„Everybody has an opinion, some people even have their own opinion,“ I explain.
That is my greeting at the beginning of the workshop. The core statement basically contains a lament. A rather cynical complaint, I know. Diversity for digital natives, that’s what it’s all about, after all. And the reaction? Embarrassed smirks, thoughtful nods of the head.
„Is it wrong not to have an opinion about something yet?“ asks a twelfth grader.
„Not at all,“ I affirm. „But then it’s easy to fall for a hoax. It happens easily, but it has serious consequences. But we also have to be careful not to get comfortable in our own filter bubble. You understand that, don’t you? It’s about the echo chambers in which we seek refuge and approval.“
„Well, I like to listen to both sides, then I form an opinion,“ interjects an eighteen-year-old about to graduate from high school. „Because I can’t know everything beforehand.“
A visit to the school auditorium in the middle of Brandenburg. I’m holding a workshop there for around 80 senior high school students. The topic: diversity for digital natives. All of them internet-savvy, all of them interested in diversity, according to their own statements. In their social media profiles, they have been committing the online protest of Black-Out-Tuesday ever since the murder of George Floyd. Since the terrorist attacks in Halle and Hanau, they have been eagerly posting hashtags against hate. If necessary, they can launch Flashmobs for Future in real time. So far, so good. But to what extent are they capable of recognising propaganda and pseudoscience on the one hand and debunking them on the other?
People can acquire the essential basics for these skills while they are still young – but not everyone gets the chance. Media literacy is not a school subject, so media literate teachers or parents are a matter of luck. However, insufficient media literacy does not only affect high school students of Gen Z. No, it also affects millennials who even work in the media, as well as that generation of newspaper readers sometimes called „boomers“, for whom the internet will forever remain „uncharted territory“ and who make up the concerned citizenry. There is no final maturity test for news literacy. We all need to constantly refine, strengthen and relearn our news skills. For the dangers lurk like mines everywhere.
Rau(h)nights, racism and religious hostility
The slide into the year 2023 in the Federal Republic of Germany was not good, but literally violent. Riots occurred in Essen, Hanover, Berlin. We are talking about firecracker attacks, the use of firearms and other despicable assaults on police and rescue workers. It is not the first time that hooligans let off steam during the „Rauhnächte“.
But now the memories of New Year’s Eve are smouldering with a burnt-out coach in the „High-Deck-Siedlung“. This place is located in the Berlin hotspot Neukölln, also described as the „neighbourhood of riots“. According to the Neukölln district office, 153,151 people from a total of 327,073 residents have a migrant background – almost 47 per cent.
In and of itself, this is a good opportunity for arch-conservative propaganda. And lo and behold: they pounced on the statistics of the Berlin police with what felt like the speed of light, whereby these statistics were constantly corrected downwards. At first it was said that there had been 159 arrests in the Spree metropolis, then 145. The media reported only 38 arrests, also a false figure.
In the end, the police confirmed 44 registered suspects, only one woman among them, and a total of 126 criminal charges. Neukölln, by the way, was not the only focus of violence on New Year’s Eve – and the law-breaking „Sieg-Heil“ shouts that rang out in Saxony on the same night were somehow not picked up.
For the tabloids and the concerned citizenry, the crucial question was: „How many foreigners were there in Neukölln?“ According to the police, almost half of those arrested were minors. Twenty-six of the accused held a German passport, ten of them dual citizenship, and 16 only a German passport. The remaining 18 had purely foreign citizenship, many of them from Afghanistan and Syria. A found food for propaganda of the right-wing fringe, a worrying cause for rights restrictions and religious antipathies.
No sooner had the smoke of the night of mists cleared than the fogging of the brain spread. In Berlin, the election campaign was on again, the hot phase fell in the middle of the winter cold. There was cross-party talk of „integration refuseniks“. In the name of the CDU parliamentary group, Kai Wegner demanded that the Senate publish the first names of those arrested. The AfD also demanded information on the „religious denomination“ of these persons. In view of German history, this would be a no-go, but not a novelty. To make matters worse, Friedrich Merz uttered the P-word. And I thought a Pasha was the one who, as a Christian Democrat member of the Bundestag, voted against the punishment of marital rape in 1997.
Lies, but the main thing is viral
Political scaremongering is programmatic and systematic. This includes the abuse of explosive social conflicts to push an agenda. A violent video is circulating in which angry rioters throw loud stones through the open door of an ambulance. An NPD politician picks up the clip, shares it under the headline „Berlin Neukölln on New Year’s Eve“ and writes: „These people belong on a special train – but not to Pankow, but back to their home countries as soon as possible.“ It was meant to prove the real attack on an ambulance in Neukölln’s Silbersteinstraße, but this video is from the streets of Hong Kong in 2019. This was discovered when the video had already gone viral and had long since heated tempers.
„PLEASE VIEW AND SHARE!!!“ wrote a Facebook user in capital letters who had also uploaded a controversial video after the sexual assaults of the „Old Cologne“ New Year’s Eve in 2015, which could not be trivialised. This video, she added without autocorrection, showed „how a mob of asylum seekers harassed and groped helpless girls“. However, this video, which was viewed millions of times in a short time, was a fake that added fuel to the fire. A certain feminist ex-icon from the corner shop made an issue of the alleged origin and religion of the suspects, who were described as mostly of North African origin – which, on the other hand, does not usually happen in the case of sexual violence at carnivals or the Oktoberfest. The racist charging of discourses on violence works for racists according to the motto: at best, the racist attribution remains in people’s memories – and they do not even notice the clarification of how false or unprovable the connections are.
Beware of racist ciphers – do you know „13/52“ and „13/90“?
In the USA, the banal-looking number sequences „13/52“ and „13/90“ are used for racist agitation against Black people. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the renowned American organisation that campaigns against the discrimination and defamation of Jews, declares in solidarity with the Black community: „The numerical sequences 13/52 and 13/90 are racist numerical codes used by white racists to portray African Americans as savage and criminal.
The number 13 refers to the alleged percentage of the US population that is African-American. The number 52 refers to the alleged percentage of all murders committed in the US that were committed by African Americans. So the number is supposed to indicate: 13 per cent of Americans, namely African Americans, commit 52 per cent of the murders in the USA (some supporters of „white supremacy“ also speak of 50 per cent). The figure 90 refers to the percentage of violent crimes allegedly committed by African Americans against white Americans. The figures make claims that are difficult to verify or falsify in everyday life. Research from 1994 (!) is cited as a source, which does not even contain the statements. In addition, an anti-Semitic conspiracy myth is told that contains not a bit of truth: Jews are responsible for the fact that black people came to America, and therefore also responsible for their violence.
Similarly, right-wing alternative media online claim that 81 per cent of white murder victims in the US are killed by black people. This claim is simply false. The fact check: data from the US Department of Justice – including those collected and analysed during the time of the arch-conservative Trump administration – shows, on the contrary, that more than 80 percent of white murder victims are killed by whites themselves! Another recommended source is this article from the Reuters news agency. But that’s not all: another report by the US Department of Justice analysing murder cases in the US between 1980 and 2008 demonstrates that during that time „most murders were intraracial“, with 84 percent of white victims killed by whites and 93 percent of black victims killed by blacks.
So here we see: fact checks are important if we want to judge whether content is spreading propaganda or is grounded in reality. People spread false narratives out of political ideology. For this very reason, it is incumbent on us to show more media literacy in order to be able to recognise this.
When people share racist disinformation, they are usually not primarily concerned with converting people from the social „mainstream“ or even from the left spectrum. No, the primary goal is to distract, engage, demoralise and unsettle opponents as well as the undecided. The aim is to spread disenchantment with politics in order to slow down the progress of progressive approaches.
If we suspect misinformation, we must always scrutinise the authenticity and authority of the sources. Arguing emotionally is not in and of itself reprehensible – we all do it when we are excited. But what is behind the emotion in terms of empiricism? Empathy? Is the anger of the angry citizen well-founded? Is he interested in strengthening the cohesion, the cohesion of society? Or is it about destroying? Is it about finding culprits according to old reflexes? Or is it about reflectively bringing about structural changes that promote inclusion and equality?
As I say goodbye to the students, I have succeeded in making many of them wonder and think – and some of their teachers too.
„The Nazis would not have angrily banned the internet, but would have spread it enthusiastically,“ I explain. „The internet would have eclipsed film and the Volksempfänger, the so-called Goebbels Schnauze. Agitation depends on being broadcast en masse.“
The basis for a robust democracy based on the rule of law is a factually informed, socially engaged population. However, internet access alone is not enough to protect us as a society.
This text was produced in cooperation with the „Get The Trolls Out“ project.
Michaela Dudley (born 1961), a Berlin-based queer feminist with African-American roots, is a journalist, lawyer (Juris Dr. US), cabaret artist and „Blacktivist“. She is also the author of the book „Race Relations: Essays on Racism“, published in 2022. Her guiding principle is: „Dehumanisation starts with words, but so does emancipation.“
