NOT too long ago, some students from an exclusive girls’ school here in the city were discouraged from attending their graduation ceremonies. Reason: Postings in their Facebook account showed them in what the school deemed unacceptable behavior.
Some of the girls’ parents sued the school for violation of the students’ privacy. But the Supreme Court believed otherwise and junked the case.
Those Facebook-related news grabbed our attention from 2012-2014.
Today, Facebook and other platforms like Twitter and WhatsApp are under closer scrutiny for more serious and far-reaching reasons.
ISIS, the radical Sunni group controlling portions of Iraq and Syria, and other extremist groups use these same platforms to recruit to their cause.
Western governments, particularly, are aligning their efforts to combating the recruitment drive. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told CNN, “We are seeing 90,000 tweets a day that we’re combating.”
The counter-terrorism drive includes knowing who have so far been vulnerable and why. So far, an estimated 20,000 foreigners from 90 countries, and 3,400 fighters from Western states have flocked to fight for ISIS.
So says Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
These are estimates, he admits, but the biggest representations come from the U.S.,Canada, France, U.K., and Australia.
Through trying to stay under the radar, they reveal themselves by their flight details. Some head for Istanbul, others for Turkey.
Eventually, they reach Syria, as is true for one Canadian whose tweets urged support for the terror group. After some hiatus, her tweets started coming in from Syria. Where lies the drawing power of ISIS on these young men and women, some still teenagers?
While the beheading of foreign nationals like U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff set off fury on social media, it was ironically after that when dozens of young men from London and Minnesota reportedly left their homes to join ISIS. We wish this was simply akin to why moths approach artificial lights and eventually get burned.
John Horgan, a psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, is among the few who study the minds of terrorists. He says ISIS appears as “an equal opportunity organization. It has everything from the sadistic psychopath to the humanitarian to the idealistic driven.”
Young women are recruited on assurances of a good life as ISIS fighters’ wives. Recruitment spiels from a recruit from Scotland include a reward for allegiance such as gifts from Allah, including “a house with free electricity and water, and no rent.” Young men need to “belong to something special,” to find something meaningful for their life, thrill, or redemption.
Plus, analysts say, the need to escape the frustration with the West. The 911 attack, the seeming powerlessness of the U.S. and allied nations versus Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin; the youth saw the West roll over and take it, again and again.
This, plus the ISIS becoming “so adept at social media that they are reaching out to disaffected individuals on a global scale.”
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)