DISINFO: Nobody talks about the White Helmets anymore, because now everyone knows they faked everything

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

AI translations:

DISINFO: Nobody talks about the White Helmets anymore, because now everyone knows they faked everything

SUMMARY

The White Helmets, now everyone knows that this was a total fake. And no one talks about them now. Where did they go, do we know? They won their Oscar and then they left?

Yes, they probably have other parallel activities, surely of the same kind. We know that they are the ones who mounted false chemical attacks in Syria. The Russians, moreover, recently warned that they had information that others, this time not the White Helmets, were preparing a new fake chemical attack in the region of Idlib.

RESPONSE

Recurrent disinformation narrative on the White Helmets.

The White Helmets movement originated in Syria in 2012. The organisation, which is made up of 3,400 volunteers including teachers, engineers, tailors and firefighters, states that it has no affiliation to any political or military actor and is committed to rendering services to anyone in need. Volunteers save people from the rubble after bombings, despite the danger of dying themselves as a result of repeated airstrikes.

White Helmets activists have documented the use of chemical weapons in Syria, later confirmed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Thus, the OPCW found reasonable grounds to believe that chlorine was used as a weapon in the Douma district of Eastern Ghouta, Syria in April 2018. Because of these awareness-raising activities, the White Helmets have become the target of a prolific and aggressive Russian disinformation campaign seeking to delegitimise their humanitarian efforts and paint them as proxies of Western intelligence to undermine the Assad regime.

The assertion that no one talks about the White Helmets recently is wrong. Russian disinformation targeted against this organisation goes on. Moreover, on October 27th 2020 The Guardian published a long article where the widow of the deceased co-founder of the White Helmets has revealed that he committed suicide due to stress caused by online disinformation campaigns and false allegations of corruption.

Read also: White Helmets preparing false flag chemical attack in Syria's Idlib , White Helmets have arrived in Idlib province to conduct a false flag attack and terrorist-linked White Helmets stage false-flag chemical attacks in Syria .

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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