It’s clear that the Islamic State is incredibly successful using the internet and social media to gain recruits. The New York Times explains exactly how it tried to recruit one young American woman: ISIS and the Lonely Young American.
Even though the Islamic State’s ideology is explicitly at odds with the West, the group is making a relentless effort to recruit Westerners into its ranks, eager to exploit them for their outsize propaganda value. Through January this year, at least 100 Americans were thought to have traveled to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, among nearly 4,000 Westerners who had done so.
The reach of the Islamic State’s recruiting effort has been multiplied by an enormous cadre of operators on social media. The terrorist group itself maintains a 24-hour online operation, and its effectiveness is vastly extended by larger rings of sympathetic volunteers and fans who pass on its messages and viewpoint, reeling in potential recruits, analysts say.
Alex’s online circle — involving several dozen accounts, some operated by people who directly identified themselves as members of the Islamic State or whom terrorism analysts believe to be directly linked to the group — collectively spent thousands of hours engaging her over more than six months. They sent her money and plied her with gifts of chocolate. They indulged her curiosity and calmed her apprehensions as they ushered her toward the hard-line theological concepts that ISIS is built on.
In this case the girl converted to Islam, but the family intervened before she left to join IS. She hasn’t completely cut off conversing with her IS “friends” though. The attraction is just too powerful.
We do live in interesting times.
June 28, 2015
I have been thinking about this for an hour now as I move about the house. I think about this girl’s recruitment. We can compare or contrast this with what some might deem the recruitment of Dylann Roof. In all honesty, after thinking about this and how often it might be happening, I just want retreat for a while back to my version of a fetal position, perhaps listening to Scott McKenzie singing, “If you’re going to San Francisco/ Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” and remembering when it seemed that the “gentle people” would some day prevail. However, as long as there are sad and lonely people, there will be those vulnerable to such recruitment, and that I must acknowledge, too. It’s easy to see this girl as sad and lonely and vulnerable: not so easy to see Dylann Roof that way. Should we try to, though, or is that fruitless and perhaps deluded? In The End of Your Life Book Club, in a section discussing Charles Taylor, I read, “If you believe in good, you also believe in evil, pure evil.” I hadn’t realized then that I’d gotten to be 65, and I didn’t believe in pure evil. I’m still struggling with that one. One of the benefits of having an auto-immune disease that sidelines you from an active life is that you have plenty of time to contemplate and reexamine your life and beliefs.
I recently listened to The End of Your Life Book Club, audible version. I don’t remember that part, and the trouble with audible versions, it’s hard to look things up. Could you tell me a bit more?
I don’t think in terms of good and evil so much. I try to live by my own values, and when I get off the path try to figure out why. I don’t think humans are divorced from nature even though we think abstractly, for “good” as well as “bad”. So why have we taken over the world? If everyone was completely peace loving, would we have been wiped out? It’s a fascinating subject.
I would rather not comment here CM. My views on the subject are well known to you and I think that I will leave it at that.
The Islamic State has mastered the art of seduction, hasn’t it? Would you call successful seduction brainwashing?
i find rampant and cunning fundamentalism in all areas rather frightening and at the least upsetting. so i tend to not even read about such as she.
it’s weak of me. but it keeps my crazy ‘sensitivity’ hypertension in check.
sad for her parents.
but to me a good parent knows when their child is over the top lonely and isolated. or i would HOPE they would know. and help her wayyy before the extremists get to her. but in today’s technological world… they can sneak in without the parents knowledge i’m sure.
sad all the way around.
That’s what I was trying to say, tammy j, although you said it more succinctly and with less risk of misinterpretation.
tammy,
I was worried about you when I wrote this post, but the changes going on in the world are just too fascinating for me not to contemplate and to write about occasionally. Would you like me to send you a warning not to read the downers? Your avoiding these topics makes good sense.
That said, the girl’s parents were long gone. No mention of the father in the article, but the mother lost custody of Alex when the baby was 11 months old — the mother was a drug addict — and the grandparents raised Alex and other grandchildren. The grandparents live out in the country, are devout Christians, etc. Part of Alex’s vulnerability comes from her having fetal alcohol syndrome, so the grandmother is to be praised, I think, for eventually realizing what was going on and trying to do something. The grandparents raised 8 children and grandchildren, and the grandmother says the others “spread their wings and flew,” but Alex is like a “lost child”. The grandmother is 68 years old and she and her husband like the quiet, simple life. Alex is 23 and bored and lonely but apparently is not capable of going off and creating a life that suits her better. I’m just glad I’m not the grandmother.
We do indeed.
Are people in Australia concerned about the Islamic State? Are they concerned about China, or do they think the rise of China is a good thing for them?
There is no need to seduce. The underlying and basic instinct of all of them is to see ISIS succeed and the establishment of the Caliphate which will spearhead globalisation of Islam.
That’s why they’re trying to seduce Western youngsters.
seduce:
attract (someone) to a belief or into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy.
“they should not be seduced into thinking that their success ruled out the possibility of a relapse”
synonyms: attract, allure, lure, tempt, entice, beguile, inveigle, maneuver
“she was seduced by the smell of coffee”
It’s terrifying.
The evil out there.
How they can reach out and like a tumor
take over the mind of someone who is searching for someone,
something, anything to belong to.
To have a passion and and a purpose to their life.
It’s terrifying how they plant that seed of hate
and feed it.
I feel utterly helpless.
I prefer to keep my head in the sand
because I feel powerless.
There’s nothing wrong with hiding your head in the sand. It just doesn’t appeal to me.
Jean,
The portion of The End of Your Life Book Club that I referenced is found in the chapter “My Father’s Tears.” Will and Mary Anne were discussing Big Machine by Lavalle, a book I haven’t read. Their discussion had led Mary Anne to comment that she thought that people really do want to help each other, and people do deserve help in the form of second chances and perhaps even, for most people, “an endless number of chances.” Will wanted her to clarify, and she agreed with his “Not everyone?” question as follows:
“Of course, not everyone,” Mom said. “When I think back to Liberia and the horrific way Charles Taylor terrorized his country, and what he did to Sierra Leone, and the millions of lives he destroyed, and the cruelty and savagery–well, he’s pure evil. He will never deserve another chance. If you believe in good, you also believe in evil, pure evil.”
Thanks!