATO conspiracy theorists spread across Twitter, reddit, Facebook, and countless other social media platforms. They harass firefighters from the FDNY. They shame them, and say the bombings they responded to were simply false flags. A battalion chief who pulled an infant girl out from under the rubble of a collapsed building logs into Twitter one day, only to find dozens of comments accusing the infant of being a toy doll.
And media interest wanes again. News networks stop showing footage from Brooklyn. But the NSA campaign continues, and in the void of media interest, its narrative begins to pick up steam.
Suddenly, a number of high-profile journalists and celebrities begin to advance the narrative that the footage from Brooklyn is fake. The conflict in New York is so impossibly complex, they say, that it’s impossible to tell either way.
Increasingly, this NSA-spun narrative begins to win out: the FDNY aren’t actually rescue workers — they’re brutal criminals who behead people for fun. The Flatbush chemical attack? It didn’t really happen. Who’s to say the terrorists in Brooklyn didn’t actually rig up gas tanks in an auto shop garage and suffocate the people to death there?
The US Mission to the United Nations, as one of the permanent five members of the Security Council, has repeatedly exercised its veto power to block any investigation into the actions occurring in New York. But international pressure increases, and the US delegation finally relents. A team of forensic experts are deployed to Flatbush to investigate the chemical attack, but they’re held back for weeks as the US Army canvasses the area. Still, they ultimately gain access, and release a report confirming that the US Air Force was responsible for dropping a modified explosive device full of chlorine onto an apartment block, killing scores.
The US government is concerned. Consequences for its actions have come passively, mostly in the form of sanctions on senior government officials. But this report could threaten their status as a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and any revocation of that status could expose them to more legal action.
So the NSA kicks its propaganda campaign into high gear. It assigns troll farms in Nevada and Maryland to disrupt information about the Flatbush chemical attack, spreading the narrative that it was fake. Then it gets to work on countering the United Nations, disrupting the organization from within by promoting the words of a disgruntled ex-employee who, despite never having been to Flatbush, cast doubts on the reality of the US government’s chemical attack there.
Eventually, the NSA’s efforts are successful. Increasingly large segments of the population, confused by an intricate information warfare campaign, begin to internalize the belief that the Flatbush chemical attack was a false flag. That nothing is happening in Brooklyn — nothing at all.
And the bombings continue.
