Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Ministry says 358 child marriages concluded abroad have been recorded since April 2012, eight annulled by courts. On October 13, The Blaze filed them under an “Islamic invasion”, a word in no statement it quotes. Two words carry the headline, and neither is in the record. Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Ministry counted 358 child marriages made abroad and reported since April 2012. The breakdown Junge Freiheit reported lists nationalities: Syrian 132, Bulgarian 62, Turkish 37, Afghan 30, Iraqi 18, and five men with German citizenship. No figure counts faith. “Islamic invasion” is the hard word, a war’s word for marriages reported by registry offices, and it appears only in The Blaze’s headline, in none of the three AfD statements its page quotes. The sentence runs on an old habit of the mind: the other group’s one member stands for all of them, while ours stays the exception. Five husbands with German citizenship remain five men; Syrian and Afghan husbands become a religion on the march. That is the tell to carry into the next headline: the faith named where the count names nationalities. The girls, some as young as 11 in Euronews’s words, are the ones harmed, and here they are the backdrop for a story about Merkel’s policy. The drift is plain beside the others. Euronews and 20 Minuten lead with the number and name no faith; The Daily Wire and Townhall add “Muslim”; The Blaze adds an army. Its body names the men’s origins nine blocks down and gives two start dates, 2012 and 2017. Beside the villain stands a savior, AfD state leader Martin Rothweiler: “Our country and our values are being abolished before our very eyes.” Courts annulled eight of the 358; the other 350 were closed as other resolutions.
