false flag

noun

plural false flags

1

: a hostile or harmful action (such as an attack) that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it

In case you didn't know, a false flag is an incident that is designed to deceive people into thinking it was actually carried out by someone else.

—Nick Giambruno

… ex-House of Commons clerk Eliot Wilson argues in an article for the paper that "it does not take the mind of a conspiracy theorist" to imagine that Downing Street may have been behind what now appears to have been a false flag.

—Joe Evans

—often used before another noun

a false flag operation

false flag attacks

The false flag conspiracy theory circulated widely after the riot …

—Ted Sickinger

2

: a deliberate misrepresentation of motives or identity

Maybe more troublesome is the fact that a small percentage of sources were recruited under false flags or based on coercion.

—Nel Marais

also : something used to misrepresent motives or identity

The Russian hackers had attempted to blame North Korea, China and other adversaries as the culprit of those assaults through a series of false flags implanted in the malware that were designed to throw investigators off track.

—Cynthia Brumfield

"Craft" is a false flag, a depoliticization of art and thus an undermining of art's ability to change or even to question the status quo.

—Jonathan Dee

3

: a flag used to disguise the identity of something (such as a ship)

Examples of false flag in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

It was not demolished as part of a false flag operation. —Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2024

Pyongyang uses intermediaries and false flags to disguise its vessels. —Jonathan Corrado, Foreign Affairs, 15 Feb. 2024

The false flag attack of Oct. 7 was enacted to steal the land of Gaza. —The San Diego Union-Tribune Staff, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Feb. 2024

The claim: Perry High School shooting was a 'false flag' to distract from Epstein documents A Jan. 4 post on X, formerly Twitter, (direct link, archive link) includes a video of a school surrounded by emergency and law enforcement vehicles. —USA TODAY, 5 Jan. 2024

Following the alleged murder, far-right figures immediately began boosting conspiracies about the beheading being a false flag in favor of the Democrats—something that has virtually become a reflex action among far-right figures following major news. —David Gilbert, WIRED, 1 Feb. 2024

Over its years of targeting Ukrainian infrastructure, the GRU unit has used a wide variety of covers, hiding behind false flags such as independent hacktivist groups and cybercriminal ransomware gangs. —Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 13 Dec. 2023

Jones had been found guilty of promoting the shooting as a false flag operation staged by the government as justification to take Americans’ guns away, and was ordered to pay $1.4 billion in damages. —Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2023

The first look, a woman wrapped in all black—an allusion to the now-iconic Miyake spring 1998 show—was a false flag planted to hide the lightness that lay ahead. —Nicole Phelps, Vogue, 11 Dec. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1569, in the meaning defined at sense 2