State Dept. Unveils Tactics for Countering ISIS: 'Nuturing and Empowering...Positive Messengers'

Brittany M. Hughes | January 8, 2016
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In the latest installment of the “Hugs, Not Drugs” approach to dealing with violent terrorists bent on world domination, the Obama administration unveiled another part of its brilliant and surefire strategy for combating ISIS jihadists Friday in its new “Center for Global Engagement.”

According to the State Department, the shiny new bureaucratic entity will help dismantle terrorists by “empowering and enabling” people to speak out against terrorist groups, “effectively utilize social media” to attack Muslim extremists and “offer positive alternatives” to keep people from strapping on suicide vests and heading to the closest bus full of school children.

From the State Department’s press release:

The State Department is revamping its counter-violent-extremist communications efforts through a new Global Engagement Center. This center will more effectively coordinate, integrate and synchronize messaging to foreign audiences that undermines the disinformation espoused by violent extremist groups, including ISIL and al-Qaeda, and that offers positive alternatives.

The center will focus more on empowering and enabling partners, governmental and non-governmental, who are able to speak out against these groups and provide an alternative to ISIL’s nihilistic vision. To that end, the center will offer services ranging from planning thematic social media campaigns to providing factual information that counters-disinformation to building capacity for third parties to effectively utilize social media to research and evaluation.



Part of the GEC’s mission will revolve around “Building narratives around thematic campaigns on the misdeeds of our enemy (e.g., poor governance, abuse of women, narratives of defectors), not the daily news cycle,” and “Nurturing and empowering a global network of positive messengers.”

The outline also includes a lot of really important-sounding phrases that are otherwise completely void of obvious substance, such as “Establishing and implementing a campaign-focused culture” and “Drawing upon data and metrics to develop, test, and evaluate themes, messages, and messengers.”

So there you have it, folks -- the United States’ foolproof strategy to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. We’re going to Tweet them to death.

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