Propaganda of The Deed in The Digital Age

Erika Dennery

Professor Shirk

Global Politics of Terrorism

February 25th, 2018

Propaganda of The Deed in The Digital Age

In the late 19th century propaganda of the deed was a technique introduced by anarchists attempting to promote their cause; fighting against the hierarchy of the government. The anarchists believed that it was actions such as assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, and more, that would trigger a revolution and thus they committed crimes that created mass panic and fear. These acts upset everything from ideas and social relations to property, and this is almost identical to the tactics that Al-Qaeda and ISIS use today by utilizing the media to their advantage in order to creating mass hysteria.

            Perhaps the most prominent example of a modern use of propaganda of the deed by Al-Qaeda is the attacks on September 11, 2001. These attacks changed the perception of Islam in an instant and created extreme unrest amongst social relations within the United States. Along with this, the Islamic State uses propaganda of the deed in order to promote and spread its ideas to new recruits through it’s exploitation of social media. It is because of this propaganda that terrorist groups today can create a story favorable to their group when discussing certain acts of terror and they can control the ways in which the general public reacts to any fear inducing situation that they create.

The anarchists created similar feelings of terror through the many assassinations that they perpetrated and the ways in which they attempted to spark a revolution. Regardless of the fact that the anarchists in the 1900’s did not have the media to shape the ways in which the public reacted to their brutal actions, they were able to utilize newspapers and pamphlets to inflict fear. Therefore, as technology has progressed the techniques of terrorism have progressed with it, along with the ways in which fear can be perpetuated for longer amounts of time due to the spread of the media. Though members of ISIS may not be considered anarchists per say, their techniques of inflicting terror mimic that of the anarchists through their use of propaganda of the deed.

          Returning to the example of the 9/11 attacks, in the aftermath of the attacks ISIS propagandists told their story on an international level as a way to utilize the fear that they had created and allow it to fester in the minds of those across the globe and give legitimacy to their threat. Similar to the anarchists, the goal of ISIS is to change their government and its hierarchy and in order to do this, members of ISIS understand that they must have full control over what is said about the acts that they commit and how they are portrayed in the media; this is part of the reason why the movement has been so successful and has continued on for so long. By making propaganda of the deed a major priority, ISIS has supplied the general public with their claims and elicited fear among many simply by mastering the use of the modern day propaganda outlet: the media.

          ISIS recognizes what it is doing and by spreading its propaganda as widely as possible through the use of the internet it is extremely apparent that it’s members understand how to set propaganda traps for our government and media to fall directly into. Along with this, ISIS relies on the fact that their acts are provoking enough to warrant a response from the media and thus they know exactly how to keep the cycle of propaganda going. Recognizing that ISIS is simply using tactics that we have seen over a hundred years ago should be comforting and should allow us to figure out how to combat their propaganda effectively and not get stuck in the traps they keep setting for us. Propaganda of the deed did not end back in the early 1900’s when the anarchist movement ended; accepting that the methods of ISIS are not new is the first step that can be taken to combat their familiar tactics.