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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   4196 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 2, 2024

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A recent even in Mannheim, put on by anti-Islam group BPE (Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa) led to a policeman getting stabbed.

What's particularly notable about this incident is the bizarre way the physical altercation between BPE members, the assailant and the police unfolded, as described by German substack writer Eugyppius:

If violent internet videos are not your cup of tea, I’ll narrate it for you:

The footage opens with Sulaiman and Stürzenberger struggling in the background. Blue-jacketed BPE staff pull Sulaiman off his victim, but Sulaiman breaks free and charges, stabbing wildly and wounding Stürzenberger in the face and leg. This footage taken from another angle shows the police intervention more clearly; as is routine for BPE events, officers were already on scene, but for fifteen long seconds they do nothing. It is Stürzenberger’s colleagues themselves who must pull Sulaiman off his victim once again and fight for control of the knife. When the officers do intervene, it is to defend Sulaiman; they free the attacker from the BPE activists, at which point Sulaiman stabs one of the policemen in the neck and another officer finally shoots him. Thereafter, to complete the farce, a female officer restrains the BPE assistant who had been fighting Sulaiman.

Source

It would be interesting to hear from the German posters here what the reaction to this has been locally. Has it been completely buried, is the story that far-right anti-Islam types got what they deserve involved in the same mischief they always do, or has anything about this made an impact?

ETA: The poster of the above substack piece has written a new article linking a different video showing that from the perspective of the policeman who intervened (and has now sadly died) it's much more understandable why he tackled the individual he did.

It's publicized enough, and you get the usual political angles. Left-wing papers run an article or two that mostly revolve around the plight of the stabbed policeman, right-wing papers give us some additional details, but none really call out the story for the blatant failure it is every which way. In the great scheme of things not much is made of it; the largely left-leaning media won't run an outrage campaign on this like they do for violence against "minorities", for obvious reasons, and there's not much else that's done at all about such incidents anymore.

Also, the story doesn't get buried so much as drowned. Southern Germany has been experiencing a lot of rainfall, and there's a lot of country under water right now. This dominates the news and largely crowds out other news.

I appreciate the perspective!

Left-wing papers run an article or two that mostly revolve around the plight of the stabbed policeman, right-wing papers give us some additional details, but none really call out the story for the blatant failure it is every which way.

Why in your opinion are right-wing papers failing to call out the story in the manner you describe? It would seem to be pretty obvious material to do just that.

Conservative papers like Welt tend to go easy on the culture war. Not sure whether it's to avoid alienating moderate readers, to uphold standards of objective journalism, or because "one crow won't peck out another's eyes", as we say - journalists probably want to avoid becoming non grata by taking the wrong side of history.

Openly rightist media like Junge Freiheit or Tichys Einblick may say the quiet part out loud, but have barely any readership and reach at all. So alright, I may have phrased it poorly - they do call it out, but nobody hears it.

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