Shortly after the Chemnitz murder (roughly three weeks ago now).....there was this video clip that appeared on social media. What it showed were German individuals, in some aggressive behavior near a tram-line area, and chasing migrants/immigrants. Everyone got hyped up and felt that this was illegal behavior, and they wanted the national Constitutional office for protection....to act upon the video clip and search for these 'bad-boys' (suggesting jail-time).
Well....the President of the office for Constitutional Protection (Hans-Georg Maassen).....says after a review.....no, it's a 'fake'.
In what way? He had a number of people review the clip and he suggests that this was created as an element of false information after the murder.....misinformation.....to draw the public away from the murder.
The Attorney General of Dresden? He says absolutely not, and intends to go and search for the culprits.
So you have this odd development going on. The pro-immigration crowd feel that the right-wing is surging and that you need to establish absolute authority....threaten people with court time and jail time....to reshape behavior.
As for the clip?
I've probably reviewed it twenty times. If you go looking for the video clip now? It's been mostly taken down. The news media might run it for 30 seconds. Based on my view of the clip.....it does appear to be the right landscape and the right time of year (weather, etc). The suggested Germans threatening the suggested migrant or immigrant? You can't say what the migrant or immigrant did in the minute or five minutes leading up to the episode....maybe he said something to entice this threat.
The threat of misinformation? This is the odd feature of the past five years. There's no doubt that hundreds of misinformation bits are laid out each year. Some by leftwing causes....some by rightwing causes....some by Russian provocateurs.....some by the German news media itself (I don't even think they realize it). For a normal German, it's beginning to be fairly tough to look at events and say with any confidence that it's purely real without any misinformation tied to it.
This suggestion of fake misinformation, and the head of the Constitutional Protection office being fired? I would suggest it's possible. But all of this will lead to more dramatic public frustration with the whole system.
The problem here is that social media makes a great outlet for misinformation. You create a scene....throw in forty people in the background....have something to occur which only three or four of the 'players' are aware of, and you create a fake but realistic video for public consumption. You could trigger the authorities into spending weeks investigating something before they realize it was all a created event.
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