In search of a digital caliphate | Al Jazeera America
▻http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/in-search-of-a-digitalcaliphate.html
So far, the IS has succeeded in drawing the U.S. back into Iraq, reinforcing the narrative of Muslim oppression at the hands of a Western power. It has also baited the State Department into employing gruesome footage of crucifixions and killings in a propaganda video intended to dissuade potential recruits from joining.
Even if the IS is eventually eliminated, its organizational model is one that our current technology is increasingly pushing us toward: an archipelago of disconnected, interest-driven communes, many of them featuring privatized services. And even though the Islamic State’s stated intention is to destroy the West, it is the West’s technology that’s making its actions possible. As French sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote in “The Spirit of Terrorism,” we are looking at “a new form of action which plays the game and lays hold of the rules of the game, solely with the aim of disrupting it.”
In a final dismissal of the naive Arab Spring media chorus that Western-developed social media would usher in a final Westernization, the IS plucks from a palette of tools — Facebook, infographics, executions, whatever seems most effective. Ragged black banners and beheadings straight out of “Game of Thrones” nightmares compete with slick social media messages, corporate-style annual reports and targeted resource takeovers, including oil pipelines, natural gas fields, wheat silos and dams. As such, the IS is just as much a product of digital echo chambers as it is the result of medievalism.
#OEI