![\"ISIS](\"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/ISIS-Reuters-two-men.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn Britain there has been understandable concern that ISIS has inspired over 60,000<\/a> supportive social media accounts this summer, and alarm at the claim<\/a> that in recent years, more young British Moslems had gone to join Jihad in Syria than had joined the army.<\/p>\n Many analysts and commentators have pointed to the \u201cmedia savvy\u201d of ISIS.\u00a0 Some have identified its ‘marketing war’<\/a> with the older Al Quaeda.\u00a0 For instance Jim Armitage who wrote in The Guardian<\/i>, \u2018Isis is refining terrorist marketing \u2026 they know all about corporate branding in war zones\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0Salience and recruiting support are presumably the two key metrics.<\/p>\n As well as drawing analogies with brand battles in business, there is an erudite literature<\/a> about importance of Islamic \u2018narratives\u2019 and \u2018Master Narratives\u2019 in forming the stories that sustain ISIS and other Jihadist groups but despite the very visual nature of social media, little attention seems to have been devoted to the ISIS \u2018visuals\u2019.\u00a0 Perhaps fashion seems too flippant to consider when innocent people are being slaughtered and journalists beheaded ?\u00a0 \u00a0Yet if \u2018jihadi cool\u2019 is important, what ISIS looks like may be very important.<\/p>\n Most press analysis focuses on the politics and hardware. \u2018As The US Strikes At ISIS, Here’s A Look At What The Jihadists Have In Their Arsenal\u2019<\/a> said Business Insider<\/i>.\u00a0 Maybe we should also look at what\u2019s in their wardrobe ?<\/p>\n Any Colour So Long As It\u2019s Black ?<\/strong><\/p>\n Black and white is graphic.\u00a0 The look is instantly recognizable, and its use is clearly controlled, in set piece marches such as these in The Independent<\/i><\/a> and on the BBC<\/a> and in set up shots such as this AP photo of a convoy reproduced in The Guardian<\/i>.<\/p>\n It also comes in handy when the flag doubles as a banner<\/a>.\u00a0 But is it cool ?\u00a0 With the atrocities dulled by the distance of time, many writers have noted that the Nazis looked \u2018cool\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2005 even Prince Harry had to apologize for wearing<\/a> a Nazi army shirt to a party.\u00a0\u00a0 Designer Hugo Boss became notorious for having made Nazi uniforms, and Walter Heck who worked for him, helped design<\/a> the iconic black and white SS uniform<\/a>.<\/p>\n Black has had its own separate fashion journey<\/a> but with the context, purpose and allusions to taking and exerting power and control, the choreographed use of black and white by the Nazis and ISIS seem more than a little coincidental.\u00a0 Below: ISIS and a SS tank general.<\/p>\n I rode a tank<\/a><\/i> Chief Nazi propagandist Herman Goebells was no slouch when it came to organising events for visual communication, as shown most famously in the film The Triumph of the Will<\/a><\/i>, which Hitler persuaded Leni Riefenstahl \u00a0to make.\u00a0 \u00a0Cinema newsreel was the most powerful propaganda medium of the day but social-media uses video, twitter, facebook and the like.\u00a0 Several other Middle Eastern organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas use partly black uniforms but none of them seem have attracted foreign online support like ISIS.<\/p>\n Nobody knows, or nobody is saying, who might have inspired ISIS from the world of online but it seems likely that their digital strategists have looked at successful online campaigns, commercial and otherwise, which have appealed to other young, \u2018Western\u2019 audiences.<\/p>\n One of the most widely discussed of these was \u2018Stop Kony<\/a>\u2019 by Invisible Children.\u00a0 In 2012 this became the most successful<\/a> viral video campaign in history, inspiring admiration at its techniques as well as a slew of questions<\/a> and criticisms.<\/p>\n The Most Successful Online Campaign ?<\/strong><\/p>\n I analysed the motivational structure of the Stop Kony campaign in a previous post<\/a> and more on that below but there are some striking visual similarities between some of IC\u2019s promotional videos and the ISIS, not to mention between some IC visuals and those of Nazi rallies.\u00a0 Of course IC are neither Nazi nor Islamic Jihadists \u2013 they are evangelical Chrsitians<\/a> \u2013 and Stop Kony was a campaign to capture a notorious human rights abuser, not a campaign causing human rights abuses but their cultish communication, some would say propaganda, has similar visual elements.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fourth Estate (IC)<\/p>\n IC and ISIS<\/p>\n IC has used music videos for campaign recruitment, \u00a0such as Blazing Trails 2007<\/a> which shows triumphant IC supporters riding a fleet of glossy black people carriers emblazoned with white graphics, frantically air-guitaring to Kings of Cydonia by Muse.<\/p>\n After viewing Stop Kony and IC recruitment videos about the \u2018Fourth Estate\u2019, UK TV host Charlie Brooker commented<\/a> on Channel 4:\u00a0 “In summary, Invisible Children are expert propagandists with what seems to be a covert religious agenda, advocating military action in central Africa, while similtaneously recruiting an “army” of young people to join their cause and their weird “Fourth Estate” youth camps… ”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What\u2019s The Appeal ?<\/strong><\/p>\n With apparently opposite agendas but similar audiences (mainly young, mainly online), can there be any similarities between the communications of groups like ISIS and IC ?\u00a0 A lot of evidence suggests there is, and it\u2019s motivational needs rather than just age or the medium which defines them.<\/p>\n IC effectively made human rights into a movie (and previously a dance video – now deleted from its website but viewable in part in the Brooker piece).\u00a0 Patrick Skinner, analyst with security intelligence services company Soufan, says<\/a> ISIS aims to reach specific demographic groups and in the West, they try to make jihad seem like a Hollywood-like video game.<\/p>\n \u201cThey make jihad seem cool, not over the top – beheading videos aren\u2019t recruitment videos – but they do do very slick productions, with music overlaid on top of very slick graphics, and they make it seem like a video game. They don\u2019t show the after effects. They’ll show an attack or they’ll show a killing, or they’ll show shooting with explosions, and it\u2019s very Hollywood-like,” says Skinner.\u00a0 Apparently ISIS also shows Jihadists with kittens and sweets in order to \u2018humanize\u2019 its fighters for the intended audience.<\/p>\n More importantly, both groups offer an apparently simple, attractive way to gain power over others, and a story about why it\u2019s the right thing to do.\u00a0 We are going to \u2018change the course of human history\u2019 Jason Russell tells the audience in the Stop Kony video.\u00a0 The decades long struggle for human rights is reduced to mobilising to capture or maybe kill, one man.\u00a0\u00a0 We are not joining a long campaign, having to negotiate or to study history, we \u2018are changing it\u2019.<\/p>\n This is classic Golden Dreamer content (see guide to Prospector Values Modes<\/a> at www.campaignstrategy.org<\/a> ): we will gain the esteem of others with one simple easy act.\u00a0 Caliphate or the Fourth Estate, we will create a promised land.<\/p>\n Raffaello Pantucci, from the Royal United Services Institute, has said<\/a> idealism, fleeing trouble at home, seeking redemption for a criminal past and religious vision may all be factors for ISIS recruits. \u201cAnd yet”, he added, “others are simply young people at a juncture in their lives where the idea of going to run around a training camp and shooting guns seems quite appealing.”\u00a0 Germany\u2019s Head of security has suggested<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u2018some young people are attracted to Isis because of its brutality, which makes it appear \u201cmore authentic\u201d than al-Qa\u2019ida\u2019.<\/p>\n In a recent post<\/a>, Pat Dade from Cultural Dynamics has analyzed population-wide psychological data from four countries to compare commitment to religion with the appeal of using force to \u2018get what you want\u2019.\u00a0 He writes:\u00a0 \u2018in each case, we have found only a small percentage that espouses the combined \u2018religious-force\u2019 factor within the culture. These \u2026\u00a0 will likely be regarded as outliers and aberrant by the standards of the culture in which they are embedded\u2019.\u00a0 His \u2018working hypothesis\u2019 drawn from the evidence is that \u201cgiven the right (not necessarily extreme) circumstances, Force will trump Religion\u201d.<\/p>\n The psychological group he is talking about is a (subset of) the Golden Dreamers, people moving from Settler (Security Driven) to Prospector (Outer Directed or Esteem Driven).\u00a0 This group has strong identity and esteem requirements and scores higher than others on factors such as the desire to have power\u00a0 \u2018over others, over things, over ideas\u2019.<\/p>\n Dade also analyzed the motivation to riot<\/a>, in the case of the 2011 UK “shopping riots”.\u00a0 He noted \u201cApart from the extreme youth of many of the participants, commentators and analysts have struggled without success to find a \u2018demographic\u2019 base for the majority of participants\u201d.<\/p>\n Amongst hundreds of questions put to thousands of British respondents he used four to charcaterize an \u2018Attribute\u2019 termed \u2018Asocial\u2019.\u00a0 The four statements that correlate and make up the Asocial Attribute are:<\/p>\n (The survey measured agree-disagree on a five point scale).\u00a0 This overlaps with just the same Golden Dreamer area of motivational values (see links above), where in his words, \u201cThe old rules that provided stability now seem oppressive and stifling. \u00a0A new world beckons, a Prospector world, one where anything is possible.\u00a0 As bounded and accepted morality frays around the edges new, multiple possibilities for recognition by others and rewards for social displays of prowess emerge and drive an excitement with life not previously experienced. Anything and everything is possible and only the experience of trying new forms of behaviour will enable the person to know what is best for them. No amount of moralizing will stop the person in [this] Danger Zone from doing or thinking what they want to \u2018right now\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Which could be leaving a comfortable suburb to join a foreign Jihad because it looks cool or simply X-box style \u2018fun\u2019, or opting into a riot, or opting into the Fourth Estate.<\/p>\n Looking for Certainties<\/strong><\/p>\n Many commentators who obviously do not share such motivational values see what people in such groups are doing and call them ‘extremists’ rather than ‘moderates’ but although their actions are extreme to us, to the followers they may look more like purity, authenticity or truthfulness.\u00a0\u00a0 They may quite literally be looking for and finding a simpler, black and white, uber-certain version of reality, as well as winning status within their group.<\/p>\n A Mother Jones<\/em> article by Chris Mooney<\/a>, \u00a0\u2018Here Are the Psychological Reasons Why an American Might Join ISIS\u2019 quotes Maryland University Professor Arie Kruglanski who has interviewed and studied the way a large number of terrorists see the world.\u00a0 He pinpoints a high need for \u2018cognitive closure<\/a>\u2019, which Mooney describes as \u2018a disposition that leads to an overwhelming desire for certainty, order, and structure in one’s life to relieve the sensation of gnawing\u2014often existential\u2014doubt and uncertainty\u2019.<\/p>\n “These extreme ideologies have a twofold type of appeal,” says Kruglanski “First of all, they are very coherent, black and white, right or wrong. Secondly, they afford the possibility of becoming very unique, and part of a larger whole.”\u00a0\u00a0 This he says, attracts young people who lack a clear sense of self-identity, and are craving a sense of larger significance. \u2018If you go through the world needing closure\u2019, writes Mooney, it predisposes you to seek out the ideologies and belief systems that most provide it.<\/p>\n It is perhaps this which is the common thread of appeal in Nazi, IC and ISIS ‘messages’, and the lure of many other fundamentalist propositions.\u00a0 These could even be \u2018extreme\u2019 animal rights and other \u2018issue\u2019 activists, or \u2018extreme\u2019 right-wing, left-wing political groups, while in business it can drive the \u2018wolves\u2019 of Wall Street and \u2019extreme\u2019 predatory captialism.\u00a0 Causes which demand total devotion and commitment to the cause, and corporations which demand total devotion and commitment to the cause, may be very different in their impacts on society but not so different in their motivations.<\/p>\n Postscript: since I began writing this post I came across the ‘Burn ISIS flag challenge<\/a>‘ (#BurnISISFlagChallenge), seemingly started by Moslems outraged by the actions of ISIS, it rolls the Ice Bucket Challenge into the bloodbath of Levant.\u00a0 It is unlikely to make much impact on ISIS but it could triangulate the public discussion, and in particular the visuals, and might just be the sort of thing to give potential recruits cause to think twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have seen more campaigner chatter about the ice-bucket challenge than about ISIS.\u00a0 Yet if there was a current communications phenomenon that is making serious waves, the social media reach of terror group ISIS is surely it. In Britain there … Continue reading <\/a> The most obvious thing is that ISIS has black clothes, masks, and black flags with white writing on them. \u00a0There are whole books<\/a> on the use of symbols by insurgent groups but more important for their power to recruit from afar (people from over 80 countries are said to be active with ISIS) is how the overall communications \u2018package\u2019 registers with potential sympathisers.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> The Nazis espoused futuristic technology and power which created now embarrassing links with companies such as Bayer, Siemens, IBM and VW but most notably, Hugo Boss.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0A www.cracked.com article \u2018Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us<\/a>\u2019, which has been viewed three million times, notes\u00a0 \u2018while today Boss uses black for slimming effects, in the SS uniforms it was used to command respect and fear in the populace\u2019.\u00a0 Nazi style was later picked up and played with by punks, incorporated into fetish fashion and has been parodied and copied countless times, from fashion to the Stormtroopers and \u00a0Imperial Officers of Star Wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n
\nHeld a general’s rank
\nWhen the blitzkrieg raged
\nAnd the bodies stank<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Third Reich (Triumph of the Will)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> IC wrote in 2007: \u2018Thirteen black vans, filled with teams of four, are driving an uprising across America\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n