On Tuesday, three bomb blasts rocked the Borussia Dortmund German football club's bus as it traveled down an open, wooded road. One Borussia player, Marc Bartra, suffered injuries in the explosions. He was immediately taken to the hospital.Investigators traced the attack to a radical Islamist from Iraq who is currently in police custody. After the foreign-born suspect was identified, the German media stopped talking about the attack, perhaps in line with a new regulation that discourages media outlets from revealing whether terrorists have migrant backgrounds.
Subsequently, one German media source, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten (DNN), pushed aside the news of the attack for, i.e., a story about the mayor and free coffee:
Normally, DNN is looking for any news related to football because Europe is passionate about football and, presumably, so is DNN's readership:
Granted, most of the sports headlines above from recent articles on DNN concern the local team, Dynamo Dresden, because DNN is headquartered in Dresden. By contrast, the team bus that was attacked was that of Borussia Dortmund. But imagine tomorrow a bomb explodes on the Dallas Cowboys' team bus and, here in Chicago, the media decides to focus on a story about free coffee; or a Manchester United team bus is attacked and the Liverpool Echo decides to feature a report on the mayor dispensing free tea.
The German media that happens to be mentioning the bombing has navigated around the bombing in a peculiar way, too:
The suspect has links to ISIS/IS or ISIL, but these terms, which are also used in the German language, do not appear in any of the reports on the bombing above. Nor is anything said about Islamisten (Islamists), Daesch (Daesh), Dshihadisten (jihadists) or Islamischer Staat (Islamic State), which are some of the other terms that one might use to indicate the suspect's connection.
For a comparison, let's look at how the major news sources in the English-speaking world, free from the Merkel regime's dictates, are covering the bombing:
Iraqi, ISIS, Islamist, Iraqi, Islamic, Islamists, ISIS. All references that were missing from the German articles.
Aside from ignoring or anonymizing the attacks, another tactic employed in Europe has been carrying on as if nothing has happened, and doing so as quickly as possible. The article on coffee with the mayor can be seen in this context. Additionally, the Borussia football team was instructed to play its match the day after the attack. Not surprisingly, the team was quite unhappy with the decision. We are being treated as if "someone had thrown a beer at our coach," the team manager said angrily. A defender for Borussia, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, was also annoyed by the ruling. He suggested that the tournament organizers should not treat the players like "animals."
But the show must go on and the stars must be herded so the rest of the cattle are not spooked. Do not question the path Europe is on. Never question the path Europe is on. That seems to be the mantra - especially in an election year.
