ICSVE's Speckhard on Fighting ISIS Using Social Media (Audio)

attack in nineteen months. Here to tell us more and help us understand this is Dr Anne Speccard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, is also the director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism and the author of the newly released book Isis Defectors Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. Dr Speccard, thanks very much for being with us. You're welcome to

um and what I oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say, first give us your reaction and your thoughts about the attack in Nice. My thoughts, Pim, are that isis is winning on the internet, and we've got to extend the battlefield a lot of people are talking about military strikes. We are fighting in Syria and Iraq. We're degrading Isis's ability to sell oil. We've degraded their taxable territory.

They're losing their territory. But over the last year I've been interviewing with my partner am At Yala thirty eight Isister Factors, and they tell us that if they lose their territory, they're just going to go underground and be a guerrilla urban warfare group. So they're not going away, and they have such internet and video capabilities. Last night, Ahmat found a video on telegram. Well actually I found it before, but he showed it to me yesterday, and

it's just chilling. When you look at their cape of abilities, it looks like Madison Avenue advertising and Hollywood Blockbuster, and it's inspiring exactly the kind of attacks that just took place in these In fact, in France they showed uh being loaded with we'll look to me like liquid flammable bombs. They showed New York and showed someone strapping on a

suicide vest and going out in the crowd. So these were real life depictions of parist attacks in the West, trying to inspire cadres from all over the world to attack, and ISIS spokesman called for attacks exactly like this before Ramadan had said during Ramadan and that was the last month, UH, that Muslims all over the world should attack the West, and he called for the same in two thousand and fourteen. And ISIS is on steroids on the internet, and we

need to fight them. And that's what we're trying to do in our little think tank. We UM. We're taking the ISIS defector interviews and their videos, were cutting them down to short videos clips and putting them out to fight with our propaganda to say, here's the truth. Here's someone who's been on the inside that says, this organization is not Islamic. Don't come here, don't join. You'll have to rape and steal and do things that are against Islam if you do, and you won't get out. If

you try to get out, they'll kill you. And but we we need to fight back. That's all I can say. And within within hours ISIS had put up propaganda posters that again we're done so well. Um. They were photoshopped and they showed London with ISIS cadres UH blooming over the skyline and the caption was we are here for New York. They had um followers of the Cross will hunt you down in the American streets, and it just went on and on with what they were putting out.

So any disturbed individual that's watching this can jump on the bandwagon and say, oh, I can use my car, my truck as a as a weapon. And as we know in the US, weapons aren't hard to get anyway, Dr Speccard. Just as a note, no organized group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, although, as you say, online accounts associated with the Islamic State and al Qaeda

have cheered this act of violence and terror. Can you tell us a little bit about how the resources are made available for these organizations to build these kinds of

videos promote them. Uh, they must have a cadre of technology experts to do so, you know, Kim, I've been watching this for a long time, and especially over the last year as we started our project, because I've interviewed almost five terrorists now and in the last year we went after ISIS and I didn't think that we would get to interview them, and it's the first time of videotaped. So here we have two to three hour in depth interviews with ISIS defectors, and we have to cut them

down to shark video clips. So we're working with Arabic video editors that are subtitling and producing our product, which you can see on YouTube under our I C s C M CEO. But what I learned was that Syria. I thought all this capability was coming from the West, that it's not true. Syria was well known as being the top video editors in the area. So they've just collopted what was already there. This is taking stock. I'm pim Fox. My co host Kathleen Hayes is on vacation.

Joining us now is Dr Ann Speckhard, Adjunct Associate Professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, also the director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, and Dr Speckhard is also the author of the newly released book entitled ISIS Defectors Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. We've just been listening to President Obama offering his comments

at the White House. He was speaking at a reception for the Diplomatic Corps in the East Room of the White House, and he mentioned specifically the ambassador to the United States from France, Ambassador are No, pledging the solidarity of the United States with France and with the French people. He spoke in general terms, also about foreign policy and

the battle against extremism. Dr Speccard in hearing some of the president's comments, were you surprised that it almost became a foreign policy statement as as much as a spirit of condolence? Yeah, he did. Uh. You spend a little time praising what he'd done over the last seven and a half years, which to me, I'm not sure it belongs in that statement, but his statement of condolences. Uh,

I sure appreciate. I've been too many of the Steel days. Uh. My husband is a retired US ambassador, so we've been too many of those kind of functions. And you know, I think that's the message that has to get across, that we're extending our hand, we're sorrowful, and we do need to stand united in all of our countries because ISIS wants to divide us and they want us to hate our Muslim population. And the truth is, nine percent of Muslims thinks that the ideology of ISIS is not Islam,

and that it's an anathma. They don't accept it, they don't support it, they don't want it. But if groups like this managed to divide our societies, then more troubled and disturbed people will start logging into their internet seduction and possibly fall for it. The president specifically mentioned previous attacks in countries such as Turkey, Iraqa, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia, and also noting that those attacks killed many Muslims as well.

In your analysis, and you're speaking with the terrorists, what have you found, how do they feel about the taking of lives of fellow Muslims. Well. In their rhetoric, they will say things like in their Sharia teachers and Isis will tell them ani Muslim that's killed. If he was righteous and good Muslim, he goes immediately to paradise as martyr and wins other rewards of martyrdom. If he was not, then basically to hell with him. And they don't care.

But individually, when we've talked to the factors, they're very disturbed by their fellow Muslims being killed. Um, we had many people tell us about the massacre of one of the tribes. It was a Sunni tribe in Syria, Al Shitad and Isis went after them and killed thousands of them, killed the women and children. The van and UH sunny Isis cadres told us that they had nightmares afterwards. They couldn't believe that they participated in that. They felt it

was long. We also had a guard of sex slaves, and we have his YouTube video up on our site UH speaking about guarding four hundred and seventy five women that were being held for systematic rape basically and that there were Sunni women among these and it was so shocking to them. Um to take the Uzds. It was also shocking and horrible because but Isis caused the devil worshippers, so you can somehow other them. But when it was

Sunni women, they were like, what's going on? So when they saw the realities of how Isis does things, they're disturbed. And we heard this often. I just readicated someone al Shabab cadres saying the same thing. You know, how can they kill how can they kill Muslims? How can't be part of this group? The president also spoken economic and political terms, speaking about economic progress, offering health benefits, education, equality,

Are those uh? Are those points likely to resonate with with potential terrorists or with people that the president is seeking to uh to speak to. Well, I don't know if France what really wants to hear that right now, but I'll tell you the truth. I lived in Belgium for seven years and amid hundreds of interviews with North Africans living in Belgium and in France, and many of them told me about how different franchised they were and how they they didn't feel that they could become a

part of normal society. That they went for job interviews and they were turned away. Um, they couldn't rent apartments and except in their ghetto wised areas. So even if they tried to integrate themselves into society, uh, they found it was impossible. And I particularly remember a French North African telling me liberty egalle tay and fraternity is not

for us. And if they are feeling that way and that it's based in any reality, uh, that's troublesome because that's exactly what isis will come and try to take advantage of all of these terrorist groups, try to take advantage of whatever local politics are not serving certain groups of people, and uh, you know, and here we see a North African was the attacker in Crunch, which is

very sad. The President also spoke about how we should not give into fear or be divided by religion and should not do the bidding of the of the terrorists. Do you think that that we still are having that debate or are are we in a sense playing into

the terrorist hands? Well? I hate to say it, but I think Donald Trump when he made his statements about we shouldn't let Muslims into our country, and you raised a lot of questions about the loyalty of Muslims, that again plays into the tarists hands because ordinary Muslims that

don't believe that is societeology. I mean, you can text scriptures out of any religion or twist them and say this is the true religion and that's what isis and al Qaeda do So when someone that's not prominent says we can't trust ordinary Muslims, we're playing into their hands because we're alienating the part of our society which we really should be saying. We know those groups are trying to seduce your children. How can we help you? Thank

you very much. Dr Ann Speckhard is ADGECT Associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, and the author of ISIS Defectors. This is Bloomberg.