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Why ISIS Is Winning The Online Propaganda War (dailydot.com)
blottsie writes: The U.S. government has been unable to fight the Islamic State on the one battlefield it currently commands: the Internet. Exemplified by an August 2014 video produced by the State Department, the U.S. remains ineffective at combating violent extremism online. A definitive report by the Daily Dot explores how ISIS succeeds in spreading its message and recruiting new militants, and why the U.S. government continues to fail in its efforts to stop ISIS online.
Young men whose culture expects a lot from them, but who have little options for employment or success due to cultural behaviors which limit their options, namely high birth rates and slow economic growth. This is both promoted by religious leaders and cultural prohibitions against lending
Either lower the birth rate or increase their opportunities and there will be no more people wanting to join ISIS
The only propaganda war ISIL is winning is spreading hatred of Islam far and wide. And it's not going to be these young men who have to wear that, it's going to be your normal suburban families who just happen to have a different religion from those around them.
If you can find something to believe in that is bigger than yourself, it can make all your doubts and insecurities go away.
So either be grateful or hateful that you're smart.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I have already theorized that if online surveillance were really as all-powerful as paranoids think it is, the NSA would have no trouble pinpointing ransomware operators and having them picturesquely snuffed out.
Reason two: wouldn't a cyberspy agency with real power be able to use the Internet to scramble ISIS communications with fake chatter, misdirected operational orders, and sites filled with doctrinal errors designed to turn wealthy Muslims against ISIS?
For the same reason why Climate-change deniers, anit-GMO campaigners, vaccine truthers and other Conspiracy theories find such fertile ground on the internet. People don't go looking for impartial information, they go looking for material that affirms their already held beliefs. The internet offers them the opportunity to find and like-minded people and form communities even when members are separated by large geographical distances
This "we'll take care of you" narrative is just about the only thing you hear from the do-gooders that're fscking up by the numbers here in Europe.
Free monies? Check. Housing? Check. More help "integrating? Check. Special and remedial language courses and schooling? Check and check. Extra doubplelus more counselling? Check, check and check. They're getting way more "help" than the natives do. It doesn't help at all.
There are piles of evidence that nothing of that actually works. And still you can regularly hear politicians harping on a schooling or support or whatever other course track thingy this week. It still doesn't work.
The problem is that these extremist youths aren't extremist because they're poor. They're poor because of their death cult beliefs. But because of their beliefs they're easy to convince to dig in even deeper, and anyway, even observing that it's their backward belief system of virulent hate that's keeping them back is "racists". This is why, with every terrorist attack, even where the attackers where shouting very literal and widely known invocations of their belief, you'll see oodles of "experts" tumbling over each other to insist that nothing of all that had to with their so-called "religion" at all, nosiree, honest. You're not supposed to point to the actual cause because that's not polite, see?
There are more problems, but the fundamental problem should already be visible: The west is operating on a certain set of assumptions ("we'll help you, then you'll be thankful and take the hint to be more like us"), and these people are operating on wildly different assumptions ("We get free stuff? Sure, give us some more. Us thankful? Nah. We have our own 'culture'. And now that free stuff is a right so we demand more or we'll call you racist... again.") that makes us look weak and contemptible in their eyes.
And that's the European situation. The US situation is possibly worse because the US and thus the US government is even worse about this perception dichotomy thing. It's why the US has lost just about every war in the last couple decades. Military might? Sure. Er, excuse me, "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!". But making it stick? HA HA HA HA. The name of the game is "hearts and minds" and against these people, the west sucks at it. The more west you look, in fact, the more they suck at it.
This is why, for one, Assad needs very much to stay where he is, yet "the west" keeps on wishing him away. This is why the "Arabian spring" turned into nothing short of a global disaster. If you're wondering how that could come to pass, well, there were these wars arming and destabilising the region, and then all it needed was a relatively small trigger. The only spark of hope for us is that the region is full of extremists that disagree with each other and therefore dislike each other to death, and that's not much of a spark. We in the west are more or less entirely powerless, because we're so completely out of touch with their frame of reference.
And that in turn is exactly what's making this counter-propaganda so excreably bad: It doesn't resonate with the target demographic at all. The ISIS propaganda, OTOH, resonates very well indeed, to the point it has no problem getting hordes of disaffected young men to join them and commit mass atrocities.
an "ally" of the United States and the Obama administration
They were also an "ally" of the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration, and the prior Bush administration and so on; because they're allies (for whatever that's worth) of the United States, regardless of its presiding administration.
Why would you mention Obama here unless for a needless (and false) partisan attempt at blame-assigning? US-Saudi relations have nothing to do with Obama specifically and long, long predate him.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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When these groups spring up they do attract followers for a while. But given a bit of time, the public tends to see through the false face that these groups present and they tend to collapse. Even in the US we have had lunatic movements that almost completely vanish. The KKK is an example. They used to have enormous power and now have only a few scraggly members with next to no influence at all. The prohibition movement is another such group although prohibition if heavy-handed would have been a great idea. And then we had the eugenics movement about 100 years ago as well. As far as the terror nuts go in reality they kill a few people and cause some economic problems but the handwriting is already on the wall for them. They are in meltdown and their leaders certainly know that.