On the night of November 2–3, shooting rang out in Vienna. According to the police, it all started at Schwedenplatz in the first district of Vienna, where the cultural center “Israel” and the synagogue are located.
Almost immediately after the first reports of the shooting, almost all the media in Austria and other European countries, as well as some politicians, not to mention social networks, began to actively disseminate the version of the “Islamic terrorist attack.”
As usual in such cases, when the information hysteria begins to reproduce itself, there was “evidence” that the attackers spoke Arabic (Turkish), shouted “Allah Akbar”, and one of the attackers even blew himself up.
In some public social networks, photos of several bearded men even appeared, with an accompanying text about “the brothers who performed the operation in Vienna.” Turkey also got it, or rather personally Erdogan, who was declared “the organizer and inspirer of the terrorist attack in Vienna.”
Even Macron could not stand it. Instead of waiting for a clarification of the situation, he rushed to tweet a post with a thick allusion to “Islamic enemies” who “attacked Europe”, but we “will defeat them together.”
Here is the full text of Macron’s Twitter message to the Austrians:
“We French share the shock and grief of the Austrian people, who were attacked tonight in the heart of their capital, Vienna. After France, our allied country was attacked. This is our Europe. Our enemies must know who they are dealing with. We will not give up anything, ”wrote Macron.
But a couple of hours passed and it turned out that the “Islamic terrorists” who attacked “our Europe” are as Islamic as Macron himself. This became clear after the first of the attackers was arrested. It turned out to be a certain 39-year-old Samuel Heidenegger, apparently an Austrian.
According to the Austrian media, the attackers were armed not only with machine guns, but also with a machine gun. The police said that the attack was carried out at once in 6 locations in Vienna.
The size of the armed group, judging by the publications in the media and statements by the authorities, may be 9 people. One was killed, five were arrested, and three more, according to the information at the time of this writing, were on the run. However, a number of sources wrote that the police are actually looking for only one armed participant in the shootout.
According to authorities, 15 people were injured, including one police officer. Although earlier the media wrote about at least 7 dead. I must say that with such a density of armed confrontation, given the size of the group and its weapons, as well as the deployment of military units and special forces in Vienna, human losses as a result of night clashes are scanty, which is strange in the background of the scale of what happened.
Meanwhile, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz made a special statement at night in which he indicated that he did not rule out the anti-Semitic motive of the attack.
“The attackers are well armed, their motives are currently unknown, but they may be related to anti-Semitism,” the Austrian chancellor announced. In other words, we can talk about a certain nationalist (or Nazi) group that does not like Jews.
An indirect sign that this may be so was the decision of the Danish authorities to take under increased protection a synagogue in Copenhagen in connection with the events in Vienna.
Kurz called the incident a “disgusting terrorist attack.” According to him, Austria “will not allow itself to be intimidated by terrorism and will fight with all its might against such attacks.”
After the Austrian authorities put forward a version of the anti-Jewish nature of the attack, Macron has not yet made any statements.
