State Department releases graphic anti-ISIS video - CNN.com
A
grisly video is the latest State Department effort to push back against
ISIS recruiting efforts by highlighting the group's barbaric nature.
State Department releases graphic anti-ISIS video
September 6, 2014 -- Updated 1743 GMT (0143 HKT)
State Dept. releases anti-ISIS video
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Video fights ISIS recruiting efforts by highlighting the group's barbaric nature
- "Welcome to the 'Islamic State' land" video is posted on a dedicated YouTube channel
- U.S. has been "messaging" in social media in Arabic, Urdu and Somali for three years
Then a body is thrown off a cliff.
Later a mosque is blown up, followed by a photo of a body with a severed head.
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Complete with
crucifixions, Muslims being whipped, shot in the head at point-blank
range and thrown into ditches, the grisly video is the latest State
Department effort to push back against ISIS recruiting efforts by
highlighting the group's barbaric nature.
The video, which uses the
group's own propaganda footage posted online, illustrates ISIS actions
by advertising so-called "useful skills" ISIS sympathizers can learn if
they join the group: blowing up mosques with Muslims inside, crucifying
and executing Muslims and plundering public resources.
Entitled "Welcome to the
'Islamic State' land," the video was posted on a dedicated YouTube
channel. It was produced by the State Department's Center for Strategic
Counterterrorism Communications, which seeks to combat ISIS extremist
narrative on social media.
The campaign is directed
at Muslims in the United States believed to be vulnerable to recruitment
by extremist groups, amid revelations that more than 100 U.S. citizens
have traveled overseas to join the jihadist group.
The State Department
regards social media as a powerful recruitment tool for terrorist groups
and in recent years has launched social media efforts to engage
jihadists and their sympathizers online, contesting their claims with
the intention of dissuading potential converts to Islamic extremism.
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Alberto Fernandez,
coordinator of the State Department's Center for Strategic
Counterterrorism Communications, which runs the program, has called it
"participating in the marketplace of ideas."
In response to this
threat, the U.S. government has been "messaging" in social media in
Arabic, Urdu and Somali for three years, attempting to penetrate the
virtual echo chambers of jihadist thought with contrary points of view.
Groups like ISIS are
posting gruesome video of decapitated heads as trophies of battlefield
victories, or images of victims from their own side, captioned with vows
to avenge them. Links to grainy phone-camera footage abound,
documenting everything from group executions to a video appeal summoning
Muslim women to come to Syria to find a husband among the Islamist
rebels. The content is disseminated swiftly around the world on the
Internet through a diverse network of jihadists and their supporters,
journalists, analysts and onlookers.
While al Qaeda and its
affiliates and sympathizers were once the focus of the U.S. campaigns to
counter violent extremism, ISIS has increasingly become a target of
U.S. efforts.
In addition to YouTube,
the center now runs a series of anti-ISIS accounts on Facebook, Twitter
and Tumblr as part of a larger social media campaign to counter violent
extremism launched late last year called "Think Again, Turn Away."
"Our mission is to
expose the facts about terrorists and their propaganda. Don't be misled
by those who break up families and destroy their true heritage," the
State Department said on the campaign's Facebook page.
The latest anti-ISIS video ends with a sarcastic enticement to would-be jihadists.
"Travel is inexpensive, because you won't need a return ticket!" Then a body is thrown off a cliff.
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