Bing preemptively dismisses rumors of a civil war in France for German users

When I was looking for a title image on Bing for an article about France for my German language blog that I stumbled over something very strange. Below the the search bar of my text search for „Bürgerkrieg Frankreich“ („civil war France“) an infobox appeared that I really didn‘t expect.

The box contained an experpt from an article written in March 2017 by the German mainstream outlet Stern. It stated the following (highlighted terms are also highlighted in the Bing infobox):

„The answer is: Yes, there are riots and civic unrest in France. But these are protests against police brutality. A civic war on the other hand is a fight between different groups within a nation. This is not the case in France.“ („Die Antwort: Ja, es gibt Krawalle und Unruhen in Frankreich. Doch es handelt sich dabei um Proteste gegen übermäßige Polizeigewalt. Ein Bürgerkrieg ist ein bewaffneter Kampf unterschiedlicher Gruppen innerhalb eines Staates. Das gibt es in Frankreich nicht.“)

That was a very blunt admission that something is seriously wrong in France. The point is that it doesn‘t refer to the Yellow Vest protests which started in late 2018, one year after the article has been published. It also doesn‘t refer to the Islamic terror attacks in Paris, Nice and other French cities as these were directed against the population and not against the government and its authorities.

Both the Yellow Vests and France‘s Islamists are not only in existence and impart resprt to violence, but they also have a very different objective than hitting back with violence against alledged police brutality. These are known facts.

If you took Stern‘s definition for civil war and apply it to at least the Islamists in France, then yes, there is a civil war raging in France. It‘s the Islamists who kill secular French citizens to push for an Islamic Caliphate.

Yet, the infobox tells everyone something very different and this in a very pointed way. After all, the infobox is not just positioned somewhere, but right below the search bar as the probably the most prominent place on the site of a search engine. A place where you normally find expensive advertisements. On top, just as advertised results the infobox has an edge, which makes it jump into the user‘s eye even more.

It means that virtually everyone who searches in German for „civil war France“ will notice this box and then read that there is no such thing as a civil West of the river Rhine.

Framing, but why?

This infobox is obviouly framing and it‘s one of the expensive kind given the position of the box and the rich alternatives, France as a nation has to offer on this topic. The question is why Bing is doing this and the answer is very disturbing.

For one, nobody adds an infobox without reason. It means either that the French or other authorities asked/paid Bing for adding this box. Or it means Germans are searching for this topic so often that Bing saw a reason to reassure everyone that nothing out of the ordinary is happening in their big Western neighbor.

As an observer who‘s reading the news beyond the mainstream headlines and therefore knows who dire the situation is in parts of France, the conclusion can only be that things are really that bad in France – or possibly even worse given this very pointed „official“ affirmation. But it gets even worse.

No civl war in Sweden, but in Italy??!

Apparently, France‘s German infobox on Bing is not the only one that leaves users scratching their head. I did the same search for all other European countries and had to hits with Sweden and Italy. While the case of Sweden seems clear, the statement in the infobox for Italy was rather surprising to me.

Here‘s what Bing has to say about „civil war in Sweden“:

„Civil war in Sweden: The military against migrants. 13. In Sweden, criminal activities by migrant gangs is escalating ever more. In 2017, there were 320 shootings in the entire country killing 43 and injuring 140. These are significantly more deaths than in previous years: In 2015 and 2016, each 28 people have been shot dead.“ („Bürgerkrieg in Schweden: Militär gegen Migranten. 13. In Schweden eskaliert die Kriminalität durch Migrantenbanden immer mehr. 2017 gab es landesweit 320 Schießereien mit 43 Toten und 140 Verletzten. Das sind deutlich mehr Tote als in den Jahren davor: 2015 und 2016 waren jeweils 28 Menschen erschossen worden.“)

If you take the definiton delivered by Stern for the French infobox, of course there is no civil war in Sweden. Since after all, the military ist just a government agency as the police is. Therefore, by definition there cannot be a cvil war in Sweden. It remains open whether Bing will update it‘s Swedish infobox in case these migrant gangs start fighting each other. Because that would fit Stern‘s definition of civil war.

The most disturbing infobox popped up when I was searching in German for „civil war in Italy“. Here‘s what it states:

„Migration wave“: Civil war in Italy. Rome, August 28th 2017 [ENA] In Italy, the situation further escalates with the ongoing migrant crisis. According to several independent sources, in the cities of Rome, Naples and Rimini as well as on Sicily there have been civil wars.“ („Migrationswelle: Bürgerkrieg in Italien. Rom, 28.08.2017 [ENA] In Italien eskaliert die Lage in Zusammenhang mit der fortschreitenden Migrationskrise. Gemäss mehreren unabhängigen Quellen soll es in den Städten Rom, Neapel und Rimini, sowie auf Sizilien zu einem Bürgerkrieg gekommen sein.“)

There we have it. According to Bing – which has to manually add and curate these infoboxes - there is a civil war raging in Italy which has been triggered by the migrant crisis. As mentioned above, I mainly read alternative media articles, but a raging civil war in Italy was still news to me.

France, motherland of modern-day civil wars

Besides these three countries, I also tested the search term for most other European country (see the list at the bottom here), but with no results. Or to be precise, there were no results with descriptions of current civil wars.

Europe has seen many of these wars and in around half of all cases, the Bing search result showed an infobox about a particularly important historc civil war in that country. The Yugoslavian war in the 1990s for example or the Glorious Revoution 1688-1689 in England, or the Greek civil between Communists and conservative forces between 1946 and 1949.

These occasional infoboxes about past civil wars though shed an even stranger light on the situation of contemporary France. Because as mentioned above, France is kind of the inventor of modern-day civil war with the French Revolution raging between 1789 and 1795, and with enough subsequent phases of civic unrest, civil war and revolution.

At least the first one was so significant for both France and the entire world that one infobox would barely be enough to mention it. But still, instead of historic accounts, German users are reassured that nothing is happening in France.

On top, not even the Stern definition has been applied consistently by Bing to all the civil war examples in the infoboxes. For example, the Glorious Revolution was not different factions within the nation fighting each other, hence no civil war, but more an institutional revoltion as its name suggests. Bing added it anyway to the „civil war“ search, for whatever reason. If the moderators of the search engine were consistent, they would either remove this example or offer a different result for queries asking about civil war in France.

Disturbingly, bottom line seems to be that there is something seriously wrong in continental Europe (more wrong than one would expect), while the media, authorities and search engines appear to be bluntly lying about it.

According to Bing Germany, there is a civil war raging right now in parts of Italy caused by the migrant crisis

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