atrocity porn

— One of the most memorable pieces of fake news during Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine was the "crucified boy of Slavyansk," a canard designed by Russian state-controlled media to whip Russians into a nationalist frenzy by the sheer enormity of the alleged crime. The gist of it was that Ukrainian forces, after retaking Slavyansk from pro-Russian militants in July 2014, supposedly subjected the town's inhabitants to vicious retribution, including the public execution of a 3-year-old boy in front of his mother. It was a perfect piece of atrocity porn.