Nobody has ever Called Söring "The German Monster"
Where did this moniker come from? It's never once been used in print.
Brandolini’s Law, or the “bullshit asymmetry principle”, holds that “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it.” The case of Jens Söring is a perfect example. Söring and his supporters have introduced so much bullsh— well, let me be polite here and call it “spin”. They’ve introduced so much spin into his case in the past 30 years that it takes a Herculean effort — for instance, a 450-page report — to deal with it all.
Here’s just one of hundreds of examples: the “German Monster” myth. This is a minor point, but once again, it shows how urban legends are given eternal life by lazy journalists. Take this report on Söring from a German newspaper: “Jens Söring, auch als „German Monster“ in den USA bekannt…”. It’s one of umpteen German news articles which claim Söring was referred to this way during his trial. We’re meant, obviously, to shake our heads in dismay at how xenophobic Yankees assumed Söring was guilty from the very beginning because he was German, and insulted him with a dehumanizing nickname.
The only problem with this story: it’s bulls— er, spin. I can find no proof any American reporter has ever referred to Söring as “The German Monster”. American reporting on the case was largely fact-based and neutral and, especially after 2010 or so, increasingly pro-Söring. I have been unable to find a single printed news source anywhere in the world in which Söring was ever referred to as “The German Monster.” Nor is the phrase cited in Beyond Reason, the first book on the case. If you can find any reference to Söring as a “German Monster” in the American or UK press, please let me know — I’ll give you a handsome reward (a nice cold beer)!
If the phrase ever was used to describe Söring, it was probably a fleeting reference in some some long-forgotten UK tabloid headline or American TV scandal-show. But Söring knows good spin when he sees it. He inflated this one brief reference — assuming it even occurred — into the false claim that he was routinely referred to as “The German Monster” by backwards, foreigner-hating Americans. How, he complains, can anyone expect to get a fair trial when the media has dubbed them a “monster”?
German journalists simply took the claim at face value, and reported it over and over, until now it’s accepted as fact.
So that’s one of the pieces of Söring’s spin debunked. Unfortunately, there are still hundreds left. And that’s not counting the zombie spin — claims about Söring’s case which have already been debunked, but which Söring continues to repeat (depending on the audience), secure in the knowledge that there are always people out there who have never heard of the case, and who won’t know they’re being fed spin.
It’s a never-ending struggle to correct the record, but fortunately I enjoy it. So stay tuned!