Hoaxmap.org: Tracking unsubstantiated rumours about refugees

February 15, 2016 3:58 PM

'Hoaxmap' busts rumors about refugees in Germany Reacting to viral rumours and accusations made against migrants arriving and living in Germany, Karolin Schwarz and Lutz Helm from Leipzig have launched hoaxmap.org, which researches and refutes claims made in German social media by contacting local police and newspapers.
posted by bouvin (19 comments total)

Really sad that this kind of thing is necessary.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:52 PM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is essential work.

I thought I had purged my facebook feed of disgusting racists until I started seeing the fear-mongering posts about the 'mass wave of immigrant violence sweeping the EU' and 'You'll never believe what these muslim young med did to this beautiful blonde woman, what happened next will shock you!'

Its fucking disgusting.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:38 PM on February 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

which researches and refutes claims made in German social media by contacting local police and newspapers.

After Cologne I'm not sure German police police and media are very credible when it comes to being honest about crime as it pertains to refugees or migrants.
posted by MikeMc at 6:13 PM on February 15, 2016 [7 favorites]

I agree that it would be more useful if it worked like Snopes, with green and red arrows for true and false reports. The only conclusion one can draw from the map as-is is that a lot of rumors exist. But how many, in proportion to true reports? And if something isn't on the map, does that mean it's true or just hasn't been checked yet? Publicizing true reports wouldn't even necessarily harm their desired message—maybe the rumors would mostly be sensational crimes like rape or murder, while the true crimes would mostly be theft or jaywalking.
posted by Rangi at 6:32 PM on February 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

Will be great for my "SJW" anti-racism work on Reddit.
posted by Guy Dudeman at 7:07 PM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

The international channel, France 24 has a feature called The Observers: Debunked, in English. An episode can be seen on YouTube here (3 min). It takes inflammatory photos and videos circulated online and researches the actual events which usually happened years before the current refugee crisis and which did not actually involve any refugees.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:51 PM on February 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

After Cologne I'm not sure German police police and media are very credible when it comes to being honest about crime as it pertains to refugees or migrants.

Not sure what 'after Cologne' means, especially regarding 'refugees or migrants'. If as you say both the media and the authorities can no longer be trusted about refugees, then it follows that anyone anywhere is free to say what they like about refugees - which is the whole point of the project linked here. (We had the 'eating swans' one in the UK around ten years ago, aimed at Polish immigrants.)

of the 59 suspects pinpointed so far, just four are from war-torn countries (Syria and Iraq), only 14 are in custody, and nobody has yet been charged. Nearly 600 hours of CCTV reveals very little, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the alleged attacks were planned in advance.

The refugee-as-rapist construct is the kind that has been used to demonise people throughout history.
posted by colie at 1:49 AM on February 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not sure what 'after Cologne' means,

I expect he's referring to such comments as the following for Der SPiegel:

"At 8:57 a.m. on the morning of January 1, the Cologne police department's press department released a statement under the heading: "Festive Atmosphere -- Celebrations Largely Peaceful.".

If as you say both the media and the authorities can no longer be trusted about refugees, then it follows that anyone anywhere is free to say what they like about refugees.

In a free society, anyone anywhere is already free to say what they like about refugees, regardless of media and authorities. And others are free to refute. Germany currently seems to working against the first proposition. Whether this a good thing or a bad thing is your decision.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:00 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

In a free society, anyone anywhere is already free to say what they like about refugees, regardless of media and authorities. Germany currently seems to working against the first proposition.

The idea that the German media is not free to whip up hysteria and hate against refugees is laughable. Regarding 'saying what you like about refugees', the extreme right 'Alternative for Germany' party is regularly invited onto prominent primetime politics shows, in which they have called among other things for the shooting of refugees who cross borders illegally.
posted by colie at 7:31 AM on February 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not to mention that Germany has pretty good reasons to be skittish about permitting racist rhetoric.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:42 AM on February 16, 2016

the extreme right 'Alternative for Germany' party is regularly invited onto prominent primetime politics shows, in which they have called among other things for the shooting of refugees who cross borders illegally.

Wait, are they advocating the death penalty for illegal immigrants? Or are they simply calling for armed border patrols with guns (as is common at most borders around the world)?
posted by sour cream at 9:09 AM on February 16, 2016

German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the head of far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has said.
posted by colie at 9:18 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks colie.

According to that article: Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to “prevent illegal border crossings", Ms Petry told the regional newspaper Mannheimer Morgen in an interview. "Armed force is there as a last resort", said Ms Petry, according to a translation by Reuters.

How is that any different from any border with armed border guards? "Armed force is the last resort." I take that to mean that the first steps would be to try to apprehend illegal border crosses without force, then perhaps with force but without guns and use guns only as a last resort. That actually sounds quite reasonable to me. I don't think that she is calling to randomly shoot all refugees. She's probably just describing the existing legal situation. (Would be a bit surprised if the use of force by the police/border guards is illegal under any circumstances in Germany and would guess that the police/border guards already have armed force as a last resort.)

Also, to my understanding, it is quite unnecessary to cross the border to Germany illegally. I thought that all you have to do is go to a regular border crossing, ask for asylum, be whisked away to the next refugee center and voila, you've legally entered Germany. So why would anyone try to enter Germany illegally anyway?
posted by sour cream at 9:37 AM on February 16, 2016

Sour cream, one reason to enter illegally would be if you do not wish to seek asylum in Germany, but intend to travel on to, say, Scandinavia.
posted by bouvin at 9:44 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I take that to mean that the first steps would be to try to apprehend illegal border crosses without force, then perhaps with force but without guns and use guns only as a last resort.

The means to stop an illegal act have to be proportional to the severity of the act. Illegally entering the country is a merely a misdemeanor ("Vergehen"), so deadly force is unlikely to be considered appropriate. (In am not a jurist; but when I followed the discussions, the jurists seemed to agree on this.)

Also, to my understanding, it is quite unnecessary to cross the border to Germany illegally.

For now, yes. But the whole question arose in the context of closing the borders for refugees. (As an aside, while one might argue how to interpret Petry's comments in the context, her colleague Beatrix von Storch commented far less ambiguously.)
posted by erdferkel at 9:58 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Of course all the border police are packing guns. My point was that the overall climate of opinion is very negative towards refugees and that Germany is emphatically not heading in a direction where people are feel they are not free to say what they like about refugees. Hence the far-right now getting 11 percent in opinion polls while they debate the finer points of when it might be expected for German troops to shoot women and children who are fleeing ISIS. It's part of the mix that now can be described as 'after Cologne', without the facts of that and other refugee stories being established.
posted by colie at 10:16 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

From colie's link: On Friday, the Cologne prosecutor Ulrich Bremer in fact told me that, of the 59 suspects pinpointed so far, just four are from war-torn countries (Syria and Iraq), only 14 are in custody, and nobody has yet been charged.

From this article: Cologne prosecutor Ulrich Bremer said 73 suspects have been identified so far — most of them from North Africa. A total of 1,075 criminal complaints have been filed, including 467 alleging crimes of a sexual nature ranging from insults to rape.

"The overwhelming majority of persons fall into the general category of refugees," Bremer told The Associated Press, saying recent reports describing only three of the suspects as refugees were "total nonsense."

...

The suspects included 30 Moroccan nationals, 27 Algerians, four Iraqis, three Germans, three Syrians, three Tunisians, and one each from Libya, Iran and Montenegro, Bremer said.

"They have various legal statuses, including illegal entry, asylum-seekers and asylum applicants," he said of the foreign suspects. "That covers the overwhelming majority of suspects."

So the Independent link seems to have numbers from Friday, which explains 59 suspects versus 73. Nabila Ramdani probably wasn't lying about only four suspects coming from Syria and Iraq, but she wasn't open about the nationality of the other suspects for an article discussing "myths".
posted by dragoon at 11:01 AM on February 16, 2016

Here's a recap of how the 'eating swans' meme, as reported in the first link above, unfolded in the UK 13 years ago. The enemies then were called 'asylum gangs' and the fear was generally of 'East Europeans.' We're hearing a lot about 'asylum gangs' now, but perhaps the terminology has changed.

The article, from 2004, mentions 'the kind of dangerous slander circulated by previous generations about gypsies or Jews.'
posted by colie at 1:25 PM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

"The Islamic Rape of Europe."
posted by colie at 10:41 AM on February 18, 2016