The Terrorist Picture: Decoding the Islamic State’s Picture-Propaganda
By Charlie Winter
Hurst Publishers, 2022
Located throughout the broader context of political communication and visible illustration, Charlie Winter’s e book, The Terrorist Picture, presents an exhaustive and good account of the Islamic State’s use of pictures to think about, convey, and assemble actuality in view of its ideological and strategic purpose(s). For anybody (un)conversant in 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, consultants or practitioners, the simplicity and directness of its writing, supported by a logically apt construction, makes it extremely readable and probably 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 targets, and sphere of affect – readers encounter the illustration of the Islamic State (and its antagonists) by means of photo-propaganda. This visible illustration finally produces very best worlds that are diametrically structured by two “international themes” of Jihad and Khilafah (Caliphate), warfare(time) and peace(time), self and others. This binary of warfare and peace (see Barkawi’s work for a superb 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 wherein the Islamic State emerged and visualises itself as a major, if not the chosen, prosecutor of this protracted warfare (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 an everlasting 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 means 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 particularly, as Winter exhibits, accentuates the connection between pictures and warfare, revealing essential understandings of time, geography, reminiscence, and the function of non-combatants corresponding to photographers. A number of photograph angles, corresponding to ‘photographs from under and out of focus’ to focus on 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 similar time episodic (intervals and ruptures) (Chukwuma 2021), shifting between totally different battle instances and moments of peace, stocktaking and recuperation. These photographs, additionally, try to render a coherent depiction of the “good life” throughout 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 lifeless photographers illustrates their symbolic and strategic worth as propagandists and jihadists, whereas the visualisation of dying by means of brutal execution pictures – presided over by the enduring “executioner” (Hansen 2014) – is an unassailable forte of the group’s communication technique and visible propaganda, wherein “the executioner” and “the condemned” embody new and historic antagonisms.
Along with the above, Winter’s unpacking of the Khilafah theme as an 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 (corresponding to 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 means of brutal strategies. The victimization body, which positions the Islamic State as a sufferer of the enemy’s violence and wanton destruction, supplies not less than 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 warfare 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 usually concentrating 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, notably by utilising insights from Barthesian semiotics in exploring the totally different layers of which means related to photographs produced by the Islamic State to supply a textured story of its visible universe. This methodological method is enhanced by the in depth corpus from which the evaluation within the e book emanates. This contains 5,441 photo-reports (or tarir musawwar) which include 20,788 photographs printed on the Islamic State’s social networking platform Telegram between 2015 and 2017, overlaying the interval of the rise and decline of the group. The Terrorist Picture, then, presents unbelievable insights for future work across the visible politics of safety, discourse and illustration, and, certainly, for a comparative research of the representational strategies utilized by totally different terrorist teams, or for evaluating these with these utilized by state actors.
In sum, that is a formidable and worthwhile e book appropriate for this platform’s viewers. It utilises a wealth of major knowledge and methodological finesse in providing an interesting tapestry of the Islamic State’s photo-propaganda to render seen its cultural and ideological underpinnings. The e book delivers on these modest targets (and extra): first, it presents a richly detailed but complete description of how the Islamic State enchantment politically and emotionally to totally different audiences together with its devotees, adversaries, and the world at massive. Second, the e book advances the research of photo-propaganda in a major manner, notably by zoning in on a non-state actor. Additionally, by drawing upon thematic community and semiotic evaluation it compellingly demonstrates the multi-layered which 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 could be collected, studied, and analysed in a scientific manner. All of this make Winter’s e book an enormous success and, I’m positive, will obtain the eye it deserves within the educational neighborhood and past.
References
Barkawi Tarak. 2016. “Decolonising warfare.” European Journal of Worldwide Safety 1 (2): 199-214
Campbell David. 2003. “Cultural governance and pictorial resistance: reflections on the imaging of warfare.” Evaluate 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.” Vital Research on Terrorism 14 (4): 421-424
Hansen Lene. 2014. “How photographs make world politics: Worldwide icons and the case of Abu Ghraib.” Evaluate 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, Warfare 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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