April 2, 2016 • 52 mins
The advent of social media technology has made global communication easier than ever before - yet this innovation creates opportunities for evil as well as good. Learn how ISIS is using social media to manipulate, groom and ultimately recruit people across the planet.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
(00:21):
is nol Uh, and Ben you are you, and hopefully
this message finds you amid grand adventure. If not too bad,
if so wonderful. Either way, this is stuff they don't
want you to know. Surely adventure is on the horizon. Yes,
adventure should always be on the horizon. We live in
(00:42):
what some ancient scholars we call interesting times, which is
not necessarily a compliment ladies and gentlemen. As you know,
on this show, we look into things that are not uh,
not so often reported in mainstream me you when we
look at obscure acts of history, strange things about the future,
(01:05):
the occult, the paranormal, the corrupt, and this means that
we travel through some dark places. Today, we are returning
to a dark place. This is something that may be
a bit controversial. We are going to cover it to
the best of our ability in the most objective way possible,
(01:27):
and we want to hear from you so as we
dive into this rabbit hole. As you're listening, you have
the opportunity and if you have some feedback, we'd like
to hear it. You can write to us directly on
Facebook and Twitter where we are conspiracy stuff. So with
that being said, that's the best I could do for disclaimer. Gents,
what do you think that's right? This week we are
(01:48):
talking about terrorism, in particular a group known as the
Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL or dioecious there are
there are numerous other names as well. It's a group
that especially here in the West. I mean you could
argue that they are like the face of terrorism cer yes,
(02:10):
then the new face, the face that most people in
the West would associate with terrorism. Right that when piece
people hear the word terrorism and their first thoughts will
not be something like, uh, the clan the KKK, it
won't be something like the I ra A, won't even
(02:32):
maybe be al Qaeda anymore, which is saying a lot.
It's just saying a lot. It will be ISIS. And
what we are going to look at today is is
the concept of specifically ISIS or ISIL or DIETSH recruitment tactics.
In the US, we've gone into some related things before.
(02:56):
But today we're going to look at this specific example.
And as we do that, we need to first take
a look at terrorism. Right, what is terrorism? Since the
events of September eleven, two thousand one, the concept of
terrorism garnered national and lasting attention in the mind of
the American public. But we know, of course, just look
(03:17):
at some of the other groups we named, We know
that terrorism as a concept, terroristic tactics, and such have
existed much much longer. Right, Yeah, that's right. I mean
even in the US, I think terrorism was in the
in the zeitgeist, in the public knowledge or understanding back
(03:37):
from the seventies. Back. I mean, if you look at
popular movies that were coming out around that time, the
bad guy a lot of times was a Middle Eastern
quote terrorists. Yeah, and it's often been said throughout history
that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. We
know that can sound tremendously controversial, right, the idea that
(04:02):
one person's absolute utter villain is somebody else's hero, right.
You know, for instance, when the US was in the
midst of the Revolutionary War, the people in the US
who were fighting to uh fighting for independence from from
(04:23):
Europe from England. They were to the average English citizen terrorists.
The tactics of fighting from the woods or something. Yeah,
not wearing uniforms, all these kind of things that we're
going to get into, they were full on terrorists to them.
And it's true that to a degree. The categorization of terrorists,
(04:46):
if you can hear my air quotes their folks, depends
on the people you ask, Like, for example, this is
just an anecdote. I'm just making this up. This is
not a real thing. I can't emphasize that enough, but
I tried. Uh. For instance, a let's mad there is
a person living in a war torn country that's been
victimized by numerous conflicts. Right, Let's say Afghanistan. Right, someone
(05:07):
who has been alive through the proxy wars of the seventies,
who has lived through the eighties and nineties and is
alive now in Afghanistan. A person living in that kind
of country has probably seen multiple foreign military forces, multiple
local warlords come and go, terrorist organizations, counter terrorism tactics,
(05:31):
and eventually you might say, well, these are all to me,
these are all still threats. These are all still equal threats.
So this definition slides. This definition has fuzzy lines. There's
not really Um, you would be hard pressed to find
(05:53):
a an organization that the entire rest of the world
said that is a terrorist organization. When I see entire
rest of the world, of course, I'm not talking about
the United Nations labeling an organization's terrorist. I'm saying the
entire population of actual people. ISIS is one of the
closest of course, because you know, Muslims around the world
(06:17):
condemn the actions of ISAIS, and ISIS is the actions
that ISAIS is taking are not those that are are
not things that the average practicing Muslim or the vast
majority of Muslims would ever condone. It's also the kind
of thing where you know, in your original example about
freedom fighters, UM, in like the American Revolution for example, UM,
(06:41):
they were working towards an end of achieving freedom, and
they were maybe like attacking certain you know, points that
would have benefited them as a group. But with ISIS,
it is a lot more directly targeted attacks at civilians
and you know, really way aging that kind of social
media war, using you know, beheading videos and things like that.
(07:05):
They're just showing this kind of lack of rules of engagement.
You know, it's just kind of like anything is fair game.
And also, yeah, the ultimate aim of isis IS has
been stated numerous times, and it is to establish a
new caliphate, right, and this means that the goal would
be to create a state and to expand that state
(07:29):
eventually across the world. You know, we've even seen al
Qaeda al Qaeda uh like disavow or condemn the actions
of ISIS, which you know, Alkaida, another terrorist group, the
terrorist group for a while there, they've they publicly, at
least allegedly came out and said no, this we we
(07:51):
we think this is awful. And there's yeah, and there's
a tangled web here. There are tangled roots and there's
a tangled web. Even if the outward depth nisition might
sound fuzzy, terrorists have several tactics that in theory differentiate
them from state level forces. So in the books, again
(08:11):
in theory, a state level force has rules of engagement.
As you said, no, they do not attack civilians. They're
clearly identifiable via uniforms. They adhere to the Geneva Conventions
for captured combatants. They adhere to the rules of war uh.
And of course, folks, unfortunately it goes without saying but
(08:35):
I will say it throughout history and be very hard
pressed to find any state level military that has always
adhered to those rules. And that goes to something else,
which might be a separate topic that we've touched upon
with specific examples in earlier podcasts of state sponsored terrorism
(08:57):
CIA backed coups in South America for instance, right or
false flag attacks, or for instance, the the proxy militias
used by different countries right like um his Law sponsored
by Iran, or something which is exactly Sadly, the reality
(09:19):
of proxy wars has been long established, the reality of
using proxies to avoid uh to avoid the consequences of
an unsuccessful action, and the concept of terrorism is itself
first appears in at least in the specific sense of
(09:39):
government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France, and
it came from the French uh terrism from the Latin.
In English it appears a few years later, three years
later in reference to the Irish rebellion. But along the
way to the modern age there were other competing terms.
(10:00):
Mass destruction terrorism was called dynamitism, and during World War One,
Britain used the term frightfulness, which came from German and
and then a deliberate policy of terrorizing enemy noncombatants. Before
we go on, guys, I want to get a bit
of a rant out of the way, and this is
(10:22):
as I have to say when we say this, this
is my opinion. Okay, this is not This does not
reflect the opinion of our show, the opinion of House
of Works, anyone else but me. I think another thing
that's dangerous about terrorism as a concept, especially in the
West and in other countries as well, is that it
(10:43):
has become a grand boogeyman used to force multiple attacks
on people's personal freedom and personal liberty. And you if
you agree, if you disagree, for instance, with warrantless surveillance,
than the implication is that you directly support terrorism. Terrorism
has become the the monster under the bed, hiding in
(11:07):
the closet of the American discourse. And this is a
very dangerous thing in US culture. What we see often
is that people the zeitgeist, as you said, Matt Uh,
becomes enamored of certain words. Remember in the nineties everything
was digital then for like even things that like a
digital toaster, there's no sense and then it doesn't even
(11:28):
have a digital clock on it. And then things were organic, right,
and then national security has become another another great boogeyman. Right. Yeah,
I was trying to decide if their thought terminating cliches,
but I don't know that they're that far. It's close almost,
because you can throw those words into a sentence and
(11:51):
kind of yeah, maybe it is because you can kind
of shut somebody's brain off if if you throw around
especially terrorism and national security in the same sentence. Right
these This is not in any way to say that uh,
terrorism is exaggerated in terms of the global context and
the damage it does. This is instead to say that
(12:14):
there are opportunistic forces and governments across the world who
are using this as uh as a window, as a
foot in the door to pass draconian laws that ordinarily
never would have been allowed by a rational, non frightened public.
(12:36):
And and so it is true that these things, these
things are real, There are these active i'll say, act
like monsters, people doing monstrous things. And then we can
never forget, however, that the people at the top of
various regimes and governments and whatnot are actively using this
(13:02):
as a way to get your private information, to get
your phone records, to protect predict excuse me your behavior.
With all that being said, I'm going to get off
the soapbox here because that is not the real point
of today's podcast. We're where is the point? I don't know,
(13:22):
I think what do you think? Though? I think they're
sort of connected for sure, But let's get into what
really what is isis, what is isis and what is
isis versus ISSOL in terms of the name. Yeah, okay,
let's see, so ISIS and ISISL. Oddly enough, the same thing.
ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
(13:45):
and that's because the territory that this this organization has
controlled has largely straddled the border between Syria and Iraq.
But EISL, on the other hand, yeah, Eiel, Eisol is
talking about the Levant, which is the it's kind of
an historic name given to this entire region. Uh. That's
(14:06):
east of the Mediterranean from Egypt. So think about where
Egypt is on the edge of Africa. They're go east
and once you get to Iran and Turkey, that's the Levant.
Wasn't there a thing that where Obama referred to them
specifically as one or the other because one legitimizes them
more than the other. Like, does that ring a bell?
(14:27):
Because I think yeah, the US, the US administration during
the rise of ISIS used the term ISIL because they're
their official party line is that this is done to
emphasize the expansionist goals of the of the terrorists writer region. Yeah. However, again,
(14:48):
if that were the case, establishing what is ultimately meant
to be a global caliphate when necessarily extend beyond the levant,
but right now, you know, the chances of that happening
are thankfully incontestimally small. Uh. The pretty much everyone else, though,
(15:10):
uses ISIS or one other thing. Yeah. This term the
diet ish has also gained some popularity and has been
used as a way of challenging the legitimacy of the group. Right,
this dietsh term comes from Arabic, and it's an acronym
formed from the group's previous name, which is I'm going
(15:30):
to butcher this, I warn you in advanced folks al
dlawa al Islamia phil rail sham. And though it doesn't
necessarily mean anything in Arabic, it sounds familiar to an
Arabic verb that means to tread underfoot, to crush something
or to trample. So that is the that's that's the
(15:52):
solution of the name. At this point, folks are probably wondering, Hey,
Matt noel Ben, are you going to talk a little
bit about the history of Isais, the formation of it,
how did it become so successful? What if any role
did intelligence agencies and other state organizations play? Right shout
(16:13):
out to the House of sod as always. We've done
a couple of earlier videos on ISAIS that you that
you may enjoy if you're well. Enjoys not the right
word that may answer some of those questions, and one
of the one of the first ones was how did
Isais become so wealthy? Which was a collaboration we had
with our friends at all time conspiracies, yes, and that
(16:34):
one we I mean kind of obviously from the title.
We look at the different ways in which Isis got
its money. And one of the big things that was
pointed to as to how they got that first that
first big bank roll to begin, you know, building an
army and getting just huge caches of weapons and explosives,
(16:57):
and it was the I believe it was the Mole Bank.
There was a heist that allegedly occurred now from differing sources.
You'll also hear that that heist never occurred actually from
some official sources, which is fascinating. Yeah, they allegedly looted
five billion Iraqi dinars, the equivalent of four hundred twenty
(17:19):
nine million at the time. But but it's did they, yeah,
exactly or did they? And that kind of called into question, well,
how are they getting their money if this perhaps didn't occur,
which has led to numerous questions about who funds this group?
And we try to answer a couple of those in
that video. I think we also talked about there's one
called who who does isis work for looking at perhaps
(17:42):
there are larger goals that isis is you know, trying
to achieve or that another group is trying to achieve
through ISIS. That was an interesting delve. I would recommend
that video. The there's a there's another part here where
we also talked about in our third video, money Blood
and God, who funds Terrorism? Which is a juicy title.
(18:08):
It's a juicy title, and there's some juicy stuff in there. Yeah,
unpleasant stuff as well. Yeah, when when I learned about
some of the funding that comes from countries that are
close allies with the United States, specifically Saudi Arabia, that
I just kind of freaked me out a little bit.
And and to be to be clear, one thing that
(18:29):
I would like to I would like to emphasize when
we talk about intelligence agencies, when we talk about government
officials funding the funding the operations of terrorist groups, whether
in the Middle East, whether in Central Asia, Southeast Asia,
South and Central America, or even the US, this doesn't
(18:52):
always mean that the entire organization condoned it. It could
just be one person acting or a fact action of
people acting in that regard. So let's do a little
bit of history of ISIS to get to their current state.
And this is from our earlier video that we had mentioned.
(19:12):
So in two thousand and fourteen, that's when we really
see the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, better known
as ISIS, spread across the Middle East. But according to
the official sources, it begins in the nineties when a
Jordanian named Abou Mussab al Zarkawi returned home from attempting
to fight the U. S s R. In Afghanistan. And
that was right after he got out of prison. He
(19:34):
was in prison for a while. I think that, and
that was after Yeah, you said Afghanistan, right, he was
gonna fight the uss R and joined that fight. But
I think when he got there it was pretty much over,
um m hmm. And when he got home, I guess
he had kind of picked up some ideas from from
(19:54):
people that he was hanging out with, and I think
he had weapons and explosives in his house. And he
got arrested for six years and he met more people, right, yeah,
And eventually he returned to set up a camp for
terrorists or again, depending on which side of the war
you were on, resistance fighters. In nine he met O
b l Osama bin Laden, but he refused to join
(20:17):
al Qaeda. In two thousand one he fled a rock
and then he eventually constructed The predecessor to the Islamic State,
Al Zarkawi, died in two thousand six, and as of
two thousand and fourteen, uh IT was the organization known
as ISIS was led by Abu Bakir al Baghdadi, who
declared himself Caliph or the calipher ruler of the self
(20:41):
declared Islamic State. So this story, this official story, seems plausible.
Histories full of groups have become increasingly violent as they
become increasingly powerful, But there are no shortage of conspiracy
theories regarding ISIS right now. In the current state of Isaza,
the conflict continues. There's pretty compelling evidence that ISAIS has
(21:05):
been selling oil to people in Turkey with knowledge of
the Turkish government. There's also been some pretty um damning
evidence that different factions of other Middle Eastern countries are
supporting spread of ISIS even while officially opposing it. And
of course groups that were UH that were and are
(21:27):
still considered terrorists by other countries are not friendly towards ISAIS,
and this has become a land of strange bedfellows, you know,
with the the current proxy war in Syria between Iran, Russia,
and the US has involved multiple entities that otherwise would
(21:48):
have been at war with one another, and currently, as
we record this, their negotiations for truces in the Syrian conflict. However,
it maybe UH, it may be that ISIS, while thriving
in this chaos, will meet an end or a dissolution
(22:12):
or fragmenting, either due to unsustainable internal situations or due
to the great powers banding together to crush it. Because
for a time. If you look at the strategy, there
were opportunistic things. There were um there were governments who
were using their forces to attack is this on one
side and drive it towards something else where they wanted
(22:35):
a region to stabilize. It seems like the fragmentation is
likely to occur. The The only difference I see with
this group is their prowess to use online sources. I
was about to say, to stay connected no matter where
they are located globally, I mean, and not only are
they using the online sources like Facebook, etcetera. To recruit,
(22:59):
they're also using it to disseminate you know, their messages.
For example, like I saw a video the other day
that had um it was after the terror attacks in Brussels,
and it had a lot of footage of all of
the explosions that there was footage available, and had Donald
Trump quotes talking about how Brussels used to be a
(23:20):
beautiful place and essentially implying that before all the Muslims
came in and made it you know, terrible or whatever.
And so they're basically using stuff from the news, from
current events and then disseminating it through you know, electronic
channels and I mean if you think about, you know,
the compared to the way al Qaeda would do things
like that. I mean they would like distribute like a
(23:40):
blurry VHS tape of you know, of Osama bin Laden
talking it was if it wasn't at all, and just
send it to like news outlets. So I mean this
is definitely a next generation. Oh yeah, the changing technology.
They're certainly making use of it. That's a good point.
Here's where it gets crazy today we were talking about
(24:01):
the something that is not a conspiracy theory, and it
is a conspiracy fact that ISAIS is recruiting in the
US or attempting to recruit in the US, and not
just of course in the US, but also in Europe.
We have read stories of red stories of European often teenagers,
(24:23):
late teens, being recruited, sometimes honestly but often deceptively to
travel to uh Syria to join ISIS. And depending on
a number of things, your nationality, your age, frightening lee enough,
(24:44):
your gender, and you're I don't know how to see
this your it's not your social status, it's socio economic background.
It's not that either, it is just your um it's
a there's a sense of loneliness that has preyed upon
by this group, a sense of isolation. Well, let's let's
(25:07):
talk about some of the specific cases of ISIS recruitment
in the US. So we're gonna grab some numbers from
twenty fifteen UH that were put out by the New
York Times, and so as of October of right as
we get in the end of that year, law enforcement
inside the United States knew of two hundred and fifty
(25:30):
Americans who had either gone to or we're thinking about
going to Syria and or Iraq to join up with
these ISIS fighters. Right and right now, there are I think,
or at least as of that time October, there were
nine hundred active investigations into ISIS sympathizers from all of
(25:52):
the fifty United States. So prosecutors have actually charged seventy
one people since March various degrees of involvement in ISIS
activities in the US um the Some of these charges
include attempting to support terrorist organizations, plotting deadly attacks on
US soil, um things of that nature. Fifty six of
(26:13):
these arrests actually took place in um and here are
some stats that came from the George Washington University Program
on Extremism analyzing seventy one of these arrests. So people
involved in the arrest on average were aged six percent,
mail traveled or had attempted to travel to Iraq or
(26:35):
Syria at some pointent were involved in plots to actually
carry out these kinds of attacks in the US. American
citizens converts to Islam and UM twenty one states UM
were involved in these arrests, and the largest number took
place in New York and Minnesota and finally involved three
(26:57):
Americans who actually died in the u US due to
ISIS related violence. And and something to point out here,
all of these people that are mentioned, they come from
various different backgrounds from socioeconomic status is they it's very
wide and varied. The people who end up being recruited
(27:17):
or are attempted to be a recruited and this is
where we arrive at the primary the primary medium or
mode of recruitment, which would be again, as you said,
social media, Twitter, Instagram, those are cited. Uh, there's there
are several specific cases, but let's let's look into one.
(27:40):
Let's look in this story of a twenty three year
old American woman named Alex and the story comes to
us from the New York Times. There's a great article
you can read if you want to. There's even a
short video piece you can watch about this. Alex is a,
as you said, Ben, a young woman. She describes herself
(28:01):
as lonely. She was a babysitter and a Sunday school teacher.
Didn't do much. She's in a very rural part of
Washington State and her day to day life is pretty boring,
right at least, this is how she describes it, and
she doesn't have many friends. She's living with her grandparents. Now.
After the video of James Foley, Uh, he was a journalist.
(28:23):
This was in August, on August nineteen, he was It
was a video of him being beheaded by isis alex
our protagonist here? She she went on Twitter. She she
wanted to find out why the heck A group would
do something so horrendous and terrible, and she says, quote
(28:43):
I was looking for people who agreed with what they
were doing so that I could understand why they were
doing it. It was actually really easy to find them
unquote chilling. And that's where she met a man from
England's calling himself Faisal most stop again telling her about
Islam and the Islamic state. As she began speaking with
(29:06):
him and others other sympathizers over the internet, Twitter, email, Skype,
she was persuaded. She took a vow on Twitter, she
converted to Islam. And now here's where he gets crazy
in the context of this story, where Alex probably I
don't know her, oh feelings should have gone off. I
guess should have put up some red flags maybe there, Yeah, exactly. Uh,
(29:28):
And I'm just gonna read another quote from the article
quote the only Muslims she knew were those she had
met online, and Faisel encouraged her to keep it that way,
arguing that Muslims are persecuted in the US, which is
to a degree true absolutely, but oh yeah, and she
could be labeled a terrorist. That he warned her of that,
(29:49):
and for now it was best for her to keep
this whole conversation, or all of these conversations that she's
having a secret, even from her grandparents who she's living with. Well,
I mean they're attempting to they're radicalizing her. I mean
they want they don't they don't want her to be exposed.
She's a really good get at this point. I mean,
she's someone that's isolated and is I assume white, right, yes,
(30:11):
and well she's impressionable impressionable, but also I just mean
in terms of like, they don't want her to all
of a sudden change her behavior and start hanging out
with a different group of people and raise any alarms
with any kind of law enforcement because they want to
be able to use her in some way. And here's
where it kind of gets into the tactics of this group.
The the circle of people that Alex is speaking with.
(30:34):
They are there are several dozen accounts operated by several
people who either directly like say that they are members
of the Islamic State or who are at least in
some way sympathizers with the group. Uh. They these people
collectively spent thousands year that thousands of hours engaging Alex
(30:57):
for over six months where they're just constantly in communication
the same thing. At the beginning. It's called a love bomb. Yes, oh,
we can get into the cult aspect, ben, but yeah,
they they sent her things through the mail. This Fisal
guy is in England, remember, so it's not that difficult
to send something. I mean, it takes a while, but
(31:18):
they were sending her prayer shawls and I believe Matt's
and chocolate. Apparently one of the biggest things they sent
her was chocolate, just tons and tons of chocolate. And
as they're doing all of this, they're they're indulging her curiosity,
they're calming her down when she's having you know, when
she's thinking maybe this isn't a good idea. They're just
(31:40):
being her friend right there. They're being this lonely isolated
girl's friend. And especially as they are starting to push
her towards some of the some of the let's say
more difficult to grasp concepts behind isis some of the
more violent parts of it, and something that would you
couldn't really just flip a switch and just be like, oh,
(32:02):
okay with this now, I'm kind of have to like
really really ease someone into it. And then before you
know it, as Ben was saying, with some of the
cults indoctrination kind of tactics, before you know what, you're
doing things you never ever ever would have been considered doing.
It's the foot in the door tactic used by sales
folks as well. Right, there's so much support generate a
(32:23):
positive psychological association with a certain idea, concept or experiment.
One thing that all human beings have in common is
that we are frighteningly easy to mislead. So this this story,
do we have the ending? Well? The ending is that
her grandmother found out several times throughout the course of
(32:45):
their communications that she was doing this. And I feel
like I have to say this. Uh. It's mentioned in
the article. In the video, Alex suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome,
and she is very much from a developmental perspective, younger
than three um and perhaps that is one of the
(33:08):
reasons that she seems to be more impressionable. And the
grandmother in particulars tries to guard her from interactions online
and this one in particular, it was scaring her because
she didn't really understand the scope or the depth of
what was happening. But in the documentary, or at least
the short piece on the New York Times, they show
(33:31):
the grandmother actually speaking with Faisal and telling them leave
my granddaughter alone. And the last thing you see in
the video is oh, and they resumed communication following the
publication of this. So who knows what's happening with Alex?
What's going on at the end of the story. I mean,
at least she was willing to tell her story when
(33:53):
this is not her real name, by the way, and
let's also let's remember that this is just one example
from one country. It is tempting to use broad brush
strokes when describing why someone would run off to join
this group. There's it's there is definitely a sense of isolation.
(34:14):
There's also a sense of anger over the way that
non Muslim countries are treating UH people of the Islamic faith.
And you know it is it is UH naive at
best to say that UH to say that Muslims are
not being persecuted for their religion, even even in countries
(34:38):
that claim to have UH such a an emphasis on
religious freedom. However, with that being said, with the idea
that there are complex, complicated motivations for this, and that
there are active UH conspiracies, because let's just remember, the
definition of a conspiracy is people working together in secret
towards a common goal. Under the definition, then there are
(35:01):
conspiracies to recruit people into this organization. They're happening now
as you listen to this broadcast, depending on when you're
listening to it. UH. The The other thing, and this
is This is a serious thing, is very sensitive. I
earlier mentioned gender mattering. Don't want to be alarmist about this,
(35:23):
but this is a fact. For people who are women
being you know, let's say, late teens, early twenties, who
are being um mis old and misled by recruiters working
on behalf of Isai's they're often convinced or persuaded to
(35:46):
travel to a part of Iraq or Syria that is
under Eyes's control with the idea that they will be
performing humanitarian aid in the in the Holy War, that
they will be uh you know, helping to save the
lives of these fighters. And at least three cases that
(36:08):
we know of they're proven and many more I'm just
counting the ones I was checking into an offer research.
What they end up being compelled to do is to
serve a essentially as prostitutes under what is known as
uh jahadi marriage. And that is because the Islamic state
(36:31):
has issued a fatwa, a religious decree, saying that this
is a righteous thing for women to do. Yeah. Wow.
In Alex's case, she was told that she would be
marrying a forty year old balding man. That was all that,
That was all the information that she got from Faisel,
But he was a a good Muslim, is what she said.
(36:55):
And so this this concept of let's see the Islamic state.
I think the report comes in twent said that Muslim
women giving themselves sexually to jahadi's is permissible because it
allows them to continue jahad to empower Islam. And however,
(37:18):
however controversial and alarmists and strangest must sound, I have
to emphasize again, this is not the belief of UM.
This is not the belief of the vast majority of
this group. So the error and critical thinking that people
can make all too easily is to to equate one
(37:42):
extremist faction with every other single practice star of that faith.
For instance, you know they're very violent, very strange, prejudiced
and twisted. UH sects of religious groups claim mean that
they are Christian, right or claiming or claiming that they
(38:05):
adhere to UM some some obscure branch of Judaism or
Hinduism or Buddhism, right. But we know that if you
are a Christian, it does not automatically make you a
member of the Westboro Baptist Church, hopefully, which pales in comparison,
(38:27):
of course, to isis uh. But the what I'm pointing
out here is that it is so easy for us,
so easy, especially given the way things are reported to
believe that one example or one group means an entire
group is rotten and this this is not the case.
But what is the case is that in Europe, in
(38:51):
the US, in other Muslim majority countries around the clock,
there are there are people who are being convinced to
join up with organization, with this organization, sometimes under false pretenses.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy fact.
(39:14):
We know that the use of internet technology has made
the cost of communication across the world lower now than
at any other point in human history. Ever. You know,
where are you listening to this podcast from? Is it
not amazing that you could tweet Matt Nolan I or
(39:36):
anybody that has a Twitter handle and almost instantaneously we
will be able to have a conversation regardless of where
we are on the globe. This is a mighty power,
and like almighty powers, it can harm and it can help.
You know, fire warms as well as burns, and legislation
(39:59):
always catches up more slowly than the than the technology. Right,
technology always outpaces legislation, and earlier we mentioned that opportunistic
governments are using things like this, which this is a
real thing online recruitment into extremist religious organizations not just
isis is a real thing, and it's happening now. But
(40:20):
is the answer I wanna this is my question for
you guys and for you listeners. Is the answer to
give a government entity absolute access to everything you and
everyone else does online? Who watches the watchman? You know
what I mean? Will this? Will this be uh protection?
(40:43):
Will it be a way to prevent acts of terrorism?
Or will we be simply giving another group of not
entirely great people a superpower. Well, here, here's one of
the things we've recently learned from the attacks in Brussels.
The people who carried out the attacks allegedly we're using
(41:05):
burner phones, the phones that you can activate and then
use the minutes up and then throw them away. And
if that is the case that they're using that technology,
then giving the FBI or n s A or whoever
else the keys to your iPhone or your Android or
whatever it is so that they can see everything you're doing,
(41:27):
it might not matter because they might not be able
to see that phone that's activated and then destroyed immediately afterwards. Yeah,
that's the technique. Technique has been used for you know,
a long time. Like I don't know if you ever
watched The Wire, but a lot of the drug dealer
characters depicted in that show use burner phones as once
you can buy a gas station and you use it
for a period of time and you don't have any
(41:47):
personal information associated with it. Yeah, and you know, they're
all kinds of arguments against allowing that to occur. I've
heard everything from the potential global blackmail that could be
generated from from having that. Sure, you know, just the
basic right of privacy that all of us believed ourselves
(42:10):
to have. But then also we have we have a
further issue here, which is that we further issue which
is that in many countries, this this should not be
a secret. In many countries, the actions of corporations and
the actions of states are closely intertwined. So we have
(42:34):
to ask, when we the people, or when we the
population of whatever country give this kind of unfettered personal
access with no accountability to a government. Who else were
we giving it to? Are we also giving it to
a large corporation that is active in there are. We
also assume giving it to a contractor who will carry
(42:57):
out part of the monitoring duty. Five Eyes has been
around for a long time, and I it is my
personal belief that the strange bedfellows of of corporate uh
and governmental power are are much closer than than are
are reported. You know, yeah, just just reads Juliana Sande's
(43:19):
Google is not what you think. I guess it's an
article or statement that he put out when he met
with some of the heads of Google back in the day.
It's fascinating to see the way alphabet is moving. Who
knows which is the parent company of Google? Now? So
let's let's also I have just a few more questions, guys.
(43:40):
I know I'm peppering everyone with questions, but I'm interested,
uh the following. Do you think that do you think
that US Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies purposefully created ISIS?
Or do you think it was an unintended consequence? I mean,
(44:03):
it's one of those things where when you shut down
one group or make it difficult for one group to
do something, you will have other groups pop up and
fill the void. Hill. Yeah, I mean I think that's
that's that's what this is. Now, I definitely don't think
that the US government was involved in creating it. I mean,
I think the US government's policially, right, I think the
(44:25):
US government's policies over a long period of time, UM
have created groups like these, you know, right. And I
think one of the questions is, of course, follow the money,
but secondly in who's who has the most compelling interest
in a destabilized Middle East? You know what I mean?
(44:45):
Like that, that's one of the questions. Well, well then
who who would it be then? Because we've also heard
that the actions of ISIS and Syria have been tacitly
encouraged by the West as a way to stop Russia
from uh successfully retaining their one uh they're there one
(45:06):
all weather port right, which is based in Syria, and
also to obtain access to build pipelines right cutting off
one of Russia's primary exports, which is natural gas to
Western Europe. So it feels to me, just in an
answer to your question, the actions of this group feel
(45:28):
very much it feels like another proxy war, That's what
That's what it feels like to me in reading the
news and watching what I why I'm watching, Yeah, I'm
I'm interested to hear more about this, you know, and
it's not. While it is tempting to say that there
are unassailable good guys in the fight, right, uh, the
(45:58):
sad truth is that there are innocence line and that
is one of the most uh, crucial factors of this.
You know. War is rarely a matter of hero and
a villain. War is often a lot of villains, or
at the very least a lot of self interested people.
And I'm not by any means, and not any by
(46:20):
any means, calling terrorist groups heroes. I think that's fundamentally offensive.
Maybe it is, maybe maybe you're right. I mean, let's
also consider that a lot of the people who were uh,
who were embroiled as children in conflicts in the Middle East,
(46:41):
had felt they had no other choice but to join
some sort of resistance, right, And with this in mind,
we'd like to hear your answers. What what do you
think of the possibility of intelligence network involvement or state
sponsorship of ISIS? And I'm also interested, what do you
think the future ELIZIS is? Right now, it looks like
(47:04):
the organization is not thriving, and it looks like superpowers
or states or other organizations that would normally be against
one another, maybe banding together to combat ISIS and uh,
but one once it's quelled or fragmented, what comes next?
What happens next? That's always the question with the Middle East,
(47:27):
isn't it? Well, I guess that's always the question with
Geoe politics in general. Right, so right to us, Let
us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are conspiracy stuff. You can check out every podcast
that Noel, Matt and I have ever done on our website.
Stuff they don't want you to know dot com. And
before we go, some of you have already written to us.
(47:49):
And that's why we're gonna go into this little space
that we like to call shout at corners. First shout
out of the day goes to jag Lulu or at
Square Moon. She says, quote, your fake British accent is
(48:10):
so bad that it's too good. You have to do
the next shout out, shout out in a British accent,
so that you're not doing that well. Because I don't
know if she was talking to me or to you.
Was that you, Ben? Was that you who butchered the
British accent? Don't look at me that way. Think it
was pretty sure. Guys, I do sketch comedy. Of course,
all my accents are based on what will work in
(48:31):
sketch comedy. I'm not trying to go to Heathrow and impersonate, Okay,
because this is a listener driven show and it appears
my producers and co hosts have put me in one
hell of a corner, a shout out corner. It's I'm
getting shouted at. I will be after this. What kind
(48:53):
of guys, What kind of British accent do you want?
Do you want more posh? Do you want more Michael Caine?
Do your Michael Caine? Okay, you're my, but more Michael
Kaye's tamrible? Can you do Michael Caine from the streets? Uh?
Cock me, Michael Kaine. You know what, guys, I'm just
gonna do just just a generic, terrible British accent. Apologies
(49:15):
to everyone here here as well as the royal family,
but you're welcome you God save the Queen? Oh gosh, yeah,
I don't know. Do you think this will mean the
Queen stops listening to our show? You have my main
She'll dive shock Okay, I'll second shout out goes to
Kelsey Griffin. Geeky Kelsey shout out to conspiracy stuff for
(49:36):
getting me through like eighteen hours of driving this week.
And have you done I'm going Cockney, have you done
one on cryptids yet? So? Yeah? Have we done one
on cryptids? That man, that's embarrassing. That was sort of
like a Kiwi British hybrid. I'm having I'm having trouble
because I've been working on my Kiwi accent. It's a sticky,
(49:57):
sticky weeky, sticky week stik. What's the beats? Let's watch
out for bats. Oh that's how that offended everyone. No,
not yet. If anything, um, someone with a decent British
accent right in and tell tell me, I'll do it.
And you know, technically, if you consider it from an
(50:17):
historical standpoint, then guys, no, Matt, we're the ones with
the accent because English came from England, so really weird.
I'm just trying to get over my my terrible American accent.
We are the music makers and we are the dreamers
of dreams. So next we have one from Sean at
Doctor Hypno toad is that one of those toads that
(50:41):
when you look at it makes you that's a Futurama reference.
Are you serious? He's like the best character in Future
and he's the third best character in Futurama. It goes
Dr Zoidberg Bender and then the hypno toad. Sean says
that he was the one who wrote in and asked
us to do an episode on big Farmer conspiration excuse,
which we did. Yeah, thank you so much for writing in, Sean,
(51:03):
And you know, I appreciate that because I remember we
were looking for we were asking ourselves who wrote in
and recommended that excellent topic for us. So now the
truth is revealed, and this concludes this installment of Shout
Out Corner? Did you want to be like Sean and
all of the other wonderful human beings that wrote into
(51:26):
us to give us an idea for a topic. We're
getting emails all the time, thank you so much for
writing in. If we haven't responded yet, hopefully we will
get to that very very soon. Take us to task.
Call us a bunch of jerks, you know we're glutton's
for that stuff. Just just dish it, kidding And you
can send those emails to Jonathan dot Strickland at how
(51:47):
stuff works dot com or if you want to send
us nice things. Yes, you can send those two conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
(00:21):
is nol Uh, and Ben you are you, and hopefully
this message finds you amid grand adventure. If not too bad,
if so wonderful. Either way, this is stuff they don't
want you to know. Surely adventure is on the horizon. Yes,
adventure should always be on the horizon. We live in
(00:42):
what some ancient scholars we call interesting times, which is
not necessarily a compliment ladies and gentlemen. As you know,
on this show, we look into things that are not uh,
not so often reported in mainstream me you when we
look at obscure acts of history, strange things about the future,
(01:05):
the occult, the paranormal, the corrupt, and this means that
we travel through some dark places. Today, we are returning
to a dark place. This is something that may be
a bit controversial. We are going to cover it to
the best of our ability in the most objective way possible,
(01:27):
and we want to hear from you so as we
dive into this rabbit hole. As you're listening, you have
the opportunity and if you have some feedback, we'd like
to hear it. You can write to us directly on
Facebook and Twitter where we are conspiracy stuff. So with
that being said, that's the best I could do for disclaimer. Gents,
what do you think that's right? This week we are
(01:48):
talking about terrorism, in particular a group known as the
Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL or dioecious there are
there are numerous other names as well. It's a group
that especially here in the West. I mean you could
argue that they are like the face of terrorism cer yes,
(02:10):
then the new face, the face that most people in
the West would associate with terrorism. Right that when piece
people hear the word terrorism and their first thoughts will
not be something like, uh, the clan the KKK, it
won't be something like the I ra A, won't even
(02:32):
maybe be al Qaeda anymore, which is saying a lot.
It's just saying a lot. It will be ISIS. And
what we are going to look at today is is
the concept of specifically ISIS or ISIL or DIETSH recruitment tactics.
In the US, we've gone into some related things before.
(02:56):
But today we're going to look at this specific example.
And as we do that, we need to first take
a look at terrorism. Right, what is terrorism? Since the
events of September eleven, two thousand one, the concept of
terrorism garnered national and lasting attention in the mind of
the American public. But we know, of course, just look
(03:17):
at some of the other groups we named, We know
that terrorism as a concept, terroristic tactics, and such have
existed much much longer. Right, Yeah, that's right. I mean
even in the US, I think terrorism was in the
in the zeitgeist, in the public knowledge or understanding back
(03:37):
from the seventies. Back. I mean, if you look at
popular movies that were coming out around that time, the
bad guy a lot of times was a Middle Eastern
quote terrorists. Yeah, and it's often been said throughout history
that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. We
know that can sound tremendously controversial, right, the idea that
(04:02):
one person's absolute utter villain is somebody else's hero, right.
You know, for instance, when the US was in the
midst of the Revolutionary War, the people in the US
who were fighting to uh fighting for independence from from
(04:23):
Europe from England. They were to the average English citizen terrorists.
The tactics of fighting from the woods or something. Yeah,
not wearing uniforms, all these kind of things that we're
going to get into, they were full on terrorists to them.
And it's true that to a degree. The categorization of terrorists,
(04:46):
if you can hear my air quotes their folks, depends
on the people you ask, Like, for example, this is
just an anecdote. I'm just making this up. This is
not a real thing. I can't emphasize that enough, but
I tried. Uh. For instance, a let's mad there is
a person living in a war torn country that's been
victimized by numerous conflicts. Right, Let's say Afghanistan. Right, someone
(05:07):
who has been alive through the proxy wars of the seventies,
who has lived through the eighties and nineties and is
alive now in Afghanistan. A person living in that kind
of country has probably seen multiple foreign military forces, multiple
local warlords come and go, terrorist organizations, counter terrorism tactics,
(05:31):
and eventually you might say, well, these are all to me,
these are all still threats. These are all still equal threats.
So this definition slides. This definition has fuzzy lines. There's
not really Um, you would be hard pressed to find
(05:53):
a an organization that the entire rest of the world
said that is a terrorist organization. When I see entire
rest of the world, of course, I'm not talking about
the United Nations labeling an organization's terrorist. I'm saying the
entire population of actual people. ISIS is one of the
closest of course, because you know, Muslims around the world
(06:17):
condemn the actions of ISAIS, and ISIS is the actions
that ISAIS is taking are not those that are are
not things that the average practicing Muslim or the vast
majority of Muslims would ever condone. It's also the kind
of thing where you know, in your original example about
freedom fighters, UM, in like the American Revolution for example, UM,
(06:41):
they were working towards an end of achieving freedom, and
they were maybe like attacking certain you know, points that
would have benefited them as a group. But with ISIS,
it is a lot more directly targeted attacks at civilians
and you know, really way aging that kind of social
media war, using you know, beheading videos and things like that.
(07:05):
They're just showing this kind of lack of rules of engagement.
You know, it's just kind of like anything is fair game.
And also, yeah, the ultimate aim of isis IS has
been stated numerous times, and it is to establish a
new caliphate, right, and this means that the goal would
be to create a state and to expand that state
(07:29):
eventually across the world. You know, we've even seen al
Qaeda al Qaeda uh like disavow or condemn the actions
of ISIS, which you know, Alkaida, another terrorist group, the
terrorist group for a while there, they've they publicly, at
least allegedly came out and said no, this we we
(07:51):
we think this is awful. And there's yeah, and there's
a tangled web here. There are tangled roots and there's
a tangled web. Even if the outward depth nisition might
sound fuzzy, terrorists have several tactics that in theory differentiate
them from state level forces. So in the books, again
(08:11):
in theory, a state level force has rules of engagement.
As you said, no, they do not attack civilians. They're
clearly identifiable via uniforms. They adhere to the Geneva Conventions
for captured combatants. They adhere to the rules of war uh.
And of course, folks, unfortunately it goes without saying but
(08:35):
I will say it throughout history and be very hard
pressed to find any state level military that has always
adhered to those rules. And that goes to something else,
which might be a separate topic that we've touched upon
with specific examples in earlier podcasts of state sponsored terrorism
(08:57):
CIA backed coups in South America for instance, right or
false flag attacks, or for instance, the the proxy militias
used by different countries right like um his Law sponsored
by Iran, or something which is exactly Sadly, the reality
(09:19):
of proxy wars has been long established, the reality of
using proxies to avoid uh to avoid the consequences of
an unsuccessful action, and the concept of terrorism is itself
first appears in at least in the specific sense of
(09:39):
government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France, and
it came from the French uh terrism from the Latin.
In English it appears a few years later, three years
later in reference to the Irish rebellion. But along the
way to the modern age there were other competing terms.
(10:00):
Mass destruction terrorism was called dynamitism, and during World War One,
Britain used the term frightfulness, which came from German and
and then a deliberate policy of terrorizing enemy noncombatants. Before
we go on, guys, I want to get a bit
of a rant out of the way, and this is
(10:22):
as I have to say when we say this, this
is my opinion. Okay, this is not This does not
reflect the opinion of our show, the opinion of House
of Works, anyone else but me. I think another thing
that's dangerous about terrorism as a concept, especially in the
West and in other countries as well, is that it
(10:43):
has become a grand boogeyman used to force multiple attacks
on people's personal freedom and personal liberty. And you if
you agree, if you disagree, for instance, with warrantless surveillance,
than the implication is that you directly support terrorism. Terrorism
has become the the monster under the bed, hiding in
(11:07):
the closet of the American discourse. And this is a
very dangerous thing in US culture. What we see often
is that people the zeitgeist, as you said, Matt Uh,
becomes enamored of certain words. Remember in the nineties everything
was digital then for like even things that like a
digital toaster, there's no sense and then it doesn't even
(11:28):
have a digital clock on it. And then things were organic, right,
and then national security has become another another great boogeyman. Right. Yeah,
I was trying to decide if their thought terminating cliches,
but I don't know that they're that far. It's close almost,
because you can throw those words into a sentence and
(11:51):
kind of yeah, maybe it is because you can kind
of shut somebody's brain off if if you throw around
especially terrorism and national security in the same sentence. Right
these This is not in any way to say that uh,
terrorism is exaggerated in terms of the global context and
the damage it does. This is instead to say that
(12:14):
there are opportunistic forces and governments across the world who
are using this as uh as a window, as a
foot in the door to pass draconian laws that ordinarily
never would have been allowed by a rational, non frightened public.
(12:36):
And and so it is true that these things, these
things are real, There are these active i'll say, act
like monsters, people doing monstrous things. And then we can
never forget, however, that the people at the top of
various regimes and governments and whatnot are actively using this
(13:02):
as a way to get your private information, to get
your phone records, to protect predict excuse me your behavior.
With all that being said, I'm going to get off
the soapbox here because that is not the real point
of today's podcast. We're where is the point? I don't know,
(13:22):
I think what do you think? Though? I think they're
sort of connected for sure, But let's get into what
really what is isis, what is isis and what is
isis versus ISSOL in terms of the name. Yeah, okay,
let's see, so ISIS and ISISL. Oddly enough, the same thing.
ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
(13:45):
and that's because the territory that this this organization has
controlled has largely straddled the border between Syria and Iraq.
But EISL, on the other hand, yeah, Eiel, Eisol is
talking about the Levant, which is the it's kind of
an historic name given to this entire region. Uh. That's
(14:06):
east of the Mediterranean from Egypt. So think about where
Egypt is on the edge of Africa. They're go east
and once you get to Iran and Turkey, that's the Levant.
Wasn't there a thing that where Obama referred to them
specifically as one or the other because one legitimizes them
more than the other. Like, does that ring a bell?
(14:27):
Because I think yeah, the US, the US administration during
the rise of ISIS used the term ISIL because they're
their official party line is that this is done to
emphasize the expansionist goals of the of the terrorists writer region. Yeah. However, again,
(14:48):
if that were the case, establishing what is ultimately meant
to be a global caliphate when necessarily extend beyond the levant,
but right now, you know, the chances of that happening
are thankfully incontestimally small. Uh. The pretty much everyone else, though,
(15:10):
uses ISIS or one other thing. Yeah. This term the
diet ish has also gained some popularity and has been
used as a way of challenging the legitimacy of the group. Right,
this dietsh term comes from Arabic, and it's an acronym
formed from the group's previous name, which is I'm going
(15:30):
to butcher this, I warn you in advanced folks al
dlawa al Islamia phil rail sham. And though it doesn't
necessarily mean anything in Arabic, it sounds familiar to an
Arabic verb that means to tread underfoot, to crush something
or to trample. So that is the that's that's the
(15:52):
solution of the name. At this point, folks are probably wondering, Hey,
Matt noel Ben, are you going to talk a little
bit about the history of Isais, the formation of it,
how did it become so successful? What if any role
did intelligence agencies and other state organizations play? Right shout
(16:13):
out to the House of sod as always. We've done
a couple of earlier videos on ISAIS that you that
you may enjoy if you're well. Enjoys not the right
word that may answer some of those questions, and one
of the one of the first ones was how did
Isais become so wealthy? Which was a collaboration we had
with our friends at all time conspiracies, yes, and that
(16:34):
one we I mean kind of obviously from the title.
We look at the different ways in which Isis got
its money. And one of the big things that was
pointed to as to how they got that first that
first big bank roll to begin, you know, building an
army and getting just huge caches of weapons and explosives,
(16:57):
and it was the I believe it was the Mole Bank.
There was a heist that allegedly occurred now from differing sources.
You'll also hear that that heist never occurred actually from
some official sources, which is fascinating. Yeah, they allegedly looted
five billion Iraqi dinars, the equivalent of four hundred twenty
(17:19):
nine million at the time. But but it's did they, yeah,
exactly or did they? And that kind of called into question, well,
how are they getting their money if this perhaps didn't occur,
which has led to numerous questions about who funds this group?
And we try to answer a couple of those in
that video. I think we also talked about there's one
called who who does isis work for looking at perhaps
(17:42):
there are larger goals that isis is you know, trying
to achieve or that another group is trying to achieve
through ISIS. That was an interesting delve. I would recommend
that video. The there's a there's another part here where
we also talked about in our third video, money Blood
and God, who funds Terrorism? Which is a juicy title.
(18:08):
It's a juicy title, and there's some juicy stuff in there. Yeah,
unpleasant stuff as well. Yeah, when when I learned about
some of the funding that comes from countries that are
close allies with the United States, specifically Saudi Arabia, that
I just kind of freaked me out a little bit.
And and to be to be clear, one thing that
(18:29):
I would like to I would like to emphasize when
we talk about intelligence agencies, when we talk about government
officials funding the funding the operations of terrorist groups, whether
in the Middle East, whether in Central Asia, Southeast Asia,
South and Central America, or even the US, this doesn't
(18:52):
always mean that the entire organization condoned it. It could
just be one person acting or a fact action of
people acting in that regard. So let's do a little
bit of history of ISIS to get to their current state.
And this is from our earlier video that we had mentioned.
(19:12):
So in two thousand and fourteen, that's when we really
see the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, better known
as ISIS, spread across the Middle East. But according to
the official sources, it begins in the nineties when a
Jordanian named Abou Mussab al Zarkawi returned home from attempting
to fight the U. S s R. In Afghanistan. And
that was right after he got out of prison. He
(19:34):
was in prison for a while. I think that, and
that was after Yeah, you said Afghanistan, right, he was
gonna fight the uss R and joined that fight. But
I think when he got there it was pretty much over,
um m hmm. And when he got home, I guess
he had kind of picked up some ideas from from
(19:54):
people that he was hanging out with, and I think
he had weapons and explosives in his house. And he
got arrested for six years and he met more people, right, yeah,
And eventually he returned to set up a camp for
terrorists or again, depending on which side of the war
you were on, resistance fighters. In nine he met O
b l Osama bin Laden, but he refused to join
(20:17):
al Qaeda. In two thousand one he fled a rock
and then he eventually constructed The predecessor to the Islamic State,
Al Zarkawi, died in two thousand six, and as of
two thousand and fourteen, uh IT was the organization known
as ISIS was led by Abu Bakir al Baghdadi, who
declared himself Caliph or the calipher ruler of the self
(20:41):
declared Islamic State. So this story, this official story, seems plausible.
Histories full of groups have become increasingly violent as they
become increasingly powerful, But there are no shortage of conspiracy
theories regarding ISIS right now. In the current state of Isaza,
the conflict continues. There's pretty compelling evidence that ISAIS has
(21:05):
been selling oil to people in Turkey with knowledge of
the Turkish government. There's also been some pretty um damning
evidence that different factions of other Middle Eastern countries are
supporting spread of ISIS even while officially opposing it. And
of course groups that were UH that were and are
(21:27):
still considered terrorists by other countries are not friendly towards ISAIS,
and this has become a land of strange bedfellows, you know,
with the the current proxy war in Syria between Iran, Russia,
and the US has involved multiple entities that otherwise would
(21:48):
have been at war with one another, and currently, as
we record this, their negotiations for truces in the Syrian conflict. However,
it maybe UH, it may be that ISIS, while thriving
in this chaos, will meet an end or a dissolution
(22:12):
or fragmenting, either due to unsustainable internal situations or due
to the great powers banding together to crush it. Because
for a time. If you look at the strategy, there
were opportunistic things. There were um there were governments who
were using their forces to attack is this on one
side and drive it towards something else where they wanted
(22:35):
a region to stabilize. It seems like the fragmentation is
likely to occur. The The only difference I see with
this group is their prowess to use online sources. I
was about to say, to stay connected no matter where
they are located globally, I mean, and not only are
they using the online sources like Facebook, etcetera. To recruit,
(22:59):
they're also using it to disseminate you know, their messages.
For example, like I saw a video the other day
that had um it was after the terror attacks in Brussels,
and it had a lot of footage of all of
the explosions that there was footage available, and had Donald
Trump quotes talking about how Brussels used to be a
(23:20):
beautiful place and essentially implying that before all the Muslims
came in and made it you know, terrible or whatever.
And so they're basically using stuff from the news, from
current events and then disseminating it through you know, electronic
channels and I mean if you think about, you know,
the compared to the way al Qaeda would do things
like that. I mean they would like distribute like a
(23:40):
blurry VHS tape of you know, of Osama bin Laden
talking it was if it wasn't at all, and just
send it to like news outlets. So I mean this
is definitely a next generation. Oh yeah, the changing technology.
They're certainly making use of it. That's a good point.
Here's where it gets crazy today we were talking about
(24:01):
the something that is not a conspiracy theory, and it
is a conspiracy fact that ISAIS is recruiting in the
US or attempting to recruit in the US, and not
just of course in the US, but also in Europe.
We have read stories of red stories of European often teenagers,
(24:23):
late teens, being recruited, sometimes honestly but often deceptively to
travel to uh Syria to join ISIS. And depending on
a number of things, your nationality, your age, frightening lee enough,
(24:44):
your gender, and you're I don't know how to see
this your it's not your social status, it's socio economic background.
It's not that either, it is just your um it's
a there's a sense of loneliness that has preyed upon
by this group, a sense of isolation. Well, let's let's
(25:07):
talk about some of the specific cases of ISIS recruitment
in the US. So we're gonna grab some numbers from
twenty fifteen UH that were put out by the New
York Times, and so as of October of right as
we get in the end of that year, law enforcement
inside the United States knew of two hundred and fifty
(25:30):
Americans who had either gone to or we're thinking about
going to Syria and or Iraq to join up with
these ISIS fighters. Right and right now, there are I think,
or at least as of that time October, there were
nine hundred active investigations into ISIS sympathizers from all of
(25:52):
the fifty United States. So prosecutors have actually charged seventy
one people since March various degrees of involvement in ISIS
activities in the US um the Some of these charges
include attempting to support terrorist organizations, plotting deadly attacks on
US soil, um things of that nature. Fifty six of
(26:13):
these arrests actually took place in um and here are
some stats that came from the George Washington University Program
on Extremism analyzing seventy one of these arrests. So people
involved in the arrest on average were aged six percent,
mail traveled or had attempted to travel to Iraq or
(26:35):
Syria at some pointent were involved in plots to actually
carry out these kinds of attacks in the US. American
citizens converts to Islam and UM twenty one states UM
were involved in these arrests, and the largest number took
place in New York and Minnesota and finally involved three
(26:57):
Americans who actually died in the u US due to
ISIS related violence. And and something to point out here,
all of these people that are mentioned, they come from
various different backgrounds from socioeconomic status is they it's very
wide and varied. The people who end up being recruited
(27:17):
or are attempted to be a recruited and this is
where we arrive at the primary the primary medium or
mode of recruitment, which would be again, as you said,
social media, Twitter, Instagram, those are cited. Uh, there's there
are several specific cases, but let's let's look into one.
(27:40):
Let's look in this story of a twenty three year
old American woman named Alex and the story comes to
us from the New York Times. There's a great article
you can read if you want to. There's even a
short video piece you can watch about this. Alex is a,
as you said, Ben, a young woman. She describes herself
(28:01):
as lonely. She was a babysitter and a Sunday school teacher.
Didn't do much. She's in a very rural part of
Washington State and her day to day life is pretty boring,
right at least, this is how she describes it, and
she doesn't have many friends. She's living with her grandparents. Now.
After the video of James Foley, Uh, he was a journalist.
(28:23):
This was in August, on August nineteen, he was It
was a video of him being beheaded by isis alex
our protagonist here? She she went on Twitter. She she
wanted to find out why the heck A group would
do something so horrendous and terrible, and she says, quote
(28:43):
I was looking for people who agreed with what they
were doing so that I could understand why they were
doing it. It was actually really easy to find them
unquote chilling. And that's where she met a man from
England's calling himself Faisal most stop again telling her about
Islam and the Islamic state. As she began speaking with
(29:06):
him and others other sympathizers over the internet, Twitter, email, Skype,
she was persuaded. She took a vow on Twitter, she
converted to Islam. And now here's where he gets crazy
in the context of this story, where Alex probably I
don't know her, oh feelings should have gone off. I
guess should have put up some red flags maybe there, Yeah, exactly. Uh,
(29:28):
And I'm just gonna read another quote from the article
quote the only Muslims she knew were those she had
met online, and Faisel encouraged her to keep it that way,
arguing that Muslims are persecuted in the US, which is
to a degree true absolutely, but oh yeah, and she
could be labeled a terrorist. That he warned her of that,
(29:49):
and for now it was best for her to keep
this whole conversation, or all of these conversations that she's
having a secret, even from her grandparents who she's living with. Well,
I mean they're attempting to they're radicalizing her. I mean
they want they don't they don't want her to be exposed.
She's a really good get at this point. I mean,
she's someone that's isolated and is I assume white, right, yes,
(30:11):
and well she's impressionable impressionable, but also I just mean
in terms of like, they don't want her to all
of a sudden change her behavior and start hanging out
with a different group of people and raise any alarms
with any kind of law enforcement because they want to
be able to use her in some way. And here's
where it kind of gets into the tactics of this group.
The the circle of people that Alex is speaking with.
(30:34):
They are there are several dozen accounts operated by several
people who either directly like say that they are members
of the Islamic State or who are at least in
some way sympathizers with the group. Uh. They these people
collectively spent thousands year that thousands of hours engaging Alex
(30:57):
for over six months where they're just constantly in communication
the same thing. At the beginning. It's called a love bomb. Yes, oh,
we can get into the cult aspect, ben, but yeah,
they they sent her things through the mail. This Fisal
guy is in England, remember, so it's not that difficult
to send something. I mean, it takes a while, but
(31:18):
they were sending her prayer shawls and I believe Matt's
and chocolate. Apparently one of the biggest things they sent
her was chocolate, just tons and tons of chocolate. And
as they're doing all of this, they're they're indulging her curiosity,
they're calming her down when she's having you know, when
she's thinking maybe this isn't a good idea. They're just
(31:40):
being her friend right there. They're being this lonely isolated
girl's friend. And especially as they are starting to push
her towards some of the some of the let's say
more difficult to grasp concepts behind isis some of the
more violent parts of it, and something that would you
couldn't really just flip a switch and just be like, oh,
(32:02):
okay with this now, I'm kind of have to like
really really ease someone into it. And then before you
know it, as Ben was saying, with some of the
cults indoctrination kind of tactics, before you know what, you're
doing things you never ever ever would have been considered doing.
It's the foot in the door tactic used by sales
folks as well. Right, there's so much support generate a
(32:23):
positive psychological association with a certain idea, concept or experiment.
One thing that all human beings have in common is
that we are frighteningly easy to mislead. So this this story,
do we have the ending? Well? The ending is that
her grandmother found out several times throughout the course of
(32:45):
their communications that she was doing this. And I feel
like I have to say this. Uh. It's mentioned in
the article. In the video, Alex suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome,
and she is very much from a developmental perspective, younger
than three um and perhaps that is one of the
(33:08):
reasons that she seems to be more impressionable. And the
grandmother in particulars tries to guard her from interactions online
and this one in particular, it was scaring her because
she didn't really understand the scope or the depth of
what was happening. But in the documentary, or at least
the short piece on the New York Times, they show
(33:31):
the grandmother actually speaking with Faisal and telling them leave
my granddaughter alone. And the last thing you see in
the video is oh, and they resumed communication following the
publication of this. So who knows what's happening with Alex?
What's going on at the end of the story. I mean,
at least she was willing to tell her story when
(33:53):
this is not her real name, by the way, and
let's also let's remember that this is just one example
from one country. It is tempting to use broad brush
strokes when describing why someone would run off to join
this group. There's it's there is definitely a sense of isolation.
(34:14):
There's also a sense of anger over the way that
non Muslim countries are treating UH people of the Islamic faith.
And you know it is it is UH naive at
best to say that UH to say that Muslims are
not being persecuted for their religion, even even in countries
(34:38):
that claim to have UH such a an emphasis on
religious freedom. However, with that being said, with the idea
that there are complex, complicated motivations for this, and that
there are active UH conspiracies, because let's just remember, the
definition of a conspiracy is people working together in secret
towards a common goal. Under the definition, then there are
(35:01):
conspiracies to recruit people into this organization. They're happening now
as you listen to this broadcast, depending on when you're
listening to it. UH. The The other thing, and this
is This is a serious thing, is very sensitive. I
earlier mentioned gender mattering. Don't want to be alarmist about this,
(35:23):
but this is a fact. For people who are women
being you know, let's say, late teens, early twenties, who
are being um mis old and misled by recruiters working
on behalf of Isai's they're often convinced or persuaded to
(35:46):
travel to a part of Iraq or Syria that is
under Eyes's control with the idea that they will be
performing humanitarian aid in the in the Holy War, that
they will be uh you know, helping to save the
lives of these fighters. And at least three cases that
(36:08):
we know of they're proven and many more I'm just
counting the ones I was checking into an offer research.
What they end up being compelled to do is to
serve a essentially as prostitutes under what is known as
uh jahadi marriage. And that is because the Islamic state
(36:31):
has issued a fatwa, a religious decree, saying that this
is a righteous thing for women to do. Yeah. Wow.
In Alex's case, she was told that she would be
marrying a forty year old balding man. That was all that,
That was all the information that she got from Faisel,
But he was a a good Muslim, is what she said.
(36:55):
And so this this concept of let's see the Islamic state.
I think the report comes in twent said that Muslim
women giving themselves sexually to jahadi's is permissible because it
allows them to continue jahad to empower Islam. And however,
(37:18):
however controversial and alarmists and strangest must sound, I have
to emphasize again, this is not the belief of UM.
This is not the belief of the vast majority of
this group. So the error and critical thinking that people
can make all too easily is to to equate one
(37:42):
extremist faction with every other single practice star of that faith.
For instance, you know they're very violent, very strange, prejudiced
and twisted. UH sects of religious groups claim mean that
they are Christian, right or claiming or claiming that they
(38:05):
adhere to UM some some obscure branch of Judaism or
Hinduism or Buddhism, right. But we know that if you
are a Christian, it does not automatically make you a
member of the Westboro Baptist Church, hopefully, which pales in comparison,
(38:27):
of course, to isis uh. But the what I'm pointing
out here is that it is so easy for us,
so easy, especially given the way things are reported to
believe that one example or one group means an entire
group is rotten and this this is not the case.
But what is the case is that in Europe, in
(38:51):
the US, in other Muslim majority countries around the clock,
there are there are people who are being convinced to
join up with organization, with this organization, sometimes under false pretenses.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy fact.
(39:14):
We know that the use of internet technology has made
the cost of communication across the world lower now than
at any other point in human history. Ever. You know,
where are you listening to this podcast from? Is it
not amazing that you could tweet Matt Nolan I or
(39:36):
anybody that has a Twitter handle and almost instantaneously we
will be able to have a conversation regardless of where
we are on the globe. This is a mighty power,
and like almighty powers, it can harm and it can help.
You know, fire warms as well as burns, and legislation
(39:59):
always catches up more slowly than the than the technology. Right,
technology always outpaces legislation, and earlier we mentioned that opportunistic
governments are using things like this, which this is a
real thing online recruitment into extremist religious organizations not just
isis is a real thing, and it's happening now. But
(40:20):
is the answer I wanna this is my question for
you guys and for you listeners. Is the answer to
give a government entity absolute access to everything you and
everyone else does online? Who watches the watchman? You know
what I mean? Will this? Will this be uh protection?
(40:43):
Will it be a way to prevent acts of terrorism?
Or will we be simply giving another group of not
entirely great people a superpower. Well, here, here's one of
the things we've recently learned from the attacks in Brussels.
The people who carried out the attacks allegedly we're using
(41:05):
burner phones, the phones that you can activate and then
use the minutes up and then throw them away. And
if that is the case that they're using that technology,
then giving the FBI or n s A or whoever
else the keys to your iPhone or your Android or
whatever it is so that they can see everything you're doing,
(41:27):
it might not matter because they might not be able
to see that phone that's activated and then destroyed immediately afterwards. Yeah,
that's the technique. Technique has been used for you know,
a long time. Like I don't know if you ever
watched The Wire, but a lot of the drug dealer
characters depicted in that show use burner phones as once
you can buy a gas station and you use it
for a period of time and you don't have any
(41:47):
personal information associated with it. Yeah, and you know, they're
all kinds of arguments against allowing that to occur. I've
heard everything from the potential global blackmail that could be
generated from from having that. Sure, you know, just the
basic right of privacy that all of us believed ourselves
(42:10):
to have. But then also we have we have a
further issue here, which is that we further issue which
is that in many countries, this this should not be
a secret. In many countries, the actions of corporations and
the actions of states are closely intertwined. So we have
(42:34):
to ask, when we the people, or when we the
population of whatever country give this kind of unfettered personal
access with no accountability to a government. Who else were
we giving it to? Are we also giving it to
a large corporation that is active in there are. We
also assume giving it to a contractor who will carry
(42:57):
out part of the monitoring duty. Five Eyes has been
around for a long time, and I it is my
personal belief that the strange bedfellows of of corporate uh
and governmental power are are much closer than than are
are reported. You know, yeah, just just reads Juliana Sande's
(43:19):
Google is not what you think. I guess it's an
article or statement that he put out when he met
with some of the heads of Google back in the day.
It's fascinating to see the way alphabet is moving. Who
knows which is the parent company of Google? Now? So
let's let's also I have just a few more questions, guys.
(43:40):
I know I'm peppering everyone with questions, but I'm interested,
uh the following. Do you think that do you think
that US Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies purposefully created ISIS?
Or do you think it was an unintended consequence? I mean,
(44:03):
it's one of those things where when you shut down
one group or make it difficult for one group to
do something, you will have other groups pop up and
fill the void. Hill. Yeah, I mean I think that's
that's that's what this is. Now, I definitely don't think
that the US government was involved in creating it. I mean,
I think the US government's policially, right, I think the
(44:25):
US government's policies over a long period of time, UM
have created groups like these, you know, right. And I
think one of the questions is, of course, follow the money,
but secondly in who's who has the most compelling interest
in a destabilized Middle East? You know what I mean?
(44:45):
Like that, that's one of the questions. Well, well then
who who would it be then? Because we've also heard
that the actions of ISIS and Syria have been tacitly
encouraged by the West as a way to stop Russia
from uh successfully retaining their one uh they're there one
(45:06):
all weather port right, which is based in Syria, and
also to obtain access to build pipelines right cutting off
one of Russia's primary exports, which is natural gas to
Western Europe. So it feels to me, just in an
answer to your question, the actions of this group feel
(45:28):
very much it feels like another proxy war, That's what
That's what it feels like to me in reading the
news and watching what I why I'm watching, Yeah, I'm
I'm interested to hear more about this, you know, and
it's not. While it is tempting to say that there
are unassailable good guys in the fight, right, uh, the
(45:58):
sad truth is that there are innocence line and that
is one of the most uh, crucial factors of this.
You know. War is rarely a matter of hero and
a villain. War is often a lot of villains, or
at the very least a lot of self interested people.
And I'm not by any means, and not any by
(46:20):
any means, calling terrorist groups heroes. I think that's fundamentally offensive.
Maybe it is, maybe maybe you're right. I mean, let's
also consider that a lot of the people who were uh,
who were embroiled as children in conflicts in the Middle East,
(46:41):
had felt they had no other choice but to join
some sort of resistance, right, And with this in mind,
we'd like to hear your answers. What what do you
think of the possibility of intelligence network involvement or state
sponsorship of ISIS? And I'm also interested, what do you
think the future ELIZIS is? Right now, it looks like
(47:04):
the organization is not thriving, and it looks like superpowers
or states or other organizations that would normally be against
one another, maybe banding together to combat ISIS and uh,
but one once it's quelled or fragmented, what comes next?
What happens next? That's always the question with the Middle East,
(47:27):
isn't it? Well, I guess that's always the question with
Geoe politics in general. Right, so right to us, Let
us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are conspiracy stuff. You can check out every podcast
that Noel, Matt and I have ever done on our website.
Stuff they don't want you to know dot com. And
before we go, some of you have already written to us.
(47:49):
And that's why we're gonna go into this little space
that we like to call shout at corners. First shout
out of the day goes to jag Lulu or at
Square Moon. She says, quote, your fake British accent is
(48:10):
so bad that it's too good. You have to do
the next shout out, shout out in a British accent,
so that you're not doing that well. Because I don't
know if she was talking to me or to you.
Was that you, Ben? Was that you who butchered the
British accent? Don't look at me that way. Think it
was pretty sure. Guys, I do sketch comedy. Of course,
all my accents are based on what will work in
(48:31):
sketch comedy. I'm not trying to go to Heathrow and impersonate, Okay,
because this is a listener driven show and it appears
my producers and co hosts have put me in one
hell of a corner, a shout out corner. It's I'm
getting shouted at. I will be after this. What kind
(48:53):
of guys, What kind of British accent do you want?
Do you want more posh? Do you want more Michael Caine?
Do your Michael Caine? Okay, you're my, but more Michael
Kaye's tamrible? Can you do Michael Caine from the streets? Uh?
Cock me, Michael Kaine. You know what, guys, I'm just
gonna do just just a generic, terrible British accent. Apologies
(49:15):
to everyone here here as well as the royal family,
but you're welcome you God save the Queen? Oh gosh, yeah,
I don't know. Do you think this will mean the
Queen stops listening to our show? You have my main
She'll dive shock Okay, I'll second shout out goes to
Kelsey Griffin. Geeky Kelsey shout out to conspiracy stuff for
(49:36):
getting me through like eighteen hours of driving this week.
And have you done I'm going Cockney, have you done
one on cryptids yet? So? Yeah? Have we done one
on cryptids? That man, that's embarrassing. That was sort of
like a Kiwi British hybrid. I'm having I'm having trouble
because I've been working on my Kiwi accent. It's a sticky,
(49:57):
sticky weeky, sticky week stik. What's the beats? Let's watch
out for bats. Oh that's how that offended everyone. No,
not yet. If anything, um, someone with a decent British
accent right in and tell tell me, I'll do it.
And you know, technically, if you consider it from an
(50:17):
historical standpoint, then guys, no, Matt, we're the ones with
the accent because English came from England, so really weird.
I'm just trying to get over my my terrible American accent.
We are the music makers and we are the dreamers
of dreams. So next we have one from Sean at
Doctor Hypno toad is that one of those toads that
(50:41):
when you look at it makes you that's a Futurama reference.
Are you serious? He's like the best character in Future
and he's the third best character in Futurama. It goes
Dr Zoidberg Bender and then the hypno toad. Sean says
that he was the one who wrote in and asked
us to do an episode on big Farmer conspiration excuse,
which we did. Yeah, thank you so much for writing in, Sean,
(51:03):
And you know, I appreciate that because I remember we
were looking for we were asking ourselves who wrote in
and recommended that excellent topic for us. So now the
truth is revealed, and this concludes this installment of Shout
Out Corner? Did you want to be like Sean and
all of the other wonderful human beings that wrote into
(51:26):
us to give us an idea for a topic. We're
getting emails all the time, thank you so much for
writing in. If we haven't responded yet, hopefully we will
get to that very very soon. Take us to task.
Call us a bunch of jerks, you know we're glutton's
for that stuff. Just just dish it, kidding And you
can send those emails to Jonathan dot Strickland at how
(51:47):
stuff works dot com or if you want to send
us nice things. Yes, you can send those two conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com.
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.