Have you heard it? The whisperings of a new language for terror, shared across our news networks?

The liberals and progressives, creating a whole new dialect, a softened tongue?

Taking the edges off the sharp stuff, dulling down the painful truth, neutering the raw? Making the truth more palatable, more malleable around the narrative they want to tell?

In the attack in Ansbach, Germany, last night, a failed asylum seeker detonated an explosive device, injuring 12 and killing himself. The motive was to harm as many innocent people as possible

I’ve heard it for a while now amongst the chattering establishment. Watched it evolve into a mother tongue.

Learned to predict what they will say next in response to the next terror attack on our people and our freedom.

It started before Nice, about the time we began developing our own coping mechanisms: hashtags, tea-lights, vigils in a public square. We lit up public buildings in the colours of the flag, even though patriotism was casually mocked any other day of the week for being racist or xenophobic.

Our communications networks saw it as their role not to inflame tensions but instead to downplay terror. To be the cool press applied directly onto the wound.

In its early days, this language for terror became Chinese whispers. It has ended up as blatant lies.

After the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, police reported a peaceful evening that passed off without incident. That night 1,200 women suffered rape, sexual assault or abuse at the hands of 2,000 men.

But the language of terror has evolved.

In the latest attack on Germany last night, a failed asylum seeker detonated an explosive device, injuring 12 and killing himself. The BBC reported: ‘Syrian Migrant Dies in German Blast. Motive not immediately clear.’

Twenty minutes after the story broke I still had to work reasonably hard to discover that three of those injured were in a serious condition.

A Syrian asylum seeker with a machete cleaved down a pregnant Polish woman in Reutlingen. Two others were injured in the attack. News channels were quick to remind us this was not a terrorist attack

And whilst ‘no motive was clear’ in this German blast, police on scene were able to tell us it was probable bits of metal had been added to the bomb in his backpack.

So the motive was to harm as many innocent people as possible, whichever way you try and bubble-wrap it.

We know the attacker was a failed asylum seeker. We know he was from Syria. Yet the BBC was keen to point out this attack had not been linked to a militant group.

If you were a family member of an innocent festival-goer, caught up in this horror, do you think you would care?

Someone tried to kill your child. For no reason. How is that for truth?

Earlier in the day, a Syrian asylum seeker with a machete cleaved down a pregnant Polish woman in Reutlingen. Two others were injured in the attack.

News channels were quick to remind us this was not a terrorist attack.

Well, that’s alright then. I don’t mind my children watching a man hack a woman to death with a meat cleaver as long as it’s not a terror attack. The language of terror has become, almost Shakespearean. A crime of passion? How charming, how desperately exciting, how romantic!

Until you remember the lady was pregnant and he hacked her to death with a machete. There is nothing passionate about that.

And all this only two days after a shooting rampage in Munich which killed nine young people.

Ali David Sonboly (pictured) became David Sonboly. Rechristened by our unbiased broadcasting corporation to sound thoroughly European, even Jewish, one might suggest. Definitely not Muslim, either way

Despite this killer’s Iranian extraction, he quickly became German – very German. So much so that the BBC even changed his name. Ali David Sonboly became David Sonboly. Rechristened by our unbiased broadcasting corporation to sound thoroughly European, even Jewish, one might suggest. Definitely not Muslim, either way.

They reverted to his real name when their sleight of hand was exposed.

Have we created a new definition of terror these days? Is an axe attack on public transport not terrifying enough to qualify?

His history of depression was shouted about. And his fascination with mass shootings and Anders Breivik. You see, this language of terror likes to use CAPS LOCK when there is something, anything, to point you away from links with migrants or Muslims.

The killer’s motive was passed around like a hot potato until it landed in the lap of the Right wing. The media was comfortable with that.

The media was keen to highlight most of the victims were migrants — a subtle attempt to influence our opinion of the attacker.

Using the victims as evidence of the motivation of the attacker is a well-rehearsed refrain. ‘Many Muslims died in the attack.’ This is how we judge the success of modern multiculturalism: we all die together, too.

Meanwhile over the weekend more than 80 Muslims died in a Kabul suicide bombing that was indubitably the work of ISIS. Does that make it any less terror?

In Nice the attacker was initially called a ‘lone wolf’, another well-rehearsed phrase in this new language of ours. Then, quietly, as the nation moved to mourn its 84 dead, four others were arrested in the city.

Over the weekend more than 80 Muslims died in a Kabul suicide bombing that was indubitably the work of ISIS. Does that make it any less terror?

The attacker had planned the attack for a year, and laughed as he drove over children like skittles, screaming Allah Akbar as he mowed them down.

But, the media was quick to reassure us, he wasn’t a real Muslim because he drank alcohol and his ex-wife was ‘shocked and surprised’.

Mohamed was a divorced father-of-three who liked girls and salsa and didn’t pray, according to a French crime correspondent. Another told BFMTV - a French rolling news channel - he was more into women than religion.

You see the new language at work? Distancing Europe from terror? Separating religion from these attacks? Waiting as long as possible before acknowledging the lone-wolf’s radicalisation and the supply of weapons to him by Albanian friends in the foothills of Nice.

Now investigators have admitted to the Associated Press that his louche behaviour may have been straight from the ISIS manual as he sought to conceal his true identity as a radicalised terrorist of at least a year’s standing behind a façade of Western decadence.

Even an axe attack on a train in Bavaria was held at arm’s length from links to Islam or ISIS. He only went to the mosque on ‘social occasions’ and was a ‘calm and quiet’ boy.

The fact he shouted Allah Akbar and took an axe to five people, injuring two critically, was considered insufficient evidence to pin this act to terror.

Have we created a new definition of terror these days? Is an axe attack on public transport not terrifying enough to qualify?

Only when a video was released by ISIS purporting to show the killer making threats against infidels did the media finally cave.

Angela Merkel’s obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink

The Australian Attorney General speaks for political elites everywhere when he asserts many terror incidents are in fact linked to mental health issues, not religious or ideological ones, and that even those screaming Allah Akbar 'are not necessarily deeply committed to and engaged with the Islamist ideology'.

I accept not all attacks are made by terrorists. I also accept not all attacks are made by migrants or asylum seekers. And I accept victims are often selected entirely at random.

But that is not the point.

Germany has seen four attacks in seven days. Whether they are officially linked to ISIS or not, they are the acts of people adopting the technique of terrorists and it IS terrorism, no matter what you want to attribute the acts to.

Merkel’s obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink

And trying to gloss over the truth has only made us cynical about this new reporting language. Like a crossword reader, I now have to look for the clues hidden in the text.

A name changed. A religion obscured by references to women and drink. A heritage confuscated by a dual-nationality passport.

This language of terror has to stop. This shape-shifting, neutering, dulling down, dampening.

We do not need tensions inflamed. But inciting the suspicion that facts are being hidden is no way to calm frayed nerves.

Merkel’s obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink.

She has to offer solutions to clear up the mess she had created. To pull the situation back from spilling over into all-out civil war.