• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Fake news alert: German authorities quash Breitbart immigrant attack story

Status
Not open for further replies.

Jackpot

Banned
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-story-of-mob-setting-fire-to-dortmund-church

German police quash Breitbart story of mob setting fire to Dortmund church

Country’s politicians warn against fake news after Breitbart website said group chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ vandalised church on New Year’s Eve

German media and politicians have warned against an election-year spike in fake news after the rightwing website Breitbart claimed a mob chanting “Allahu Akbar” had set fire to a church in the city of Dortmund on New Year’s Eve.

After the report by the US site was widely shared on social media, the city’s police clarified that no “extraordinary or spectacular” incidents had marred the festivities.

The local newspaper, Ruhr Nachrichten, said elements of its online reporting on New Year’s Eve had been distorted by Breitbart to produce “fake news, hate and propaganda”.

Tens of thousands clicked and shared the Breitbart.com story with the headline “Revealed: 1,000-man mob attack police, set Germany’s oldest church alight on New Year’s Eve”.

It said the men had “chanted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest), launched fireworks at police and set fire to a historic church”, while also massing “around the flag of al-Qaida and Islamic State collaborators the Free Syrian Army.”

The local newspaper said Breitbart had combined and exaggerated unconnected incidents to create a picture of chaos and of foreigners promoting terrorism.

Stray fireworks did start a small blaze, but only on netting covering scaffolding on the church and it was put out after about 12 minutes, the paper reported. The roof was not on fire and the church is not Germany’s oldest.


Dortmund police on Thursday said its officers had handled 185 missions that night, sharply down from 421 the previous year. The force’s leader judged the night as “rather average to quiet”, in part thanks to a large police presence.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily said Breitbart had used exaggerations and factual errors to create “an image of chaotic civil war-like conditions in Germany, caused by Islamist aggressors”.

It said the article “may be a foretaste” of what is to come before parliamentary elections expected in September as some websites spread “misinformation and distortion in order to diminish trust in established institutions”.

Breitbart has declined to comment.
 

Gattsu25

Banned
Again, Facebook is a primary method of spreading these false propaganda reports.

Breitbart should be under the sane suspicion that other propaganda outlets are in Europe before it furthers the trend of far-right expansion on the backs of lies.
 

ViviOggi

Member
BILD said:
In dieser Woche geriet Deutschland in das Visier der populistschen [sic] Website.

Even the BILD of all papers is calling Breitbart populist. Keep your garbage in the US you pathetic white supremacist fucks
 

m3k

Member
i never really considered how blatantly evil fake news might be ... i always thought it was just used as a depresing science fiction evil government control system

these guys here are evil
 

Kater

Banned
Why make a story about a small city in Germany being attacked? Aren't the people reading their news mostly Americans?

I noticed an increase of fake news here as well but they are mostly about stuff on a national scale, not international.

Breitbart writers and the fake news writers here, both can burn for whatever I care, they are despicable. They have no honor.
 

Nikodemos

Member
I think it's high time the fuckers running those fake news garbage get the Gerald Bull treatment.

It's the only way that shit will get shut down for good.
 
Why make a story about a small city in Germany being attacked? Aren't the people reading their news mostly Americans?

I noticed an increase of fake news here as well but they are mostly about stuff on a national scale, not international.

Breitbart writers and the fake news writers here, both can burn for whatever I care, they are despicable. They have no honor.

It's about feeding the idea that people everywhere are under threat from Islam. Nowhere is safe.

It's not that different from small towns in the US banning Sharia Law even though there aren't any Muslims in those towns/there's absolutely no threat of that ever happening.
 

RinsFury

Member
There are some truly evil people working at fake news outlets such as Breitbart. Their goal seems to be to stir up as much fear and chaos as possible, in order to further their ultimate objective of total white supremacy. They should have been forced to shut down and those in charge of the operation arrested for treason. Of course now Breitbart will become the new Pravda of the US government.
 
Why make a story about a small city in Germany being attacked? Aren't the people reading their news mostly Americans?

I noticed an increase of fake news here as well but they are mostly about stuff on a national scale, not international.

Breitbart writers and the fake news writers here, both can burn for whatever I care, they are despicable. They have no honor.
American elections are over, German and French ones are next. So new targets for Putin and his allies.

Can they sue Breitbart over stories like this in Germany?
 

Kater

Banned
It's about feeding the idea that people everywhere are under threat from Islam. Nowhere is safe.

It's not that different from small towns in the US banning Sharia Law even though there aren't any Muslims in those towns/there's absolutely no threat of that ever happening.
Yeah, I get that. Create the illusion that there's an immediate threat right outside your door. But that far away? As I said, the readers that Breitbart has are mostly Americans.

Maybe since it's a small city and they hoped that they would get away with it? If they made the story about Berlin or Cologne you can be damn sure that Merkel would have called them out openly for that.

American elections are over, German and French ones are next. So new targets for Putin and his allies.

Can they sue Breitbart over stories like this in Germany?
That's a better explanation. And both of those countries have right-wing parties on the rise. It's troubling.

I'd hope so, but even if they can, they probably just want to push it under the rug. -
 

Jumeira

Banned
I thought Zuckerburg changed his position on fake news, previously deny it's an evil, to saying it's an issue they're looking address.

Surprised it's still not fixed.
 

Xando

Member
I thought Zuckerburg changed his position on fake news, previously deny it's an evil, to saying it's an issue they're looking address.

Surprised it's still not fixed.

He's not gonna do shit. German goverment already announced they're bringing in legislation to force google/facebook and others to counter fake news.


It's pretty scary that we now have right wing influencers not only from the east but also from the west trying to run interference.
 
It's never going to stop. The term "fake news" is even being co-opted by the people spreading it like Alex Jones.

And people don't care. They post fake news, you can prove unequivocally that it's fake, and they tell YOU to stop trolling.
 

Nightbird

Member
lol, of course Breitbart refused to comment.

But the damage is done, this news was not intended for us locals, but rather for Americans so that their views towards Muslim immigrants would get even worse.
 

Par Score

Member
Maybe Germany will finally be the country to really go after these evil stains on humanity, just like they do other Nazi fucks like Holocaust deniers.

The problem is even if you make this shit illegal it's almost impossible to enforce.
 

Mivey

Member
Would be good but i doubt it considering some of the goverments we have in eastern europe.
Germany has a lot of weight, if they can get France and others to agree, they could definitely make it EU law. From there, its up to each country whether they want to comply. I mean, Hungary basically removed basic rights of a free press and I think the worst they got was a finger waggling from the EU commission.
 
Would be good but i doubt it considering some of the goverments we have in eastern europe.

No worries - there's plenty of cases where France&Germany can enforce their will against smaller member states since in current treaty only some things can be vetoed.

They already did trying to enforce mandatory immigrant quota last year.
 

Xater

Member
American elections are over, German and French ones are next. So new targets for Putin and his allies.

Can they sue Breitbart over stories like this in Germany?

What these websites are doing is not protected by free speech here, so there are possibilities to deal with them.
 
There are enough AfD followers who don't give a shit. They'll swallow whatever Breitbart serves for dinner. For those, every media in Germany is corrupted anyhow, so they prefer living in their facebook / twitter / whatsapp echo chambers.

Now. The good thing about all of this is that "only" 10% of Germans are hardcore AfD voters. The rest still use their brain up in a while, so this news about systematic spread of fake news is going to sensitize at least some of them.

Furthermore, "internal security" will be THE most important topic for the next election in Germany, as recent surveys illustrate. And the Union is already focussing on this issue, including demanding a federal security agency (which even the majority of SPD voters want) and blaming SPD-Green-coalition-led federal states for blocking the declaration of the Maghreb States as save countries in the Federal Council, which would enable Germany to send back people from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
 

Drazgul

Member
What these websites are doing is not protected by free speech here, so there are possibilities to deal with them.

It's not a website hosted on german servers or made by a german staff, so what exactly are these possibilities? Writing a stern letter?

I mean you could always force german ISPs to block the site, but that'd likely just have the opposite effect and draw more attention to the site from the german public.
 

Zaru

Member
It's not a website hosted on german servers or made by a german staff, so what exactly are these possibilities? Writing a stern letter?

I mean you could always force german ISPs to block the site, but that'd likely just have the opposite effect and draw more attention to the site from the german public.

That's the big issue here. It's hard to punish a foreign website, even if Breitbart has less truth on it than TheOnion. And letting the state block websites for "lies" opens not a can, but an oil tanker full of worms, both in the response it creates and the precedent it sets (though one might argue that excepting Nazi propaganda from free speech already set that precedent in Germany/Austria)
 

Lime

Member
Free speech?
Sites like that always existed, but they've never been successful. Times have changed.

I know, but inciting violence against specific (minority) groups is illegal in some European countries.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom