Twitter wars: How the US is fighting Islamic State propaganda through internet memes

ISIS is known for using social media to spread propaganda and recruit fighters. The US State Department is taking on the militant group at its own game.

The Islamic State group's widespread use of social media to recruit fighters is well publicised, and this week prompted a Sydney Muslim community leader to call for Australia to immediately launch a social media campaign to halt the grooming of jihadists. But what might such a campaign look like?

The US State Department already runs three Twitter accounts - @DOTArabic, @DSDOTAR, and @DigitalOutreach - that fire off dozens of tweets a day in Arabic and often directly reply to people who espouse radical views.

The aim, it says, is to "counter terrorist propaganda and misinformation about the United States across a wide variety of interactive digital environments that had previously been ceded to extremists".

Many of the tweets poke fun at IS beliefs and use images that resemble internet memes to target the group's hypocrisy. Here are 12 such memes, with translations into English.

Al-Baghdadi's Fatwa: When you carry out the religious duty of jihad you have to wear a Rolex watch.

When the Islamic State group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made a rare public appearance last year during a sermon reportedly delivered in Mosul, observers took an interest in his choice of accessory.

While clad in traditional black robes and a turban, he also sported a bulky silver wristwatch - the kind of indulgence, some media outlets claimed, that would be at odds with the religious leader's conservative values.

While some commentators suggested it might be a Rolex or an Omega seamaster (RRP: $3,600), others thought it resembled an Al-Fajr model that marks the call to prayer and shows the direction of Mecca.

The State Department meme has photoshopped an image from the YouTube video of al-Baghdadi's address into the window of a Rolex store.

Al-Baghdadi (the boot). An ISIS suicide bomber (the ass).

When a Twitter user posted using the hashtag #International_campaign_in_support_of_IS, the State Department's social media team hit back directly.

"Isn't it hypocritical to call the West apostate and tweet on Twitter at the same time?"

The user responded: "I hate having to respond when an idiot addresses me with impunity" - a verse from a poem by a famous 8th-century Islamic jurist.

The government account responded again, saying: "How do you explain that al-Baghdadi sends the sons of others to die on his behalf?"

The State Department tweet included this image, depicting al-Baghdadi as the boot and an IS suicide bomber as the ass.

When will al-Baghdadi produce his new tape?

In this image - preceded by the words "When will al-Baghdadi produce his new tape?", a reference to the YouTube sermons of the IS leader - the text refers to al-Baghdadi as "The Prince of the Depraved".

Mosul University under IS - after (left), before (right).

When the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to Islamic State, the group took control of its main university, reportedly using its classrooms as sleeping quarters for fighters and looting its chemistry labs.

The group later released a video it claimed showed fighters destroying statues and artefacts housed at the city's main library, in what the UN called an act of "cultural cleansing".

Last month, the State Department celebrated the university's return to academic staff "after ISIS failed to impose its control over it".

One user replied: "The soldiers of IS are a thorn in your side."

There is a huge difference between Burj Khalifa and the Khalifa's burj.

A Twitter user tweeted that 500 Muslims had attended the burial of "martyr" Omar el-Hussein, the 22-year-old gunman who carried out two deadly attacks in Copenhagen last month.

The State Department responded that el-Hussein had "betrayed Denmark and its people after having enjoyed their freedoms".

"Burj" means tower in Arabic - Dubai's Burj Khalifa, depicted on the right, is the tallest man-made structure in the world - but the second reference in this sentence is to the "Caliph" - al-Baghdadi, depicted in the corner holding a bloody knife.

ISIS displaces thousands of Iraqis.

"Wherever ISIS lands, destruction and ruin will follow." Those are the words that precede the image in this State Department tweet.

The message points out thousands of people from al-Baghdadi's home town, Samarra, in central Iraq, have been killed or forced to flee following Islamic State's attempts to take the city from Iraqi forces.

ISIS kills the Sunnis, not defends them.

Some experts trace the roots of Islamic State back to an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam.

The group claims to follow the Sunni belief system but the US government accuses it of being indiscriminate in its slaughter.

The captions on the three smaller images, from left to right, say: "Apostate. Revivalist. Collaborator."

Raqqa residents can't find food while Qaeda princelings enjoy banquets.

A Twitter user wrote that if the soldiers of Islamic State were criminals, "as portrayed by the anti-Christ's media", thousands would be killed in Mosul, Raqqa and other cities controlled by IS.

This response from one of the State Department's Twitter accounts sought to highlight a key hypocrisy: as its people line up for much-needed food rations, the group's fighters have plenty to eat.

ISIS members rape women. Will their mothers be proud of them?

Amnesty International says the Islamic State group has abducted hundreds of women and girls from the tribal areas of the Yazidi minority, forcing them to convert to Islam and marry fighters.

In a report last year, the rights group said fighters - including some indentified as Australian - had taken women into their homes and forced them into sexual slavery.

Women sexually abused at the hands of the group were then subject to a brutal stigma, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera said, with some reportedly taking their own lives.

"They have suffered unbelievable atrocities," Ms Rovera said.

Al-Baghdadi quakes in his hole while ISIS perishes.

In this tweet, the State Department asks when "the Caliph" will address his "faithful tweeters", a reference to the 46,000 accounts on Twitter that the Brookings Institute says are used by IS supporters.

The official US account tweeted a short video using the service Vine; it depicts al-Baghdadi as some kind of hole-dwelling mammal, and was sent to dozens of Twitter users.

ISIS will perish. Kobane remains.

The battle for Kobane, a Kurdish-controlled town on the Syrian side of the Syria-Turkey border, became a focal point of the larger campaign against Islamic State.

The fear of a massacre of Kurdish civilians by Islamic State in Kobane forced the hand of the international community, whose airstrikes have taken out several IS positions.

While Turkey, which has long faced the threat of its own Kurdish separatist movement, was slow to help, it eventually let some of the hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing the town to enter its territory.

As of January, IS has been pushed out of Kobane, which prior to the Syrian civil war had a population of about 45,000.

Despotic and threatens to slaughter Muslims in Iraq and Syria

This tweet asks: If you are concerned about Muslims, what's your position on IS butchery in Mosul?

The flag rising up from the Middle East is that of Islamic State - with added text saying "al-Baghdadi's alleged state".





Topics: terrorism, social-media, internet-culture, information-and-communication, united-states, syrian-arab-republic, iraq