Gefaehrder. The new IT-piece of German journalism.

After the attack in Berlin, people keep saying this one word, whether in the correct context or not. And it makes me feel dizzy. It’s the word at the moment! It makes you look as if you cared for German politics, as if you were well-informed. Anis Amri was one. And there are roughly 549 more in Germany. People knew about his attitude, his way of thinking, his behavior was thought of as endangering. He was a you-know-what.

Right. But what do we do with this knowledge? Apart from the fact that we now got a really fancy, cool, new, funky word to throw around us every and any time.

People, graded as ‘Gefaehrder’ should get electronic tags. So big brother can watch them. Oh, we probably don’t have the resources to evaluate the amount of data we’ll receive but don’t worry. I mean, we categorized them and they got a tag. And now back to business: the upcoming election..

But I have a problem with that. I don’t like the word ‘Gefaehrder’, I don’t like the way it is used and overall how often it has been used by whom. I would have expected more from professional journalists and magazines than following the bestselling path of walking down the street of news that fuel populist ideas!

But once again, I probably had too naive ideas about the world and it’s ideals.

I think, words like these are endangering themselves. If not used correctly, they can cause bigger trouble than one would expect.