Germany Discovers The Copycat Effect

The German publication Deutsche Welle, on July 26, 2016, after a series of shootings and rampages (Amokläufe) in their country, published "Mass Killers Inspire 'Copycat' Attackers."

In the wake of all the carnage, the violence could not be ignored. The article began,

There is growing evidence that an act of mass murder will inspire others to commit similar crimes. Media reports on carnages like the ones in Munich or Japan, play a crucial role in spawning "copycat" killers.

On July 22, Ali David S. struck the Olympia shopping mall in Munich, exactly five years after right-wing extremist Andres Breivik killed 77 people in Norway. There is a possibility that the Norwegian was a role model for the Munich killer.

To me, of course, what is remarkable is that during this summer of 2014, a dozen years about it was released, the media is discovering my book.

Deutsche Welle noted,

News organizations need to pay attention to the choice of words while reporting on such incidents, says Loren Coleman, author of the book The Copycat Effect: How The Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines. 

According to Coleman, one should not, for example, report on "successful" gun attacks or "failed" suicides. Stereotypes such as "the boy next door" or "loner" should also be avoided, he adds.

There is no German language edition of The Copycat Effect, but it can be obtained in English in Germany.

The Vanishing Santa Claus of Munich's Shooting

Munich's Amoklauf has been a minefield of hidden discoveries.

For instance, it has been brought to my attention that initial reports of a Santa Claus being seen near the attack are disappearing from media reports. 

This is the archived passage:

Two witnesses told n-tv television that they saw a man dressed as Santa Claus walking away from the scene of the shooting with a crowd of people. One said the man had blonde hair, was not carrying a weapon but had a suitcase.

The account is still visible at the Blue Lives Matter News, the Arab America News, and the Otago Daily News.

While searching on Google shows that this same phrase existed in previous online copies of articles on the Munich attack, they have been deleted from later editions. See here, here, and here, for three examples. 

Was there a "Christmas in July" event happening at this mall that the media wishes to hide?

In line with the twilight language, it probably is of no surprise to readers here that Santa Claus - Saint Nicholas - should make an appearance in the Munich rampage. 

The contemporary thoughts of Jim Brandon, author of Weird America (1978) and The Rebirth of Pan (1983), are turning out to be worthy of our attention, in the strangest places. (For more on the Nicholas name game, see here.)

Besides the materials on school shootings found in the gunman's room, and his obvious choice of the 5th anniversary of the Norway: 7.22.11 Breivik Attacks, even the location may have been picked on purpose.

The Olympia Park Mall was built near where the previous entitled "Munich Massacre" occurred. The Munich massacre was an attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, at which eleven Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.

Amoklauf Munich Olympia Mall: Nine Dead

Okay, this is getting weird, considering what I have just previously written about borrowing the Malay-German word Amoklauf. A copy of the above book Amok Im Kopf was found in the Munich shooter's room.  German police say he studied school and other mass shootings, and hacked into a woman's account on Facebook to lure children to the McDonald's for free meal items.

It's become quite apparent: He picked the date because it was the 5th anniversary of Breivik.

Someone on Twitter claimed the Munich shooter used a photo of Breivik as his WhatsApp profile pic.

"Obvious link" between Munich gunman and Norway's mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, German police say, the day after.

He appears to have been born in Germany, of Iranian descent, but was extremely xenophobic, anti-immigrants, during the shouted statements he made to his victims and eyewitnesses.

Amoklauf in Munich. At a McDonalds. A mall. Another day, another rampage - a shooting rampage - hit Germany on Friday, July 22, 2016.

Today is the 5th anniversary of the Norway: 7.22.11 Breivik Attacks. The attack was revealed to have a strong rightwing foundation. The Breivik events assisted me in predicting the Aurora shootings.

Now this German attack in Munich, a location heavy with terrorism history tied to the Olympics, as the August 5th date for the 2016 Summer Olympics nears.

Well, Loren, no sooner do you invite the word Amoklauf into our language than another Amoklauf happens --- and in Germany, specifically in the city of Munich where I was stationed in the US Army exactly 42 years ago. ~ Tom Mellet.

The shooter targeted children came the early reports said. Children at a McDonalds, next to the Olympia shopping mall. Reports of multiple shooters - up to three - probably were wrong, as they have been lately.

At least nine people were killed when gunfire erupted at a shopping center in Munich, Germany, in what police officials said "looks like a terror attack."

Munich police have verified that one of the ten dead bodies was the shooter.

The shooter has now been identified as an 18-year-old Iranian, who has been living in Munich for more than two years.

Police said no one was in custody, and the city was under a virtual lockdown, with residents being urged to stay home, restaurants and other business closing and public transit shutting down.

The shooting broke out at a McDonald's across from the Olympia shopping mall at about 5:50 p.m. local time, police spokeswoman Claudia Küntzel said. Shots also were fired inside the mall, witnesses said.

On Facebook, police said gunfire was reported in several locations and that witnesses said they saw three people with firearms. These reports appear to have mistaken.

A witness identified as Lauretta told CNN her son was in a bathroom with a shooter at the McDonald's. "That's where he loaded his weapon," she said. "I hear like an alarm and boom, boom, boom... And he's still killing the children. The children were sitting to eat. They can't run."

[Lauretta said she heard the gunman say, "Allahu Akbar," or God is great. "I know this because I'm Muslim. I hear this and I only cry." - Some are disputing this claim.]

This McDonald's shooting was only days after another infamous McDonald's rampage. It also was laid to a motivation rooted in xenophobia, as appears the Munich one.

The San Ysidro McDonald's massacre was a mass shooting that occurred in and around a McDonald's restaurant in the San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro on July 18, 1984. The perpetrator, 41-year-old James Huberty, shot and killed 21 people and injured 19 others before being fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper.

It will be noted that the first victim killed in this 1984 massacre was named "Caine" and another fatality had the first name "Aurora."

The shooting ranked as the deadliest mass shooting committed in the United States until the 1991 Luby's shooting. It is the second deadliest shooting rampage in which the perpetrator was killed by police as opposed to dying by suicide, behind only the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

Some insights from others about the Munich shooting:

Olym(Pi)a on Pi day. 22/7. ~ Rory Sonya

Just as the Micah X. Johnson Amoklauf in Dallas took place just 1/4 mile East of Dealey Plaza, so did the latest Amoklauf in the Olympia shopping mall in Munich take place 3/4 mile West of the Olympic Village Building 31 where the Palestinian terrorist group called Black September took the Israeli Wrestling team hostage at the Munich Olympics on September 5, 1972. Just 4 months later, on January 7, 1973, Mark Essex took to the Howard Johnson's rooftop in New Orleans to carry out his Amoklauf mission. ~ Tom Mellet.

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Let us also recall, beside the recent German train attack and the German cinema attack, there was a train station incident in May.

On May 10, 2016, there was a 5 a.m. attack at the Grafing train station, near Munich, Germany. One person was killed, three injured, as the man with a knife was quickly arrested. He yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great."

The Grafing Bahnhof suspect was taken into custody with bare feet, and his shoes could not be found.

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(Thanks to Enki King for updates.)

Munich: 40 Years Ago

The Olympics' Munich massacre occurred 40 years ago, on September 5-6, 1972, from 4:30 a.m. through 12:04 a.m. local time. The target was the Israeli Olympic team.

The Munich massacre is an informal name for an attack that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria, in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Shortly after the crisis began, they demanded the release of 234 prisoners held in Israeli jails, and the release of the founders (Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof) of the German Red Army Faction, who were held in German prisons. Black September called the operation "Ikrit and Biram," after two Christian Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were expelled by the Haganah in 1948.

The attackers, who were given logistical assistance by German neo-Nazis, killed eleven Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German police officer. Five of the eight members of Black September were killed by police officers during a failed rescue attempt. The three surviving assassins were captured, but later released by West Germany following the hijacking by Black September of a Lufthansa airliner. Israel responded to the killers' release with Operation Spring of Youth and Operation Wrath of God, during which Palestinians suspected of involvement in the massacre were systematically tracked down and killed by Israeli intelligence and special forces. The Israeli operations killed one innocent in Norway and four passersby in Lebanon, with 18 others injured during the killing of Ali Hassan Salameh.

A rescue effort was attempted by the ill-prepared German authorities. It failed miserably.

Initial news reports, published all over the world, indicated that all the hostages were alive, and that all the attackers had been killed. Only later did a representative for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggest that "initial reports were overly optimistic." Jim McKay, who was covering the Olympics that year for ABC, had taken on the job of reporting the events as Roone Arledge fed them into his earpiece. At 3:24 a.m., McKay received the official confirmation:

We just got the final word ... you know, when I was a kid, my father used to say "Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized." Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They've now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.

Sources as attributed above in embedded links, as well as mixes and various tidbits from Wikipedia.