The State Department is touting what it believes is a “vital” stage in its propaganda campaign against ISIS recruitment, releasing a new video attempting to parody the ISIS online recruitment videos.
The “Think again, turn away” campaign is aimed at discouraging Westerners from going off to join ISIS, showing images of mosques blowing up and people being decapitated, something Sen. Ted Cruz (R – TX) called “bizarre.”
Some Congressmen are pushing for a propaganda campaign that is a bit more focused and a lot more serious than the parody-style video, which ends by declaring “travel is inexpensive, because you won’t need a return ticket.”
Yet past efforts at propagandizing that the US has carried out during the global war on terror have been similarly unsuccessful, and enormously expensive. The US government simply isn’t very good at these sort of marketing campaigns that try to manufacture a positive view for US war efforts, or a negative view for their enemy of the moment.
Though officials will doubtless continue to hype the large numbers of Westerners joining ISIS as a justification for the campaign, there is no reason to think a single would-be ISIS recruit will be dissuaded because the State Department is making fun of them.
Hmmm…Ted Cruz and “bizarre” in the same sentence – appropriate juxtaposition, Ditz. Even more so when Cruz utters it himself.
As for "US government simply isn’t very good at these sort of marketing campaigns that try to manufacture a positive view for US war efforts" I have to disagree. The US, through the MSM and many cable outlets are masters at tweaking the American psyche so that a majority of Americans polled support the push for more war and adventure in the ME, e.g., the wall-to-wall reporting and "empathy laden" pieces of the beheadings, inflaming the easily manipulated emotions of Joe/Josette Sixpack, even to the extreme of dragging the mother of one of them out to use as a prop (my personal opinion).
As for the polls, maybe they just ask the same people…maybe they just make up the poll results to prop the plan…I wouldn't put it past them.
the parody-style video, which ends by declaring “travel is inexpensive, because you won’t need a return ticket.”
You got to be kidding me? IS fighters are there not because they got payed at the end of the month, they are there the be martyrs, they will love to be killed there, they even have videos of their dead