When to Use
When someone encounters a narrative being used to justify expanded government power and wants to evaluate whether it follows the atrocity story pattern.
The Framework
The Pattern
From political science, via Balaji:
“One of the most time-honored techniques to mobilize public animosity against the enemy and to justify military action is the atrocity story. This technique, says Professor Lasswell, has been used ‘with unvarying success in every conflict known to man.’” — Quoted in The Network State, Ch 2.3
Extended to peacetime:
“The concept is as useful in peacetime as it is in war. Even in peacetime, the state is predicated on force. And this use of force requires justification. The atrocity story is the tool used to convince people that the use of state force is legitimate.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
Connected to Rene Girard’s mimetic theory:
“Rene Girard would call this a ‘founding murder.’ Once you see this technique, you see it everywhere.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
The Template
- Bad event occurs (real, exaggerated, or fabricated)
- Event framed as requiring expanded state force
- Deaths/harms from the force are not counted
- Questioning the narrative is treated as endorsing the original atrocity
Balaji’s examples of the template in action:
“If we don’t force people to take off their shoes at the airport, people will die! If we don’t stop people from voluntarily taking experimental curative drugs, people will die! If we don’t set up a disinformation office to stop people from making hostile comments online, people will die!” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
Case Study 1: FDA Drug Lag
The canonical example of a real atrocity story creating a worse response:
“When the FDA ‘prevented’ deaths by cracking down on drug approvals after thalidomide, it caused many more deaths via Eroom’s Law and drug lag.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
The thalidomide tragedy was real. The FDA’s response (massively increasing drug approval requirements) was framed as preventing future thalidomide-type disasters. But the deaths caused by delayed drug approvals (drug lag) far exceeded the deaths that would have been caused by less regulation. The FDA counts the lives it “saved” by blocking bad drugs, but does not count the lives lost by blocking or delaying good drugs.
Case Study 2: Iraq WMD / Babies from Incubators
Examples of fabricated atrocity stories:
“Before Iraq was falsely accused of holding WMD, it was falsely accused of tossing babies from incubators.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
The “babies from incubators” testimony (1990) was fabricated by a PR firm. The WMD claims (2002-2003) were based on flawed or fabricated intelligence. Both were used to justify military action. Neither was true.
Case Study 3: The Holodomor Coverup (Inverse Pattern)
The atrocity story can also work in reverse: media power used to suppress a real atrocity.
“The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning coverup of Stalin’s Ukrainian famine.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for NYT reporting that denied the Holodomor (the deliberate Ukrainian famine that killed millions). This is the inverse: not a fake atrocity used to justify power, but a real atrocity suppressed to protect an allied power.
The Political Mascot Variant
A related technique: picking a sympathetic “mascot” group and using their real suffering to justify actions that benefit the powerful.
“The political mascot model: history is written by winners pretending to be acting on behalf of losers.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
The “Flopping” Dynamic
“You should be aware that states are always ‘flopping,’ exaggerating the severity of the fouls against them or the mascots they claim to represent, trying to bring in the public on their side, whether they are Chinese or American or Russian.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
The Balance Warning
Balaji warns against overcorrection:
“Just because there is an incentive to fake (or exaggerate) atrocities does not mean that all atrocities are fake or exaggerated.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
“The next goal is to guard against both the Scylla and the Charybdis, against being too credulous and too cynical. Because just as the atrocity story is a tool for political power, unfortunately so too is genocide denial.” — Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State, Ch 2.3
Example
COVID lockdowns (2020-2022): A real public health threat (COVID-19) was used to justify historically unprecedented expansions of state power (lockdowns, business closures, vaccine mandates, digital tracking). The harms of the response (economic devastation, mental health crisis, learning loss, civil liberty erosion) were systematically undercounted relative to the harms of the virus. Whether the net effect was positive or negative is a legitimate question that the atrocity story pattern helps frame.
Output
After reading this, you should be able to:
- Identify the atrocity story pattern when it appears in current events
- Distinguish real atrocities from fabricated or exaggerated ones
- Demand a “harms accounting” that counts deaths from both the event AND the response
- Avoid both credulity (accepting all atrocity narratives) and cynicism (dismissing all of them)
Source: The Network State, Ch 2.3: “Political Power and Technological Truth”