We need to talk about the Peschiera del Garda mass riot
A mob of 2500 North African youths tore through a picturesque Italian lakeside town, leaving residents and tourists shocked and scared. However, it went largely ignored by mainstream media. Why?
A commentary on “Ein italienisches Touristendorf wird von nordafrikanischen Migranten gestürmt, Steine fliegen, und ein Mob bedrängt Mädchen im Zug – was in den Medien folgt, ist langes Schweigen” (published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung on June 17, 2022)
A lot has been written and said about the increasingly biased and unbalanced coverage in Western mainstream media outlets, both in Europe and across the pond. Any halfway literate media consumer will inevitably have noticed a certain tilt, an ideological coloring in a way that facts are construed to favor a particular agenda and discussions leave less and less room for alternative opinions. This tilt, however, may be hard to spot when it comes in the form of what is called selection or “gatekeeping” bias – or in other words: When certain news stories are simply not covered in mainstream media or just barely mentioned in a sidenote.
This is basically what happened to the story of a mass riot that took place on June 2, 2022 at Peschiera del Garda in the north of Italy. Peschiera is a lakeside town located at the beautiful Lago di Garda, where tourists from all over come to spend their holidays and enjoy a little bit of la dolce vita. On June 2, however, Peschiera was the scene of what cannot be described other than a violent mass mob. Around 2500 teens and young adults, mostly of North African origin, came to town under the pretense of an illegal “L’Africa a Peschiera” party. Inebriated and riled up, the youths harassed and attacked residents and tourists – some with a pocketknife –, trampled on cars, destroyed beach chairs. Video footage shows these young men waving Moroccan flags and screaming “This is Africa!” or “This is our territory”. Several girls and women, who were on the same train as the rioters going to Peschiera from Milan, reported having been surrounded, sexually harassed and insulted as “white women”. According to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, one of very few major media outlets to report about the incident, at least sixteen women made a complaint to the police.
While in Italy the Peschiera riots have unleashed a discussion around sensitive topics such as migration and integration, German and generally European coverage of the events has been mostly non-existent or, if anything, suspiciously time delayed. This is especially odd since the Lago di Garda area is a hotspot for German tourists (spending your vacation at Gardasee is a classic, particularly for people from the south of Germany). You would think that a mass riot of 2500 youths at a popular tourist destination would garner at least some immediate media attention. But it took most German news outlets over two weeks to publish an article, same as the Swiss NZZ (the FAZ and Junge Freiheit seem to be the exception to the rule).
Coverage, of course, goes as you might expect: Left-leaning papers and public service broadcasters are downplaying the rioters’ destructive behavior, instead pointing fingers at right-wing politicians and protestors who want stricter rules on (illegal) immigration. Right-leaning outlets deliver more detail on the brutality of the rioting, focus more on the victims or include videos in their coverage to make their point.
But what is most interesting to me in this case is the fact that it took German news agency DPA a whopping two weeks to report about the riot. In the age of the internet, a two-week delay is a death sentence for any news story.
Which makes you wonder: Why did it take DPA (and, subsequently, major German news outlets) two weeks to report about such an outrageous event? Why was nobody interested in bringing this sensational (and therefore lucrative) story to the people? Upon inquiry by the NZZ, a DPA spokesperson said they “hadn’t realized the scope of the story”, but that is hard to believe.
It seems much more plausible that this is a case of selection bias. In a media environment which is increasingly concerned with following a type of political correctness taken to its absolute extreme (aka wokeness), events like the Peschiera mass riot can only be taboo. Topics like migration, its connection to violence, racism and discrimination (both against people of color and white people) and general problems of integration (both on side of the host country and the immigrant) have become too sensitive to talk about. It’s like the three monkeys who refuse to see, hear or speak – let’s just look the other way and stay blissfully ignorant.
But where does that leave a society if everyone looks the other way? Respectful and reasonable criticism of any kind needs to be possible in a society that considers itself democratic. Criticism cannot be selective if it is inconvenient; that’s when it is most necessary. But while it is accepted, even applauded, to say that European host countries are continually failing to integrate immigrants (which is the case), it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to criticize immigrant behavior without being labeled racist. It is now considered inopportune to say that it was predominantly young men from North Africa who have violently attacked Peschiera del Garda. Or that violence against women is disproportionately committed by young men from Maghreb and Muslim countries (see: New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne in 2015 or in Milan in 2021, etc.). Or that the integration of immigrants with that specific background tends to be immensely difficult compared to other migrant groups. So, nobody says anything at all.
The biased media coverage of the Peschiera mass riot (or lack thereof) is indicative of a bigger problem that can be observed all over the West. Political hypercorrectness and woke ideology have led to a kind of censorship that hinders people from simply stating inconvenient facts. This is happening in the media, it is happening in academia, in education, in everyday life.
But if selection bias makes news agencies and media outlets keep silence on sensitive topics out of a distorted sense of political correctness, people will get the impression that these important topics are being swept under the rug. That, eventually, will only fuel suspicion, frustration, xenophobia and racism. We need to be able to openly talk about events like the Peschiera riots. We need to talk about the issues that lie underneath and about constructive ways to tackle them. We need to bring together left, right and center for a constructive debate about what kind of society we want to live in, how to make it work and how consequences should look like. Yes, this might be inconvenient and yes, it might be painful. But problems need to be addressed in order to be solved. This is why selection bias is one of the most dangerous biases of them all. In the end, reality will catch up with the monkey who refuses to acknowledge it – and then, it will be too late.
About the author: Born 1987, with roots in Germany and the Philippines, living in Spain. Constantly curious and eager to learn new things. Freedom > safety. Your own opinion > groupthink. Coffee > tea. Podcast recommendation: How Anti-Racism Is Hurting Black America | John McWhorter & Jordan Peterson
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