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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
It's US/ISIS, fighting against the Russians.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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?
"He who has the gold, makes the rules."
WHO is funding ISIS ?
Since we haven't evolved to live on a planet without money yet, the only effective way to stop any propaganda is to find out WHO financially supports them and cut off their money supply.
All the Petabytes of Information the NSA has and they have to target American Citizens instead ??
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
? really? ISIS may not be Obama's JV team, but ISIS ain't in the Final Four.
They have failed to curb violent extremism online because if it's online, it's almost entirely fake. If anyone disagrees with me, I'll melt them in a vat of acid and post cum tributes of their cleaned skeleton.
Because we're helping them.
Think about:
1. Everything you know about ISIS.
2. Who showed you these things?
By portraying ISIS as evil incarnate and letting them provoke a reaction out of us, we are helping them get what they want.
Without everyone being up in arms about them and feeding the media frenzy about a bunch of backwards goatherders, they would not have been able to successfully recruit their terror cells.
Reality is online extremism is not really all that much of a problem. Most countries have laws in place to cover certain kinds of speech and on line extremism is pretty much like criminals carrying around a sign stating their crimes and expecting not to be arrested. You are kind of meant to allow it to happen and then investigate and arrest it creators and prosecute them not only for those specific speech crimes (keep in mind, money is speech and paying someone to kill someone else is just free 'er' paid for speech, also not to forget credit card fraud). As part of that you shut down the web site. So either they do commit real crimes and you prosecute them or they do not and in reality they are just one amongst a billion others. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves.
When it comes to offshore sites, well, that is imported and should come under import control laws and also can be extended to other countries export controls. Should countries not be doing enough to control export of criminal digital transmissions they should be subject to bans on other exports, until they in term seek to control the digital transmissions being export from the networks.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Not the usual kind of censorship, but that of the news not showing anything that might be upsetting. Have to wonder if minds would change if they showed pictures of a happy, active 5 year old, then a burned, twisted mass of stuff that was the kid's body after some asshole set off a bomb.
That would make their position sound pretty sensible.
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.
Wanting or getting a sense of purpose in life has nothing to do with intelligence - at least whatever is measured by IQ and SATs. The most insecure people I know are quite brilliant and wonder why they're wasting their life on crap that's basically a consumer product that really doesn't better mankind. Or getting into a profession because they wanted a job but would rather have studied 19th century French literature - so they grit their teeth everyday and go to work. Some are lucky. I know an OB/GYN who studied music as an undergrad but wanted a family and knew he couldn't support them on a musician's salary (he was a classical pianist). After white knuckling ti through med school and residency, he ended up living delivery babies.
So, what comes down to is what gives you meaning that counts.
And our lives in the US - live to work at the expense of family and friends - to live a shallow consuming life is depressing. I miss the days when I had a lot of friends and cool people to hang with - even though I was poor as shit.
Can someone explain to my why that in the United States of America, the right hates and wants to carpet bomb a bunch of right wing extremists who believe in God, Guns and family values, while the Wacky left wing wants to protect and defend a bunch of people who want to keep women covered and walking 6 paces behind the men.
Why do we fight the wars we do? It is because someone in the media says those guys are evil. I remember when Russia was evil and the Mujahudeen were our buddies. What has changed?
To me the propoganda war is being waged in the United States against the citizens of the United States. It is being waged to turn the USA in upon itself. White against black. Left against Right. In the meantime China and Mexico grow rich. I believe nothing of what I hear on the news. None of it makes any sense to me anymore. It is all a conspiracy made up by someone on high for their own agenda.
It's also why Trump is doing so well. People in general are very gullible.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is well-known that most domestic terrorists are well educated, middle class to wealthy individuals.
Most Domestic 'Jihadists' Are Educated, Well-Off
However, many foreign terrorists are also very wealthy.
Osama Bin Laden Had $29 Million in Wealth, Requested it Mainly Be Used for âJihadâ(TM) in Personal Will
Whatâ(TM)s made the Islamic State one of the richest terrorist armies in history?
The World's Richest Terrorists
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.
They attack everyone's flaws and those are always plentiful... but in the long term they are nothing because they have no platform, no leadership, no ideas and they exist only as parasites on the system they claim to hate so much.
As I said.. just like today's Republican politicians.
It's easy to be critical of others and rally hate like that. We've seen this thousands of times throughout history and it's happened millions of uncountable times. However, when the shit hits the fan people demand reform and real governing tactics and it's pretty plain to see the Democrats are the only ones that have any kind of real and consistent plan. It's been the same message pretty much since The Great Depression.
Of course the logistics of being liberal is what most conservatives don't get. You don't need to like other people or want to be generous to endorse social programs. Social programs are cheaper than prisons and the only other alternatives you have would be killing off the poor and that STILL hasn't worked!!
You might have that backwards.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is a really easy explanation, but it doesn't make much sense. We're talking about relatively large groups of people here. We're also talking about a disorder that doesn't usually predispose one toward self sacrifice for some greater ideal.
Did Hitler manage to put together a program to find hundreds of thousands of sociopaths from the German population? Or is it more likely that bad ideas and toxic cultural influences can make otherwise good people do terrible things?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You think they are stupid enough to be this obvious? Of course, we are talking about a government bureaucracy, so you may have a point....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The finest trick of the terrorist is to persuade you to fear him.
When you have angry, disaffected young men who feel slighted by society/parents/whatever, they'll gravitate to anti-authoritarian entities. Usually these are individuals or groups that cause a lot of angst for people in power, and the knee-jerk reaction of the powerful is to speak out against them. This is the same as lavishing attention upon these groups, and makes them even more attractive to the disaffected.
I think the media probably needs to reassess the way in which it reports on extremist groups and terrorist events. It'll probably have knock on effects for the rest of the "propaganda war".
After all, the madman on the soapbox leaves when he realises there's nobody hanging around to listen.
Then again when it comes to ISIS/Daesh, I must admit the hard power approach looks very attractive.
These extremist really like this propaganda line, when bragging about themselves and addressing the West:
"We love death more than you love life."
Given this sentiment I am inclined to say, let's help them along. Give them what they so dearly love.
On the other hand, from a more rational point of view, the soft power approach would probably be more cost effective.
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?
And when the NSA pinpoints the ransomware operator, what are they supposed to do? A drone strike in a place we're not at war with is a bad idea. A formal criminal action will fail because they live in corrupt countries. And even if you tried, you would be revealing sources and methods you use to spy on terrorists.
Being good at spying is very distinct from being good at propaganda.
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.
Muslims all over the world think the West is corrupt and immoral and it must be set on the right path.
2nd and 3rd generation Muslims that live in western countries fill ashamed of and guilty to help maintain these western immoral and corrupt societies. Some of those react by embracing terrorism.
1st generation Muslim immigrants that have struggled to get a place in western societies don't choose terrorism because they are torn inside: from one side, they dislike the West, and from the other side, they feel obliged to the West.
It has nothing to do with poorness or social outcasting. It has only to do with how Muslims see the western civilization. That is why terrorists are not poor or uneducated.
Has used political correctness and 'respect' for muslims to stifle the anti-islam debate.
Also governments can't take the moral high ground because they are corrupt.
All power corrupts, we'd be better off without governments, no power to abuse.
Unless you've got enough religious nutjobs, then you just need enough power to keep them from forcing their religion on everyone else.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
The U.S. government has been unable to fight the Islamic State on the one battlefield it currently commands: the Internet.
I don't get the impression that they/we have actually done much to even engage in a propaganda war online. Perhaps because he real battle has to be fought elsewhere, in the communities, where so many young people are vulnerable to the frankly idiotic nonsense from Daesh. I don't think it is only about lack of good opportunities; many of them seem to be genuinely motivated by moral concerns, even if they are perverted in the extreme. It is in many ways driven by the same factors that created the hippies, the punk phenomenon, the 'Moral Majority' and others: the feeling that the establishment are false, self-serving hypocrites, nothing more than "the willing lackeys of capitalism" to use a phrase from yet another anti-establishment movement.
Meanwhile, Daesh will die of natural causes sooner or later. We have already seen for a while that people go out there, full of idealism and enthusiasm and regret it, because they find that Daesh is not the promised Islamic State, built on divine justice, but rather a brutal tyranny ruled by the most depraved and callous criminals. A state can never exist in isolation, and who is going to want to want to trade with them? Only other criminals. Daesh will die out - what we should concentrate on is 1) How to get that to happen sooner, and 2) How to stop it happening again. It isn't a lot of use that we go in and wipe out the plague that springs from our own failings, if we don't go and clean up the conditions that will allow the next plague to erupt.
The premise seems to be that the US government controls the Internet
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
To be perfectly frank, I don't want anyone to succeed at quelling speech online, or offline, anywhere. I am proud of the fact that dissenting opinions and views, like those of frankly reprehensible groups like NAMBLA and the KKK, are not silenced in my country.
For the same reason that rehabilitation rather than punishment should be the primary goal of prisons, our primary foreign policy should be aimed at trade and improving the economic viability and stability of the rest of the world for one simple reason: well fed, happy, comfortable people don't become suicide bombers. They don't take up guns and murder people. They don't rebel against the system.
If we took half the military budget and spent it on trade instead the US could single-handedly eliminate half of the poverty in the world. And I don't mean 'spend it on handouts'. I mean trade, where we receive goods for money. But use the taxes for trade incentives rather that disincentives like tariffs.
When entire populations of people are angry enough at my country to take up arms, then I consider that a failing of my country. We did something to deserve that anger. In the case of the middle east, we have spent decades meddling in their politics or actively waging war... no fucking shit they're angry. But silencing them doesn't remove the anger or repair the harm done. Instead, it just opens up the idea that controlling speech is effective. And that's antithetical to the entire foundation of our nation and the Internet.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Western civilization has the greatest propagandists the world has ever seen. Armed with modern psychology and decades of experience, they do an excellent job of making us buy stuff and vote for people. How the hell are we losing this war? Are we failing to understand what's attractive about ISIS? Are we getting third-rate propagandists working against ISIS? We need to figure out what's going on and sell these people on something other than suicidal violence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
GTFO! Silly rabbit...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
http://nypost.com/2016/03/29/y...
Does anyone really still care whether Punch or Judy are going to be running the show?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let them spew their shit. Nobody but their "supporters" give a rat's ass about it anyway.
Who gives a damn about what Daesh says?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ISIS BAD USA GOOD
ISIS BAD USA GOOD
ISIS BAD USA GOOD
There I just saved you the trouble of thinking about this or reading any of the posts here
The only difference between a Christian gunman and a Muslim terrorist is RACISM
http://qz.com/649933/the-only-difference-between-a-christian-gunman-and-a-muslim-terrorist-is-racism/
Casteism
Since 1971, OPEC is bullied to sell Crude Oil exclusively in US dollars resulting in friction between Islam and the West;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency
Petrocurrency is a global Pyramid scheme;
http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779
Casteism
Amazing how emotionally invested people are in the decision about which muppet is going to sit on the hand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.