The Terrorist Picture: Decoding the Islamic State’s Picture-Propaganda
By Charlie Winter
Hurst Publishers, 2022
Located inside the broader context of political communication and visible illustration, Charlie Winter’s e book, The Terrorist Picture, affords an exhaustive and sensible account of the Islamic State’s use of images to think about, convey, and assemble actuality in view of its ideological and strategic aim(s). For anybody (un)aware of the dialogue across the media marketing campaign methods of terrorist organisations such because the Islamic State (see for instance: Winkler, El-Damanhoury, Saleh, Hendry, and El-Karhili 2021), Winter’s e book contributes considerably to this by exploring the “cultural and doctrinal values” that underpin such visible practices (p.3). Whereas this e book speaks principally to a specialist viewers, together with terrorism researchers, college students, specialists or practitioners, the simplicity and directness of its writing, supported by a logically apt construction, makes it extremely readable and doubtlessly accessible to a wider viewers past its supposed goal.
All through Winter’s evaluation – which is pushed by two associated questions: first, to establish what the Islamic State makes use of photographs for, and second, how these articulate meanings concerning the group, its ideological and strategic objectives, and sphere of affect – readers encounter the illustration of the Islamic State (and its antagonists) by way of photo-propaganda. This visible illustration finally produces perfect worlds that are diametrically structured by two “international themes” of Jihad and Khilafah (Caliphate), battle(time) and peace(time), self and others. This binary of battle and peace (see Barkawi’s work for a wonderful critique), which is central to the group’s visible rendition, is certainly convoluted and sometimes displays a long-standing wrestle towards ‘the adversaries’ of Islam by which the Islamic State emerged and visualises itself as a major, if not the chosen, prosecutor of this protracted battle (p.17). Amongst a number of examples, to briefly illustrate, readers encounter the illustration of “the Mujahidin” (or soldier) which succinctly portrays a double picture of the Islamic State’s soldier: idealised as a relentless combatant concerned in a permanent battle on the one hand, and as a submissive devotee whose piety ensures his final victory, on the opposite (Winter 2022, pp. 46-55).
Whereas the Islamic State’s keenness for visible propaganda, whether or not by way of its notorious execution movies or fatwas delivered from minbars, is well-known, Winter demonstrates how successfully organised, although extremely centralised and hierarchical, the group’s media equipment is (see chapter two). Its photo-propaganda specifically, as Winter reveals, accentuates the connection between images and warfare, revealing essential understandings of time, geography, reminiscence, and the position of non-combatants resembling photographers. A number of picture angles, resembling ‘pictures from under and out of focus’ to spotlight the vulnerability of the soldier, intricately entangle the soldier, the photographer and the viewers on this efficiency (p.60). The jihad itself is historic (continuity) and on the identical time episodic (intervals and ruptures) (Chukwuma 2021), shifting between totally different battle occasions and moments of peace, stocktaking and recuperation. These photographs, additionally, try and render a coherent depiction of the “good life” inside the Islamic State’s managed territories; that’s, as an area characterised by untrammelled devotion and the follow of ‘true Islam’ which have to be defended from the abodes of infidels. Furthermore, the memorialisation of useless photographers illustrates their symbolic and strategic worth as propagandists and jihadists, whereas the visualisation of demise by way of brutal execution photographs – presided over by the enduring “executioner” (Hansen 2014) – is an unassailable forte of the group’s communication technique and visible propaganda, by which “the executioner” and “the condemned” embody new and historic antagonisms.
Along with the above, Winter’s unpacking of the Khilafah theme for instance salient representations of state follow, nation-building, and victimhood, present readers with copious particulars of life inside ISIS-controlled territories. One hanging instance, amongst a number of mentioned on this e book, features a {photograph} displaying members of the hisbah police taking part in road video games (resembling tug-of-war) (p.131). This certainly serves to humanise the (Islamic) state. Contrastingly, nevertheless, the brandishing of assault rifles in public areas and the implementation of Hudud (public punishment) by the state police amidst an apprehensive crowd actually reinforces the (Islamic) state supremacy, if by way of brutal methods. The victimization body, which positions the Islamic State as a sufferer of the enemy’s violence and wanton destruction, gives at the least two readings. On the one hand, such instrumentalization of losses or narratives of victimization – generally utilized by state and non-state actors in warfare – generate justification for its battle efforts or jihad. And on the opposite, highlights the horrors of the worldwide marketing campaign towards the Islamic State, which embody sustained air raids and drone strikes typically focusing on civilian areas, and lift vital questions on modern counter-terrorism methods.
These snapshots of the e book, thus, put it alongside a broader tenor of labor on visible and illustration in IR and safety that seeks to ‘meet the pictorial challenges’ by ‘acknowledging the relevance of the communicative acts that photographs carry out’ (Campbell 2003; Möller 2007). Winter’s e book certainly meets this problem, significantly by utilising insights from Barthesian semiotics in exploring the totally different layers of that means related to photographs produced by the Islamic State to supply a textured story of its visible universe. This methodological strategy is enhanced by the intensive corpus from which the evaluation within the e book emanates. This contains 5,441 photo-reports (or tarir musawwar) which include 20,788 photographs revealed on the Islamic State’s social networking platform Telegram between 2015 and 2017, protecting the interval of the rise and decline of the group. The Terrorist Picture, then, affords unbelievable insights for future work across the visible politics of safety, discourse and illustration, and, certainly, for a comparative research of the representational methods utilized by totally different terrorist teams, or for evaluating these with these utilized by state actors.
In sum, that is a powerful and worthwhile e book appropriate for this platform’s viewers. It utilises a wealth of main knowledge and methodological finesse in providing an enchanting tapestry of the Islamic State’s photo-propaganda to render seen its cultural and ideological underpinnings. The e book delivers on these modest goals (and extra): first, it presents a richly detailed but complete description of how the Islamic State attraction politically and emotionally to totally different audiences together with its devotees, adversaries, and the world at giant. Second, the e book advances the research of photo-propaganda in a major method, significantly by zoning in on a non-state actor. Additionally, by drawing upon thematic community and semiotic evaluation it compellingly demonstrates the multi-layered that means of photographs produced by the Islamic State which, by and huge, are wrought and understood inside a charged political context. Third, it makes an vital methodological contribution to visible semiotics by displaying why photographs matter and the way these will be collected, studied, and analysed in a scientific method. All of this make Winter’s e book an enormous success and, I’m positive, will obtain the eye it deserves within the tutorial neighborhood and past.
References
Barkawi Tarak. 2016. “Decolonising battle.” European Journal of Worldwide Safety 1 (2): 199-214
Campbell David. 2003. “Cultural governance and pictorial resistance: reflections on the imaging of battle.” Assessment of Worldwide Research 29 (Particular Subject): 57-73
Chukwuma Kodili H.. 2021. “9/11 and the politics of counter-terrorism: writing temporality in(to) counter-terrorism rhetoric and discourse in Nigeria.” Essential Research on Terrorism 14 (4): 421-424
Hansen Lene. 2014. “How photographs make world politics: Worldwide icons and the case of Abu Ghraib.” Assessment of Worldwide Research 1-26
Möller Frank. 2007. “Photographic interventions in post-9/11 safety coverage.” Safety Dialogue 38 (2): 179-196
Winkler Carol, Kareem El-Damanhoury, Zainab Saleh, John Hendry, and Nagham El-Karhili. 2021. “Intersections of ISIS media chief loss and media marketing campaign technique: A visible framing evaluation.” Media, Battle and Battle 14 (4): 401-418
Winter Charlie. 2022. The Terrorist Picture: Decoding the Islamic State’s Picture-Propaganda (London: Hurst and Firm)
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