🧩 BND Motif Index · M1897
Just following orders
An official answering for what his forces did says every act was lawful and ordered from above, by the commander, the president, the chain of command, so the responsibility rests with the orders; critics answer with Nuremberg: the Nazis said the same, it didn't save them, and it won't save him.
🗣️ Arguments🗂️ Accountability🗂️ Leader-Follower Dynamics🗂️ Shadow of the Reich
- 2claims filed under it
- 1right show it came up on
- 1claim retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 0 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “Another Nuremberg defense.” “everyone was a lawful operation ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself” “Here is Hegseth noting everything I did was ordered by Trump. I was just following orders.” “That was the excuse all the Nazis used during the Nuremberg Trials. Didn’t work then, won’t work now.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-11 “Pete Hegseth says the strikes on cartels, Maduro and Yemen were all lawful operations ordered by the commander in chief, then by him.” 1
Retold online 1
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-11 “The excuse being used now is the same one used by Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials and it won't work.”
M1897 · first seen 2026-11-11 · what this is · how the index works