Branko Malić
21st Century Wire
There’s a certain “yawn…” moment looming about “daily shooter” phenomena provided, of course, that you are not getting shot yourself. It stems from predictability. What independent media dub “anomalies” does not seem so anomalous anymore, because anomalies themselves are apparently inevitable, and therefore: predictable, even more so then the main line of events mediated by mass media.
We are talking, of course, about frequent unreliability of media images, ties of perpetrators to some form of security and/or intelligence services, unbelievable nature of not so minute details of the story, etc.
München shoot out of July, 22 (dubbed in German München Amoklauf – “running amok” ) displays one such possible “un-anomalous anomaly”, we’ll name, for the sake of the argument, “terror-embedded journalism”.
Good year for Gutjahr
Predictably enough, hot European summer brings us new installment in the series of “daily shooter”, enriched by “monster truck rampage special” attack in Nice, France (July, 14).
However, the anomaly of new weapon of choice in the form of lorry being allowed through famous promenade, killing whole bunch of people in the process, pales in comparison to the nature of media node that provided the world with first moving images of atrocity exhibition.
This node has a name: Richard Gutjahr.
He is a München based journalist, talk show moderator, blogger and “new media technologies” enthusiast, currently employed by Bavarian TV company, BR 24.
For uninitiated into Gutjahr’s impressive, if somewhat bizarre, CV his name will probably remain in memory simply because he decided to visit Nice for an “extended weekend” to experience the July, 14. Bastille Day celebration and, quite accidentally, found himself on the balcony of his hotel room, when white lorry driver commenced his rampage.
“Today’s gonna be a good day” Well, not for everyone, apparently …
Gutjahr – like a real citizen-journalist he presents himself to be – started to film the event with his iPhone:
“It (i.e. the lorry, BM) seemed out of place, because the streets were closed for all motor vehicles. The lorry was moving rather slowly, some people started screaming. This was strange so I commenced filming with my Handy”. (source: Spiegel online)
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The rest is, as they say, history.
Or, is it …?
For, barely a week later, name Guthjar was again all over the place.
Namely, while driving through München, Richard got the call from a friend informing him that there’s a shootout in the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum.
Like a good citizen-journalist that he presents himself to be, he rushed to the scene “following the column of police vehicles” and proceeded to act again as the media node, at least for German public:
One of Gutjahr’s reports. The other one you can find on this link (sources in German)
Wannabe analysts
Then he did something that provoked the stir among myriads of people prowling the Internet for the evidence that terror events are elaborate hoaxes, and using their infantile analytical skills to poison the wells of information that in fact do point in this direction.
Namely, Gutjahr twitted the photos of a standoff at shopping centre and someone immediately picked up on him being the same node responsible for mainline presentation of Nice event.
Not checking whether the photos were taken by Gutjahr himself – which, interesting though these images are, was apparently not the case, American ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who tweeted:
“Same Israeli photographer captures Nice and Munich tragedies. How likely is that? Remember the Dancing Israelis?…”
To our knowledge so far, Gutjahr is not technically an “Israeli photographer” and the fact that McKinney got this detail wrong allowed some Israeli news sources to try and discredit her.
Gutjahr promptly deleted his tweets with a message expressing regret for the mistake of posting them in the first place, and mainstream, especially Israeli and pro-Israel, sources were left with carte blanche to crucify anyone pointing out uncanny fact that the ‘first-responder journalist’ from the scenes of both great European “terror events” was accidentally the same man.
Just goes to show what happens when one fuels his quest for truth with resentment.
Before: “I’m standing in front of OEZ”
After:”I made a mistake today. I cannot believe it that I find myself again in such situation. The images are removed”
However, German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski apparently decided that there’s far more to this story than both mainstream journalists and YouTube “antisemitic” pundits (trying to establish a Mossad connection) posing as “truthers” think.
In his article, “München-Attack: Shameless Reporter Luck of Richard G.” published by Kopp-Verlag Online he shifts focus from the photos, videos and terror events into far more interesting direction – Gutjahr’s CV:
Kopp-Verlag Online
“This treasured asset of every news agency always seems to stumble upon lumps of reporter’s gold. So, for instance, in April, 2010., after 23 hours of waiting in the row in New York, he was the first man in the world to get his hands on iPad. This surprises you, huh? But that’s not all: he was present in Egypt during the revolution. Truth be told, he was in the neighborhood at the time of the event – probably by pure accident – namely in Israel, and, on a whim, decided to take a trip to a nearby Egypt.“
READ MORE AT: Kopp-Verlag Online
Apparently, Gutjarh always seems to find himself in the right place at the right time – the first to get an iPad, the first to film the carnage. Admittedly, there’s something boyish, if not downright infantile, about this man that reinforces one in the belief that he could very well become an intelligence asset/dupe for a price of one iPad and some acquired 007 vibe:
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This impression seems all the more remarkable if we now compare his professional CV with his personal life, i.e. with quite indiscrete, yet significant, question of with whom does he share his bed.
From bedding to embedding?
Namely, the boyish German journalist is married to a cool, calm and collected former Israeli politician, intelligence services officer and practicing Zionist-feminist (Ziofem? Femizio?) lobbyist, suffering from “secular-messianic” disorder, by the name of Einat Wilf.
Before we proceed to introduce Ms. Wilf, there’s something interesting to point out about her, rather heavy, on-line presence, i.e. her Wikipedia page.
Wisniewski informs us that:
“There raged an Edit-War on Wikipedia over certain (…) details. At one time something was there, and then it was gone. Obviously, there was a struggle behind the scenes between various Wikipedia page editors over a small, but quite important, detail, namely: for whom had the wife of German Reporter Gutjahr worked or is still working? Four days after the Nizza attack one could still find certain information about this in Wilf’s Wiki-Article, but one day after the München shooting, on 23. July, it was deleted, only to reemerge in a single passage. It says that Gutjahr’s wife Einat Wilf completed her military service as “Israeli secret service officer of the Unit 8200 with the rank of lieutenant”
READ MORE AT: Kopp-Verlag Online
Nowadays, Wilf is giving talks and lobbying for Israel (and, respectively, contra Assad’s Syria) around the world, and is quite vocal about the “special role” of this remarkable Middle Eastern democracy, advocating the idea of secularization of messianic role of Israelis from “God’s chosen people” into “Self-chosen people”:
Messianic politics? A must have for emancipated modern woman.
.Being a resident of South-Eastern Europe – born and raised – I suffer an inborn vomiting reflex when I hear about, “peoples/nations with messianic missions”, that cannot be alleviated by liberal clap trap this strategic communications (read: psy-op) expert employs to disguise her bloodthirsty, “clash of civilizations”-style (she prefers the term ‘tribes’) depiction of history. In the lecture bellow you can hear her (at 7:08 and further) sum it up in the favorite rhyme of all warmongers, that, concerning the present, as she calls it: “really authentic”, state of things in Middle East, “When you’re trying to move from an old order to a new order, it doesn’t happen smoothly, it doesn’t happen nicely. It is always bloody and violent.“:
Feminist Samuel Huntington with some of that ole’ Messiah complex. You go girrrrl!!!
.Well, be that as it may, Wilf and Gutjahr make for strange bedfellows, don’t you think? On the one hand you have a boyish hipster and on the other a highly professional, and well positioned, info warrior. Bizarrely enough, I even can’t shake the feeling that she’s more into Richard Wagner then her soft spoken German hubby. Wagner…
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Where to Next?
At this moment, there’s no certainty about where will this story go. In all probability it will sink beneath the sediments of ever-spinning news cycle, especially now when single tweet from public personage has potentially ‘poisoned the well’ of information, and inquiry. However, for those who want to get a grip on postmodern virtualization of terrorism it provides some invaluable pieces of the puzzle.
Namely, we’ll conclude the exposé of this strange story with an interpretation of possible trend-setting potential of the Gutjahr’s uncanny ability to be at the right place at the right time.
It is undeniable that he served as a main node to transfer the most potent aspects of the event – meaning: timely audio/visual messages out of which the mainstream media narrative emerged or, at least, by which it was supported. It is fairly immaterial whether he himself took the München photos. He mediated them. Moreover, although a professional journalist, he didn’t act in working hours, but in his free time, as a ‘citizen-journalist’ – so the story indicates. A veritable model to us all, one could assume. Is there more to this than meets the eye? Further yet, he is a TV host with high profile politician-cum-think tanker wife which somewhat disqualifies him as an unbiased ‘accidental hero’. Come to think of it, the whole affair makes him look like an impersonator, an actor if you like or, better still, a human node in a network of media produced reality show.
The New 5-D Rabbit Hole
The usual slur about conspiracy theorists is that they pathologically abhor accident, i.e. unpredictability of reality. Yet, if we observe the series of terror events, at least from Orlando Shooting up to this latest calamity, nothing seems to be accidental any more, even the face of the man-node relating them to us.
The essence of these events is their unnatural predictability, a clear sign, one could argue, of their essential artificiality.
In this respect, Gutjahr could very well be a “terror-embedded journalist”, tasked to provide the media representation of the event in the form of reality show, therefore the show that feigns the unpredictability of reality, but is essentially constructed to be as predictable as it gets.
The future will show whether these speculations are justified. At this moment they are at least plausible. Therefore it would be expedient not to forget about this uncanny circumstance of two European terror events, because it could very well prove to become a principle in the events surely to come, possibly during the course of this summer.
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Author Branko Malić is a Croatian author and owner of Kali Tribune, with the background in classical philosophy. He’s focused on philosophy, media, culture and deep politics analysis.
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