Why ISIS propaganda also includes scenes of fishing and handicrafts

The World
ISIS propaganda videos showing hostage killings have been seen across the world.

ISIS is notorious for propaganda videos showing the brutal execution of hostages and the destruction of historic sites. But a new finds the group also uses more subtle ways to win over potential supporters. 

Alex Winter, of the British counter-extremism group the Quilliam Foundation, spent a month tracking every piece of propaganga released by the group during the Islamic month of Shawwal, from mid-July to mid-August. According to Winter, the sheer volume of output during this period was impressive.

He catalogued 1,146 "units" of propaganda: videos, theological treatises, radio bulletins, photo essays, magazine articles and online postings. Among the languages used were Arabic, English, German, Russian, French and Kurdish.  

Also surprising was the content. There were some depictions of violence, both against perceived enemies of the regime, as well as against civilians accused of crimes. But a much larger proportion of the propaganda showed no violence or conflict — 52 percent of all the propaganda instead focused on the group's idealized vision of civilian life.

According to Winter this is just as important for the regime's political aims.

"They want to show children playing in the street, they want to show families going out fishing together — although never women. There are also depictions of handicrafts, even a lot of wildlife," says Winter. "The propagandaists want to keep stressing that there may be this war going on, there may be air strikes, but life is going on as normal."

According to Winter, this reflects the regime's need to win over local populations in Syria and Iraq, who are exhausted by conflict and warefare. One film that Winter says is typical shows the celebrations that followed the end of Ramadan in ISIS controlled territory.

"You see children playing on fairground rides, foreign fighters hanging out with local fighters, smiling euphorically. There is a sense that it is not like anything else on earth. They are trying to make it seem like it is unimaginably happy."

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