A top State Department official said the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has a “dark, nasty” online presence and that the U.S. needed to be more aggressive to counter the group on social media.
“The space that ISIL is in online — that social media space — is a dark, nasty space,” Richard Stengel, the department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, told MSNBC on Friday, using an alternate name for the group.
{mosads}ISIS has used its presence online as a recruitment tool, including multiple videos showing beheadings of U.S. and British citizens.
Stengel said the U.S. faced a challenge trying to reach out to disaffected young men from the Middle East who may be drawn to support ISIS.
Stengel defended the State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, which uses online and social media tools including Twitter, YouTube and other platforms to counter terrorist propaganda.
The State Department program, which is carried out in a number of languages, has been criticized by some as ineffective. Others have questioned the program’s tone.
One YouTube video titled “Welcome to the ‘Islamic State’ Land” is set up as a mocking travel video, with graphic images of violence the group has carried out.
“If we are contesting that space, if we are competing in that space, there will be times when we do things that mirror that darkness,” said Stengel. “But that is how to reach the people that it is appealing to.”
Stengel said the program is focused at reaching a small group of disaffected young men, adding that the vast majority of the Muslim community finds the group abhorrent.
“There are actually ways where we are trying to prevent the message from getting out there, from people receiving it,” Stengel said. “But again we also still do try through the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications to talk to those young men and say, ‘turn away, this isn’t worth it.’
“I think we have to speak in that same voice,” he added. “I mean, it can’t be the stentorian voice of the U.S. government. It has to be a voice that they understand.”