Yours are terrorists, ours are freedom fighters

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist it.” They stared at the road. “Maybe some terrorist—?” Aziraphale began.

“Not one of ours,” said Crowley.

“Or ours,” said Aziraphale. “Although ours are freedom fighters, of course.”

One week into a highly eventful year, one might be forgiven for thinking we’ve already seen enough demonstrations of double standards to last us until December but, of course, one would be mistaken.

While everyone was watching Venezuela, a bunch of environmentalist extremists plunged tens of thousands of Berliners into cold and darkness, to save the planet. For an in-depth report on the act of terrorism and the extremists, go to eugyppius. I, meanwhile, would like to focus on how corporate media treated the news, namely, by giving us all an object lesson in This Is Different.

Here’s a Reuters report on the sabotage:

“The far-left Volcano activist group claimed responsibility for the attack which also shut down mobile phone connections, cut heating during freezing weather, stopped trains and forced hospitals to switch to back-up generators.”

But here’s a later Reuters report:

“Electricity was restored to southwestern Berlin on Wednesday after a suspected arson attack on a power station by leftist activists caused a blackout for tens of thousands of households, the longest outage in the German capital since World War Two.”

The Volcano loonies claimed responsibility but hey, it’ “suspected” because they may be lying, even though, per Reuters again, “In its most recent annual report, the domestic intelligence agency said left-wing militancy was a growing danger and made explicit reference to the Volcano group.”

Then we have the AP, which chose to mitigate the disaster of fact by using quotation marks:

Many households and businesses in south-west Berlin face days without electricity after high-voltage power lines were damaged by a fire which city authorities said Sunday was a result of a politically motivated attack by “left-wing extremists.””

This is so impotent that I couldn’t even get angry at the AP.

But both the AP and Reuters are a mild cheese compared to others, such as, for instance, Euractiv.

“Increasingly sophisticated attacks are raising question in Germany about the sharing of critical infrastructure data, with political extremists on both the left and right fringes increasingly resorting to sabotage and violence.

Right-wing violence was up by half in 2024, surging to 38,000 incidents. But although much less common, with fewer than 6,000 cases that year, a focus on infrastructure by groups claiming allegiance to the left means they have arguably had a greater impact.”

If anyone in the room is considering a career in disinformation, take notes. You lead with a general attention-grabbing statement, you note A Bad Thing about the Enemy and then, towards the end, mention a bit of truth. Use of a softening modifier such as “arguably” is mandatory.

Further softening comes in the form of noting the group’s “ties to the anarchist scene” as if that makes them less left, and indeed, it does in the hearts and minds of readers, because “anarchist” is such a strong word compared with “leftist”. Euractiv is worth academic research even more than The Guardian, which I won’t bother quoting. We all know how it covered the news and besides, I’ve grown squeamish in my old age.

The most glowing example of what the news has become these days from corporate media outlets comes not from the Euractivs or the Guardians of the world. No, it comes from the Financial Times, the Limburger of media cheeses. Read and marvel:

The lead: “An arson attack that left parts of Berlin without power for days in freezing temperatures has shaken residents and sparked a debate about the resilience of Germany’s energy infrastructure.”

The third and fourth paragraphs:

“Investigators are still working to establish who was responsible for the deliberate fire, which damaged several high-voltage cables running over a canal near a power plant.

Activists purporting to be from a leftwing anti capitalist organisation called Volcano group initially claimed responsibility. But subsequently others who said they were the authentic Volcano group denied involvement.”

The fifth paragraph:

“Germans have grown accustomed to increased sabotage in recent years — which Chancellor Friedrich Merz has mostly attributed to Russian hybrid warfare — but Saturday’s incident caused unprecedented disruption.”

The FT’s rules for covering inconvenient news:

1. Do not mention the inconvenient fact in the lead.

2. Bend the truth.

3. Break it with a snap.

4. Mention Russia. Always mention Russia in bad news reports.

The rest of the story is more of the same, which is why I’m not longer a paying subscriber to the FT. I would like to see a modicum of compunction in my media meals. So much for the depressing part of this post. Let’s end on a positive note.

Corporate media seem to believe that they can twist the truth as much as they are capable of, in order to keep the narrative going unblemished. Yet people like those Volcanoists are making the job really difficult. Obviously, you can make your report more about Germany’s ageing infrastructure and the annexation of Crimea (I’m not joking, that’s the rest of the FT report) but I can think of at least 50,000 people who wouldn’t care about any of these because they spent several days without electricity. In winter.

And you know what else those at least 50,000 people wouldn’t care about? That the Volcanoists apologised, yes, apologised, to the “less wealthy” among those in the blackout zone. The other thing the Volcanoists wrote? “Power outages were not the goal of the action; the fossil fuel industry was.” And I wondered for a second why none of the aforequoted media mentioned their letter. That’s beyond saving, even if you write that Putin’s an honorary member of the group.

I hear corporate media are suffering an exodus of readers. They are probably wondering why, while doubling down on their agenda of narrative maintenance. The people in charge of the agenda appear incapable of understanding that, as one U.S. president allegedly said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

Oh, and another thing: most of us have no trouble with double standards as long as these double standards benefit us. The thing about double standards is they are flexible and dynamic, and like revolutions, they tend to eat their children. Take note, Big Media.