STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The Blowback Phenomena of ISIS Gory Propaganda!
  Nothing succeeds like success but nothing fails like too much of success. ISIS has been creating an ersatz caliphate through an effective propaganda machinery that employs Twitter, Facebook and other social media. They have been incredibly successful, as they have claimed, in recruiting new members from all over the Western and Arab world. However, ISIS never really learned the lessons of psychological warfare –that too much of a good thing can become quite a downer. Now ISIS, whomever this entity may really be, has entered the arena of propaganda warfare that is quite tricky and has to be managed very carefully.

In an excellent article (posted earlier) by Thomas Friedman, NYT, Dec.6, 2014, “How ISIS Drives Muslims From Islam”, he illustrates a number of very revealing cases of Muslims who are being turned off by the idea of a Nation-State enveloped in the artificial Islamic codes of “Sharia Law”.

Let me give you an example of what Friedman has insightfully recognized.

“.. on Twitter, a hashtag which translated as  ‘why we reject implementing Shariah’ has been used 5000 times in 24 hours. The conversation is mainly taking place in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”

I find this particular anti-ISIS phenomena quite exciting. It illustrates that no matter how much one wants to use social media for recruitment and/or propaganda, there are internal limits to its utility. Every piece of propaganda showing the horrors that are committed by one or another side has inherent constraints which limit the utility of that particular message and media. I call that a ‘titration problem’. No matter how effective ISIS thought it was in the initial phase of its psychological warfare, it had to go in only one constant direction—more of the same.

When the saturation point of absorption occurred among knowledgeable Muslim youths all over the world, ISIS started to become a parody of horror and grotesqueness. The message of instituting Sharia Law backfired in such a way that it literally mobilized an anti-Sharia campaign in the very areas of the Middle East where Sharia Law is most prominent: Saudi Arabia. If there were any one Muslim country which least represents the true value of Islam, it is Saudi Arabia, a desert Kingdom of dysfunctional, spoiled brats who call themselves Kings, Princes and Royalty. 

For me, Saudi Arabia has been like a mirage in the desert, a fading image of post British Colonialism earmarked by a completely distorted/warped interpretation of Islam in the form of the parochial and dangerous Wahhabi tribal traditions which are the guarantors of the Saud/Faisal family reign. Fortunately for the enlightened world, Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism is faltering, if not moribund. The youth of Saudi Arabia are too smart for this arcane type of spiritual/political leadership. They have been trained in our schools from Montana State University to the Eastern Ivy League Universities. Saudi women will no longer wear the dark clothes of submission to assure the men that they are subjugated to a false God and makeshift misogynic laws. Saudi women are demanding their rights to drive, teach, learn as their western contemporaries have done for centuries.

When I went to Saudi Arabia years ago, the inherent hypocrisy of Sharia Law was evident in the 747 airplane that was taking off from the runway. As soon as we reached a certain altitude, all the Saudi women immediately disrobed and assumed their acquired western oriented dress codes. Believe me, these women were exceedingly beautiful.

ISIS is eventually going to implode on itself. Military excursions for and against ISIS, will have a very limited purpose. ISIS lives basically on a cash flow which propagates a myth of a caliphate that can never exist in the 21st century because the internet will deconstruct every statement, picture or utterance of fake political entity based on thousands of years of wishful thinking. Even the great Kurdish fighter, Saladin, knew that one day Judeo-Christian beliefs would have to consort in a world with Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism. He knew very well what the lesser, more pretentious, ineffective pretenders of ISIS did not realize—the Caliphates of thousands of years ago are essentially buried in the texts of the Koran, if one knows how to read the Holy Book properly.

For those of you who are thinking of joining ISIS or any other outdated, childish fantasy, think again. It could turn out that ISIS may be dangerous to your health. I want to thank and encourage all those young Muslims around the world who understand that religion and statecraft are two separate entities. Western European Renaissance was an outgrowth of the once dynamic Arab Culture that gave western civilization coffee, calculus and world-wide commerce.

Now, it is time for the youth of Saudi Arabia and other countries where so-called religious despots rule--- to overthrow their respective illegitimate regimes and become the ‘terrorists’ that the American Founding Fathers had once been called.

Good luck !
  And thank you ISIS for completely failing in your mission of conversion and nation-state building. If I did not know better, I would have presumed that most of ISIS was composed of the most dysfunctional NEOCONS, Intelligence Operatives and Bush-ites who failed to establish a stable nation after they invaded Iraq. That is just a whimsical thought..or maybe not!