The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is an idiosyncratic creation of Iran’s revolutionary class that now sits at the centre of the modern Iranian state. In 1979, the Islamic constitution established the group as an “ideological army” — in deliberate …
Who will rule Twitter next?
It is often declared that Twitter is not real life; too rarely does anyone add, because it’s far more important. As the primary vector for the construction and dissemination of political narratives, social media has become the central battleground where …
How the media whitewashed Isis brides
“Send the money now brother, we can’t wait. We are living with the Kafir [infidel] pigs.” This was one of hundreds of text messages I received in 2020 from Isis women living in Syria’s miserable al-Hol prison camp. As part …
The seductive horror of extremist violence
There is something horribly seductive about the spectacle of extreme violence: it’s disgusting, gut-wrenching, appalling. It’s also impossibly compelling in its extremity and strangeness: just look at it.
Anyone who builds a career out of watching such material, whether it’s …
Don’t fall for the Isis Matchmaker
I’ll never forget the moment I uncovered Umm Muthanna Al-Britannia’s real name. Back in early 2015, she was a brazen British propagandist and recruiter for the Islamic State. I’d been tracking her for months, almost marvelling at her shamelessness: she …
The Shamima Begum delusion
Our national conversation on Shamima Begum, which ebbs and flows according to the imperatives of Begum’s legal team and a simultaneously cynical and naïve mass media, is saturated in bullshit. For her detractors, the 23-year-old East-London runaway is a danger …
The rise of Jihadi prison gangs
By the last count, there were more than 200 convicted terrorists — most Islamist, but some far-Right — currently housed at Her Majesty’s pleasure in British prisons, with a further 200 or so convicted of other offences but deemed similarly …
The Jihadists of the Caribbean
“He’s a truly spiritual person,” Fuad Abu Bakr told me. He was referring to his father, Yasin, the notorious Trinidadian militant who led the first and only Islamist insurrection ever attempted in a Western democracy. We were standing in front …
The men who watch gore porn
In his review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a spectacularly violent horror film that set the stage for the even more spectacularly violent slasher films of the Eighties, David J. Hogan described it, approvingly, in this way:
“The most affecting …
Jihadi John created online censorship
It’s unclear how far Elon Musk’s pledge to restore free speech to Twitter will go; it wasn’t long ago that you could easily stumble upon entire ecosystems of online jihadis and their fanboys on the site. As one surrealist Twitter …
