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More and more ISIS resembles the Nazis in Nazi Germany and how they treated occupied terrority. Vox has a report on how its brutality is institutionalized, has a point — and may be working. Yours truly is a World War II buff and is now reading “Hitler: A Study in Tyranny” by John Toland. I read reports like this and there is a sense of deja vu.
To wit:
Scattered reports from inside ISIS-controlled territory have painted an awful picture of life under the militant group’s rule. But a brand-new UN report, compiled from interviews with 300 people who have lived or currently are living in ISIS-controlled Syria, gives us a systematic look at the militant group’s reign.
And it is horrifying.
This isn’t just because the behavior documented is terrible, though it is. It’s that the UN report documents a strategy, not just random brutality or religious fanaticism. ISIS’s ultraviolence is designed to cement its rule by terrifying the population into submission. And it might be working.
For instance:
Consider this testimony from an anonymous father living in Deir ez Zor, in the eastern part of the country.
Walking with his son, he saw two men strung up on a cross. “Both victims’ hands were tied to each side of the improvised cross,” the man reports. “I went to read the placards. On the first one it read, ‘This is the fate of those who fight against us.'”
He somehow had to explain this to his child. “I realized that my 7-year-old son was next to me, still holding my hand and watching this horrifying scene. He later asked me, ‘Why were they there? Why was their blood on the heads and bodies?’ I had to lie to him and say they were waiting for ambulances to come and rescue them.”
According to the UN, this terrible public killing is terrifyingly common: “ISIS has beheaded, shot and stoned men, women and children in public spaces in towns and villages across northeastern Syria.” UN investigators found a consistent pattern, where ISIS “encourages” citizens to attend public executions — often at gunpoint.
“Following the killings, the corpses are placed on public display, often on crosses, for up to three days, serving as a warning to local residents,” the UN reports. “Witnesses saw scenes of still-bleeding bodies hanging from crosses and of heads placed on spikes along park railings.”
This includes genocide, rape, selling women into slavery, force-to-watch executions with dead (often beheaded) bodies displayed and utterly merciless murders of children (yes they are beheaded according to some reports).
More deja vu:
“Following the killings, the corpses are placed on public display, often on crosses, for up to three days, serving as a warning to local residents,” the UN reports. “Witnesses saw scenes of still-bleeding bodies hanging from crosses and of heads placed on spikes along park railings.”
There does seem to be one difference.
The Nazis tried to mask at least some of their mercilessness and brutalities from the world.
ISIS touts theirs on social media.
It has become the largest producer of snuff films, the most widely viewed snuff films in world history.
This all seems utterly inhuman. But it’s not random. Unlike some human rights abusers, ISIS doesn’t hide its brutality — in fact, it makes the horror impossible to ignore. There’s a terrible logic at work here. “By publicizing its brutality,” the UN concludes, “the so-called ISIS seeks to convey its authority over its areas of control, to show its strength to attract recruits, and to threaten any individuals, groups or States that challenge its ideology.”
And:
1. It helps recruit. There are some people particularly in their early to mid-twenties who are excited by violence and what better way then to do it for a (warped) cause?
2. It faces divided enemies. The world is partially responding but even in the United States we now see World War II Republican isolationists replaced by some Democratic isolationists who repeat the same slogans warning about a bigger war to stop ISIS that they did during the Vietnam and Iraq wars’ heights of controversy. They’e stuck in political sloganeering belonging to the late sixties and early 21st century eras — when what the world is now seeing, highly trumpted by those doing the murdering, is a return to the kind of merciless butchery the world watched unfold with horror in the late thirties and early 40s.
What was that quote about those who ignore history again?
Oh yes, there are various versions.
All of them correct.
Graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.