Cologne nye- BBC bias

[Gone2far]

I've just been catching up with the fascinating bbc series on the EU. However there was a tiny piece in the last one, that covered immigration where they said something along the lines of it being an alleged attack by possibly dozens of men. I think so, anyway. It was done almost before I registered it.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it shocking that they minimised it to that extent.
Did anyone else seen it?

Haven’t seen it.

But clearly remember that the BBC and Guardian both minimised this at the time. Guardian did not report anything on it for days, and there was no mention of the attackers origins/ethnicity. Women totally thrown under the bus.

Yes, I may have ranted at the TV at that point too.

Now, it is true that men from all backgrounds and ethnicities commit rape, and that we have an institutional set up in many European countries which renders it next to impossible to prosecute rape. (It turned out that many of the NYE attacks in Cologne weren't actually crimes under German law as it then was, because an attack only counted as rape if you physically fought back - freezing with terror was presumed to be consent. The law has since been changed, but there have been similar cases in Spain which have shown up similar problems with Spanish law.) Nonetheless, the phenomenon of Taharrush Gamea (street sexual harassment up to and including rape as a means of social control to mark out territory and enforce sex segregation by marking out public places as not safe for women) is a new and frightening phenomenon in Western Europe post WWII (rape was committed on an industrial scale by the Allies at the end of WWII - most notably by the Russians, but the Brits and Americans were also implicated).

Now, given that "they are raping our women" is one of the oldest tropes of propaganda (and effective precisely because typically both sides are in fact raping the other sides women) you can see why the story needed to be fact checked very very carefully at a time of rising ethnic tension. However, it was horrifying to see the way the BBC and Guardian tried to brush this attack under the carpet completely, then when that didn't work, tried to minimise it and victim blame (Gaby Hinscliffe's notorious "well the women had shiny new mobile phones - what did they expect" article).

And it pisses me off that the BBC are still minimising this.

(But otherwise absolutely fascinating and brilliant series).

FermatsTheorem can't help thinking that's because they got their reporting on it doubly wrong. Namely by both minimising it and then failing to accurately understand what went on once they did acknowledge it was sexual violence on a huge scale.

And it would have been such an opportunity to discuss, with nuance, a problem with many Western European immigration systems.

The perpetrators were from the Maghreb, who'd been in the country for years, had been denied permission to stay and should have been deported long before that NYE. But their home countries had denied Germany permission to fly these guys (and they were all guys) home. They were denied all recourse to public money and increasingly turned to crime, causing issues in many places (but Cologne was the largest by a huge margin). But the authorities just ignored the problem. Until Cologne.

This is another manifestation of the problem that resulted in the Rotheram scandal: when immigrants do actually cause problems and commit crimes and the authorities fail to deal with it for fear of being labelled racist by the left.

This was massively discussed on German TV debate shows once it became known that it wasn't Syrian refugees but almost exclusively long-term, failed asylum seekers known to the authorities.

But that's largely been unreported in Britain because the liberal media got egg on their faces decrying reports of the event as made up and racist, then had to admit it happened, and then they were hand-wringing so hard over how to frame the issue without demonising refugees while still blaming them that when the full facts became known they would have had to admit to getting it wrong twice. Beyond embarrassing. So I expect most reference to Cologne NYE to be exactly like that - in passing, without looking at the details.

And I should add that these men deliberately targeted women because they were angry at the German authorities, and assaulting and raping women has always been considered as an effective way to anger your enemy. Women as collateral damage of a war between immigrants and host country.

How can it be racist to point out that men from countries where women have no rights or freedom or access to justice when they are attacked are a risk?
The women from their home countries have been telling us this for years.
Liberal feminists ignore feminists abroad when they fall over themselves to not be seen as racist. It's a slap in the face for minority women in the West too.
Brave women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali become persona non grata because their views are inconvenient, their truths are inconvenient and their existence is inconvenient.
Also, accepting a lower standard of behaviour from certain demographics (of men) is in itself racist. It has implications of a lack of agency, and that these men are savages who can't help themselves.
Of course they can, and we should never be complicit in covering up for them.
That doesn't mean getting into bed with the far right, the far left, or anyone. It's just about being honest, reporting fairly and applying the law without prejudice.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3692184/amp/Cologne-New-Year-s-Eve-attack-victim-pregnant-raped.html

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3684302/amp/1-200-German-women-sexually-assaulted-New-Year-s-Eve-Cologne-elsewhere.html

Other news sites reported this, but the DM seems to have followed the story closely. Yes, the BBC have definitely minimised.

Other sites have indeed reported it - and well, and in a balanced nuanced way. As I watched the story unfold in real time, I was getting most of my info from the Frankfurter Allgemeine (school German plus google translate), New York Times, Washington Post. It was the BBC and Guardian who were dropping the ball.

I saw this. Thought it was a good series in the main. But I had the same WTF? reaction to the single sentence about the "alleged" Cologne attacks.

FlyingOink I don't understand it either. But it only ever seems to happen where the crimes target women and girls.

FermatsTheorem yes, others did, thankfully. But the so-called liberal media in the UK didn't.

This article from The Independent reckons that around 1200 women were sexually assaulted, and around 2000 men involved. It wasn't just foreign nationals from North Africa involved, it was also ones from Iraq and other countries.
As flyingoink pointed out, this is mostly down to culture, but if you say this in the media, you are labelled a racist or Islamophobe.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/cologne-new-years-eve-mass-sex-attacks-leaked-document-a7130476.html

Not so long ago, I talked to a male friend of mine, a professional educated to PhD level, and he actually thought that the Cologne attacks were a hoax.

It's really dangerous when women are caught in the middle between a Left that's denying inconvenient facts and a Right that tries to instrumentalise them.

Nutellavore that's exactly what I was trying to say (only you did it much better).

Neither the left nor the right in the UK properly addressed the issue. German TV debates did, they deep dived into the intricacies of the German immigration system and explored the reasons for what happened in Cologne and how to make sure it never happens again, but I've never seen anything coming remotely close on British television or even heard it on the radio here. I suppose that's to be expected though as we have different issues here.

Thanks, Charlie, always enjoy your contributions, btw.

The debate in Germany was also anti-women in parts as many third wave feminists kept on going on about how German men also committed sexual violence, instead of just focusing on the victims in Cologne and the structural reasons for this mass assault. One self-identified feminist infamously said ‘this sort of thing happens at Oktoberfest all the time’ which is nonsense.

Yes, BBC and Guardian definitely minimised this.

Another thing that gets swept under the carpet is the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls in refugee/migrant homes and camps throughout Germany.

Henning Wehn said in an interview in the Times something like "Cologne was one evening blown out of proportion" or something very much like it. Put me right off him.

Not so long ago, I talked to a male friend of mine, a professional educated to PhD level, and he actually thought that the Cologne attacks were a hoax.
He was right - about reports of attacks over the 2016/67 New Year: German Newspaper Bild Apologises For False Story Alleging Cologne-Style Sex Attacks By Migrants
The New Years Eve attacks that this thread seems to be about were in 2015/16. So, to avoid confusion the date of the attack you're referring to should be made clear.

Nutellavore

On a similar note, didn't Jess Phillips compare the events in Cologne to a Saturday night in Birmingham?

GrumpyGran8

The attacks in Cologne in 2015/2016 happened, the alleged attacks in Frankfurt in 2016/2017 were made up.

Yes, she did. Idiot

Well Jess Phillips can hardly be blamed for being consistent, Tory minister placed a hand on a reporters thigh it’s abuse of the highest order, left wing charity worker pushed women up against walls with his hand around their necks and that’s worthy of much softer rebuke.

This why people like Weinstein got away with what he did for so bloody long. Signal the right virtues donate to the right people and your’re Teflon. We shouldn’t weaponize women’s issues to bolster one political side and attack the other.