ISIS atrocity propaganda is designed to induce terror, fascination, and dissociation. The first two mental states are obvious. Terror is the normal response to seeing bodies desecrated with cruel intentions. Torture demonstrates that the worst things we can imagine can come true. Fascination occurs when we cannot look away. When we see the degradation of persons we cannot forget it. Numerous American movies, and now TV shows, show torture scenes in startling detail. All exploit these scenes for their shock value; very few exploit them for overt political ends. In contrast, ISIS propagandists do so with great skill. Among their Islamic models were earlier zealots, such as the followers of Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). According to Alastair Crooke,
Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity--a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated.
Similar to other proponents of theocratic totalitarianism, ISIS propagandists use terror as part of statecraft. Christian theocratic totalitarians did the same thing. From the 12th to the 16th century they destroyed alleged heretics, Jews, Muslims and others deemed to be dangerous to their brand of orthodoxy. Why they did this is complex; how they did it is not. The goal of atrocity is to induce terror in as many people as possible, to persuade those open to conformity and to threaten those who are not. In 16th century Europe this meant staging public executions, especially burnings, in elaborate rituals. Before burning the condemned prisoners, crowds of Christian penitents confessed their sins and heard denunciations of heresy. At the climax, when the flames consumed the victims, observers saw and smelled what hell would be like: shrieks of pain, humans roasted on fires, the degradation of bodies. The lesson was clear: if you reject God's rules (as laid down by divine instructions) your immortal soul will face the same judgment at your death. Reports of these religious executions flooded through Christendom.
The same impulses animated western political leaders to endorse public executions. The ritual of the death sentence in England underscored its religious origins. Addressing the prisoner by name, the judge invoked the name of God as he announced the prisoner's fate. Everyone hearing this invocation felt the solemnity of these words and recognized the power that the state assumed over the life of a now-harmless person.
Atrocities Are Lessons in the Flesh: Dissociation as Response
In his famous painting of the Last Judgment on a wall in the Sistine Chapel, done around 1536, Michelangelo drew upon his knowledge of Dante's poem, The Inferno (published in 1321) to portray the fate of persons damned by the Christian God. Today tourists glance at Michelangelo's paintings of humans being skinned alive, their genitals pierced, and so on without too much distress. Art historians may spend lifetimes studying these scenes without being disturbed by Michelangelo's images of hell and Satan. However, those who are emotionally convinced of their reality do not see this painting as a charming artifact. It exhibits the horrors that they will suffer if they believe and act the wrong way. The value of atrocity imagery for theocratic rulers is that people don't need to remember abstract doctrines about the consequences of wrong actions and beliefs. On the contrary, depictions of bloodshed and terror are lessons in the flesh. In psychological terms, this amounts to shaping a culture by inducing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the community, especially in children as noted in an earlier essay.
Atrocity images have an additional advantage. Once provoked by these lessons in blood and flesh, many people dissociate. Dissociation names a spectrum of psychological functioning. In normal moments, it appears briefly when one loses awareness of time and of one's immediate surroundings. One is caught up in a movie, or a book, or music and 'time flows' by without our knowing it. In abnormal moments, under intense anxiety, dissociation is deeper, longer lasting, and impairs ordinary thinking. At extremes people show amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, and confusion about their identity.
These four features are distressing, especially confusion about one's identity. In that awful state people cannot reason about themselves or about their world. They need rescue now. They are caught in a riptide of feelings. People crave a story that names the evil that causes their horror and names the heroes who will save them from it. Here, in its glory, returns the theocratic promise: working through his true believers, God, the all-powerful and all-merciful (to those who obey Him), will defeat evil and restore justice.
ISIS propagandists do not need to show endless murders. A research team at the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based think tank, examined more than 1,146 pieces of ISIS propaganda broadcast between July 17 and August 15, 2015. (Thanks to Lauren Steinberg for this citation.) They found that 2% displayed brutal (atrocity) images (a decrease from previous measures); Mercy (1%), Belonging (1%); Victimhood (7%); War (37%); and Utopia (53%). The latter proclaims that ISIS has established the only true Islamic ideal, a caliphate ruled by sharia law, according to the original vision. The so-called caliphate promises to create an Islamic state where the consequences of obedience and disobedience are made clear immediately.
These scenes of contentment and order are not an aberration. On the contrary, traditional Islamic teaching portrays a similar utopian ideal, an ideal shared with other utopian versions of God's rule. According to fundamentalist Islamic theology no one is above the Koran and other Muslim teachings. For that reason, Islam does not tolerate tyranny. That principle justifies the overthrow of dictators; it also justifies the destruction of apostates, persons who have abandoned Islam. Their destruction is mandated by the logic of religious perfectionism: having learned the truth and its infinite value for peace and justice, they became traitors whose infected minds must be destroyed. ISIS atrocity videos demonstrate the power of ISIS authorities to enforce religious laws and to exact punishments laid down in (some) Islamic teachings. By wrapping their utopian messages within the constant threat of brutality they demonstrate their version of faithfulness. How to confront this propaganda and how to mount an Islamic argument against ISIS are deep questions. It took the West hundreds of years to undo its theocratic impulses, Muslim nations face a similar task today.