Last week, a man in train uniform and gas mask shot and detonated stun grenades on the New York subway. Ten people were injured, some seriously. However, some German media prefer to keep a low profile on possible motives. It is not about terror, it is conveyed, and the man is just crazy.
It is very likely that the man has a psychological problem – but as is so often the case, this does not rule out the possibility that he can also be a political extremist at the same time. Except that we probably don’t like to talk about it here.
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perpetrator-victim reversal
“Bar Shootout”? The strange coverage of anti-Semitic terror in Tel Aviv
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The 62-year-old African American Frank James is now in custody for the subway attack; “Terrorist attacks and other violence against mass transit systems” is the crime he is charged with. In online videos and posts he spreads black nationalism, sometimes wears a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt, characterizes the situation of African Americans as “American Auschwitz”, agitates against Jews, whites, ex-President Trump and speaks of a coming one “Race War”. It’s only a matter of time before white people start committing genocide against black people, he claims, and then says: “And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun and just started, on to shoot these sons of bitches.” James also appeared on an FBI terror watch list until 2019.
Die daily News simply calls it “confused” or writes that it is about omissions about “racism, homelessness and gun violence”. The motive is unclear, but terrorism can be ruled out.
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Israel, the eternal escalation
How ARD twists historical facts and dispenses with current ones
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Of course, you can’t draw a definitive conclusion about his motive at this point in time. But that held them daily News never stopped speculating about the background to fatal shots in the past either. For example, when she reports on exactly what might have driven James. When police officers shoot at black people, for example, this is often directly titled “Police violence in the USA” and presented as “for many, further proof of the injustice in the country”, without any background being clear. Even after investigations found no misconduct by the police, such as in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the reported daily News about the incident as a case of “police violence”.
Public broadcasters become very selective when it comes to reporting or speculating about the background to a crime. Anyway, one can imagine how the coverage would have looked if the man had been a right-wing extremist and would have promoted anti-black instead of anti-white racism – or he might have been wearing a Trump cap somewhere instead of a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Shirt would have posed.
