THE ERFURT SHOOTINGS & DOUBLE STANDARDS

You all have heard that a few days ago a young man went into a school and killed about 17 people, mostly teachers. The newsworthy thing about this incident was that it happened in a little town in (Ex-)East-Germany called Erfurt. If it had happened in the USA, the newspapers around here would have commented no more than "another teen-shooting in the States". Moreover, there is an important vote coming up in Germany, so the whole atmosphere was tensed even further. The reactions in the media and in politics were more than the expected ones, that is, they went in the expectable direction, but aimed further than usual, which made them hyperbolic in a sense. It has to be the upcoming election that stops any good sense in people. It has all really become ridiculous (if it wasn't for the people killed) and a complete waste. This ain't funny.

If a shocking, outraging violent act has occured, the usual reactions are easy to predict (after the initial counting of bodies and interviews with friends and family of the victims are done with): first, the identification of the killer falls into two standards. Either, he was always an outsider who didn't fit into society, or, he was the nice guy from next-door, who nobody ever suspected of doing anything like this. Or first the one and then the other. Next step is unravelling the history of the killer, bringing to light some gory details or weird occurences, hobbies, whatever. Third on the list is the discussion part, where everybod steps back and starts to talk about the whys and whynots, the future ways to deal with these situations and how to prevent this. This is usually the part in which heavy metal and video-games come into the discussion. The fourth and final step I'd like to call dripping out. Everyone has seen the bloody pictures, expressed sorrow and outrage, condemned the evil influences of modern culture and thereby has done his part of respect to the social community that we live in. So, it is time now to walk on and look into the future, aka forget about it until the next violent incident, which has to be a little more violent (maybe twenty or twentfive people killed) than the one before, to be noticed. It was the same structure on September 11th, 2001. It is alwas the same structure.

The reasons for this are clear, journalists and politicians have to do their job. That their job is inherently stupid and evil to society - especially if it is done the modern way, where ideology or personal ideas don't count, you only have to suck up to the masses to sell, newspapers or votes - is never being talked about. If something happens, journalists have to write about it. No matter what they know, if they know anything more than their colleagues from all the other medias, they have to produce. So in the first instance they start counting bodies and collect statements of relatives and friends. Always on the lookout for those pictures and facts, no matter how small they are, which are a little more extreme than those of their colleagues (to sell more papers that way) they'll go for anything. A police-official stating "maybe eighteen people killed" becomes "nearly twenty dead" or even "close to two dozen".

 Overstatement is the tool of the trade. Then the scavenger hunt starts: crying relatives being interviewed, his mother says, she never suspected anything, but he listened to heavy metal sometimes. Little details become important, such as: he followed the news to the Columbine-shootings closely (but who didn't) or he had trouble with his girlfriend a few days ago (but who hasn't). You have seen all this because it was inavoidable.

Next up are the politicians, who, solely informed by what the media cried out and always mistaking the newspapers and their trends with the people and their opinions in the country, say to themselves, we have to react quickly. People want us to do something. On better days, they talk. On worse days they make new laws. Believe me, ad-hoc laws are never any good. (Aside: since when has consensus become a bad thing? since when is populism a good thing?) Ad-hoc-laws install police officers in schools to make gun-controls on pupils, condemns people to long prison sentences who a few days ago would have gotten a completely different sentence and makes a mess that has to be wiped clean in dilligent small work in the months and years afterwards. And it never has the effects it should have. And the stupidity of it all tends to cumulate with time. The shooting in Erfurt occured on the same day the German parliament set up a new law that further tightened gun control and made it harder to get guns legally. Nevertheless, some politicians cried out for even tighter gun laws. The highpoint (at this point of time) was the conservative candidate, Edmund Stoiber, who declared, that the internet should be controlled worldwide to prevent these things. Well, at first this is impossible. Second, only countries like Afghanistan or China want to controll the internet, and see what happened to the Taliban. Third, what has the internet to do with it? Answers Edmund Stoiber, violent videogames forbidden in Germany can be ordered via Internet. See, Germany has one of the tightes laws concerning videogames. E.g. the Die Hard Trilogy for the Playstation was forbidden there. There is always green or purple blood in versions delivered to Germany (and therefore also to Austria) to make these games less realistic. The VHS for the German version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was forbidden. (though not the english version and the Laserdisc, but that is another story). Of course, interested people find ways to get these things. But obviously those strong laws didn't prevent this shooting, why should even stronger laws prevent further ones?

The other candidate had another great idea - he called together all the main heads from all the television channels (public and private) to a discussion on what the tv-stations can do, to further prevent such things. Only a few of these big bosses said that no reglementation of tv-programme can help what lacking trust, love and affection in the family circle have done to a kid, but these voices go unheard. Obviously the chancellor of Germany talking to them in person made a big effect on some tv-bosses. So, PRO7 cancelled the broadcast of Natural Born Killers and Stephen King's Children of the Corn and some other "violent" movies. All of which have been played before several times, but anyway. Viva, the German music station, said it won't play any videos by Slipknot anymore, because the Erfurt Killer was a fan of that band. Well, first how many million people are fans of that band? Second, I have never seen a video by Slipknot on that channel, which is dominated by Brittney Spears. N'Sync and friends anyway, so what is the point?

Today, as I write this, we have already started into the discussion-phase, where long articles and tv-discussions are done to point out the backgrounds, the psychological and societal reasons and of course why video-games and heavy metal-music are bad to kids and turn them into psycho-killers. Be sure, they'll always find an incident, where the person has seen a violent movie, such as "Lethal Weapon" or "Die Hard" (well, there is a lot of shooting in these movies), has played a violent computer game, such as "Tomb Raider" or "Space Invaders" (there is a lot of shooting in these games) or listened to heavy metal music, such as Limp Bizkit or even Nickleback (both are on nearly every Charts-Sampler you'll look at). I only hope, that there are enough kids out there, who like "Lethal Weapon", Limp Bizkit and "Tomb Raider" (and I am sure there are), who will say to themselves, I like all that stuff and I am no killer. The media and politicians are all stupid tossers, this has nothing to do with the music you listen to, it is a problem this person had.

Look at me, I like horror-movies and action-movies. Check out my review-section, you'll find some pretty heavy music there, way more evil than Slipknot. Am I the next killer? Obviously, I am, but the things that make me really angry are pop-videos by fabricated mainstream-stars such as No Angels, because they live on picking the pockets of small children, or shopping-channels, because they make me sick, and right-wing politicians, who are as stupid as a bucket of straw but made it into parliament nevertheless, where they now get on everybodys nerve with emotional attacks on everything and everybody, without any constructive ideas whatsoever and without any brightness in their damp minds. Oh yeah, if the police reads this, I am well fucked. So I'll go on. Maybe everybody has forgotten that every nation has one institution that does nothing but to teach people how to kill other people: the army. Maybe everybody has forgotten that the media (including music and movies) are not the institutions to educate children, which should be done by the family (even the school can't do that anymore). Maybe everbody has forgotten that violent acts have occured long before tv and newspapers existed, e.g. Billy The Kid, Jesse James, piracy and robbers in medieval times, and so on. Maybe everybody has forgotten that, if someone can't make out the difference between a movie or a computer game and reality, that person has a psychological problem anyway (even if he wants to be a Teletubby or makes his life a Daily Soap). Maybe everybody has forgotten that the news are way more violent than the majority of movies and the news are real.

Maybe I have forgotten that there is no cure for stupidity and that it has ruled the world for a long time.