Alberto Fernandez is the coordinator of the CSCC. The CSCC's goal is to undermine the jihadist message and make it less appealing to potential recruits.
What we do is counter-messaging. We’re the guys in the political campaign that [do] negative advertising. We’re in people’s faces.”
Fernandez says the U.S. doesn't have a compelling counter-narrative. Nor does it have "fanboys" to spread its message. He describes the fanboys as "dedicated, self-sufficient and occasionally funny." Cottee writes:
More crucially, ISIS has a narrative. This is often described by the group’s opponents as “superficial” or “bankrupt.” Only it isn’t. It is immensely rich. ... These fighters may be naive or stupid, but they didn’t sacrifice everything for nothing. John Horgan, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at University of Massachusetts Lowell, told me that people who join groups like ISIS “are trying to find a path, to answer a call to something, to right some perceived wrong, to do something truly meaningful with their lives.”
In addition to the narrative:
Shock and gore....is where the action is—and hence where the Internet traffic tends to go. “You’re never going to be able to match the power of their outrageousness,” Fernandez said, conceding this disadvantage.
Fernandez says the U.S. has only half a message to work with:
ISIS’s message,” he said, “is that Muslims are being killed and that they’re the solution. ... There is an appeal to violence, obviously, but there is also an appeal to the best in people, to people’s aspirations, hopes and dreams, to their deepest yearnings for identity, faith, and self-actualization. We don’t have a counter-narrative that speaks to that. What we have is half a message: ‘Don’t do this.’ But we lack the ‘do this instead.’ That’s not very exciting. The positive narrative is always more powerful, especially if it involves dressing in black like a ninja, having a cool flag, being on television, and fighting for your people.”
Cottee writes:
The more immediate, but no less intractable, challenge is to change the reality on the ground in Syria and Iraq, so that ISIS’s narrative of Sunni Muslim persecution at the hands of the Assad regime and Iranian-backed Shiite militias commands less resonance among Sunnis. One problem in countering that narrative is that some of it happens to be true: Sunni Muslims are being persecuted in Syria and Iraq.
He quotes Scott Atran's book Talking to the Enemy:
“In the long run, perhaps the most important counterterrorism measure of all is to provide alternative heroes and hopes that are more enticing and empowering than any moderating lessons or material offerings.”
If media is half the battle, the other half is the reality on the ground. Right now, Cottee says, the reality on the ground supports ISIS' narrative. Fernandez says:
“Saying ISIS is bad is not good enough. There has to be change on the ground. Messaging can shape and shade, but it can’t turn black into white.”
