Last weekend we were treated to “news” on social media that a thousand Muslim men had descended upon Cologne Germany and, while shooting fireworks in their faces to disfigure them, raped 100 women. The tale was somewhat confirmed by Breitbart and other sources, but amazingly, many of the reports of even “sexual assault” turn out to be unconfirmed and in many cases to have been attempts at harassment and intimidation, but are certainly not rape or severe sexual assault. Leaving us to wonder, what will be remembered about this event? D.E.

I’ve always wanted to go to the tomato festival in Pamplona, Spain to partake in the running of the Bulls. My better judgment however has concerns that focus on whether or not I am quick enough on my feet to avoid going viral on Youtube by outmaneuvering a herd of 1500 pound raging bulls. However, a new and far more exciting travel destination has come of interest as of late. Cologne, Germany. A week and a half ago saw the inaugural New Years Eve Running of the Rapists or so one might conclude if they believed everything they read in headlines that suggest that up to 100 women were raped, sexually assaulted and the targets of a coordinated attack by as many 1000 Arab and North African Men. 100 women did not get raped on New Years eve in Cologne by 1000 Arab and North African men.

What I find most troubling isn’t the fact that 100 women were allegedly sexually assaulted, it is the fact that the media recognizes that the smartest person stupid enough to believe this sits atop a segment of the population large enough to be profitable.

This was an easy story to publish for many media outlets. It feeds directly into the current fears many westerners already have about the huge influx of Syrian migrants into Europe and North America. Feminists have not done too much with this story. If anyone would recognize a sensationalized crisis, it would be those who make a living off of them. I would have thought for sure Jessica Valenti would have tweeted about this during her first morning shit of 2016. Amanda Marcotte who tweets more than twice as often as Jessica but has less than half the followers made no mention of this either. On Twitter David Futrelle was openly challenged in one post as to why he was sharing AVFM memes about men taking their girlfriends to MacDonald’s as an example of misogyny rather than discussing the Cologne rape crisis.

David hasn’t replied. The reports coming out of Cologne steeped in the sort of moral panic and hysteria seen numerous times throughout history were reminiscent in some ways of the magnitude of crisis that unfolded in Paris two months ago. CNN reported that there were 379 criminal acts on New Years Eve, 150 or so being investigated for sexual assault. The Independent claims there were 90 criminal reports with one alleged rape. CBC reported that 121 women were robbed, threatened or sexually molested by gangs of men. The Wall Street journal claimed that 121 reports were recieved by German authorities with three quarters being related to sexual assault. The Rebel called it a “Civil War” as if describing an army of Muslims storming the train station under Muhammad E Lee screaming Allahu Akbar.

Other outlets, including Breitbart called it a “Rapefest” like it was something you could buy tickets from Groupon online and linked video footage as if to provide definitive proof of mass rape that showed nothing of the sort except fireworks going off in a jubilant, if rowdy crowd. I’ve seen worse mobs having good clean fun torching police cruisers, overturning vehicles and making out in the middle of chaos in downtown Vancouver after the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals back in 2011.

As a measure of how useless the video footage was, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering couldn’t even use it in their next documentary. Perhaps the best quote from the media so far is the BBC’s suggestion that

…the attacks appear to have been organised. Around 1,000 young men arrived in large groups, seemingly with the specific intention of carrying out attacks on women.

I could be wrong of course and maybe two full battalions of similar size to what Australia committed to the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003 did in fact orchestrate a coordinated attack on women at the strategically vital and lucrative Cologne train station while intoxicated but we need to calm the fuck down here and approach this with a more critical eye. We can all agree something happened here, but highly unlikely to be worth the hysteria that currently exists.

As mentioned, CNN reported that there were 379 reports made to police and Breitbart now reports that there have been 379 arrests. What luck. Despite the mass panic and hysteria only two rapes have been reported thus far. Right about now I’ll have to preemptively dodge a few straw-men being thrown my way, as some will ask “Why does it matter? – two is two too many.” That part is correct, but for the media who know that the degree of hysteria they create is related to the revenue and political capital to be gained, two is no where near enough. If it doesn’t matter that two rapes were reported as 100; than it was never about the rape to begin with. That is why these stories are presented in the manner they are – that leaves a lasting impression that a predatory culture that we were warned would do something like this has now conveniently materialized and is now stalking the streets of Germany in great hordes like it was the dawn of the zombie apocalypse.

Often the voices worth paying attention to are the ones countering the narrative and saying the things that few want to hear. Enter Marcia Adair, an expat Canadian journalist living in Cologne, who managed to piss off Islamophobes for daring to describe these men without reference to their religion and coffee shop feminists for her internalized misogyny that refused to bare false witness against anything that happened that night. Her article in the National Post is unique for a variety of reasons. It is the only one I can find in a major news source that provides an alternative viewpoint to what happened in Cologne on New Years Eve, and the second relatively unique and interesting thing is that she was actually there.

I was at the main station, alone after midnight, as I often am, happy to have had a lovely night watching fireworks at the Rhine. Imagine my surprise, six days later, to discover I had been within 100 metres of a roving gang of rapists without noticing that anything was amiss.

Bystanders today are now generally encouraged to intervene and speak out against those they witness committing rape marking a dramatic shift from what we would have done previously, which was apparently to sit by like a bunch of perverts and do nothing without it ever occurring to us that someone was being harmed. Apparently rape is an act of public exhibitionism that has been happening in plain site all around me for most of my life. It is amazing that she wouldn’t notice a “Rapefest” happening right under her nose in 2015 when we are taught that everything is rape.

Thankfully the First Canadian Couch Commando Regiment from 3000 miles away weren’t buying it and deployed to the echo chamber of a comment section (the National Post being a Canadian publication) of her article to correct her about what she really saw. In one comment thread alleging that Adair was whitewashing what happened that night, one commenter quipped,

I think her feeling would be different if she were a victim

which is a strange thing to assume for someone who was at the scene of the alleged crime and clearly states she will,

…still walk the city centre as I have always done and not think twice about it.

One commenter posted a Rebel article as the source of his faith in the reports coming out of Germany without any sense of irony in the fact that this article pointed out the German government “… writes false press releases [and]… sits on the news.” Apparently government censorship and dishonesty surrounding Cologne could only apply to the occurrence of mass rapes, rather than the lack thereof. Consider for a moment that this is the same media who have convinced many people that something similar is happening on our college and university campuses.

We have all the reason in the world to be skeptical about the extent and level being reported. The Western world has been accepting Muslim refugees and migrants for decades and specifically from the Syrian crisis since 2011. Canada’s Muslim population is over 1,000,000 and no roving hordes of rape gangs. As of 2010 the US had roughly 2,500,000 Muslims and no roving hordes of rape gangs. Syria according to some statistics had a very low rape rate before statistics became difficult to find since the start of their civil war at .06 rapes per 100,000 people. Even if we accept the most generous of non-reporting figures and cultural differences regarding definitions of rape it is still quite low. According to the Local, a German English media outlet,

Less than 1 percent of the total crimes committed by refugees are sex crimes, going against rumours spread on social media that these have become more common with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

What changed New Years Eve and how did Marcia Adair walk right through the middle of it and not notice? How has North America so successfully screened out rapists? Clearly there were some incidents, but to the degree stated in most news outlets? Let us not forget that the media has successfully convinced legislators that 25% of female students are raped in university so it should not be seen as a big surprise that so many people believe what is being reported now.

Speaking out against rape does not make you racist and does not conflict with positive or negative feelings regarding the migrant situation in Europe which makes it strange as to why many high profile feminists have chosen not to provide any coverage of this situation at all when so many of those feminists are not only happy to believe a non credible story, but a story exposed as false, such as the case of UVA. This should not in and of itself be surprising. Feminist advocacy has always been very selective about the character and nature of their victim and perpetrator narratives. I very well could be wrong, but I am not going to go superimposing the German flag on top of my Facebook profile picture just yet.