CINCINNATI – At first blush, the online magazine looks like any other slick electronic publication. The color graphics are eye-catching, the production values are good, and the layout could have been done by a design school grad.
Even the magazine’s name â?? Inspire â?? suggests the content could be about improving your health, or maybe gardening.
It’s not.
Page 62 features an article titled “Car Bombs Inside America,” with a how-to guide for building bombs in your kitchen. Page 15 promotes the setting of forest fires in America as part of an “arson jihad.” And page 33 boasts a first-person account of “Why I Joined al-Qaida.”
Welcome to the world of the modern-day jihadi recruiter, where an Islamic radical makes a pitch to potential converts with the fervor of a religious zealot and the skill of a Madison Avenue ad executive.
The FBI says those recruiters found a willing subject in Green Township, just outside of Cincinnati, sometime last year, when 20-year-old Christopher Cornell took a deep dive into the Internet’s pool of pro-jihadi videos and propaganda.
Cornell’s journey ended with his arrest last week on charges of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. But it appears to have begun, as it has for thousands of others around the world, with the click of a mouse.
The far reach of the Internet gives jihadis an opportunity to connect to a global audience of lost, disaffected young people who, experts say, are particularly susceptible to their message. By some estimates, foreign recruits from Western nations now account for more than 5 percent of those fighting for the Islamic State militant group, which also uses the acronyms ISIL and ISIS.
“The phenomena of social media recruitment is key,” said Ed Bridgeman, a criminal justice professor at the University of Cincinnati. “There’s an al-Qaeda and ISIS recruiter in every living room now, potentially.”
The recruiter’s message is appalling to most, but for some, it carries the promise of belonging and purpose, of being part of something more valuable than even their own lives.
For someone like Cornell, who appears to have had few friends and a penchant for anti-government conspiracy theories, the radical Islam he discovered online might have resonated, experts say.
“This guy’s story is very typical,” said Max Abrahms, a Northeastern University professor who specializes in terrorism. “They don’t come up with these ideas on their own, and it’s not surprising he’d be based in Ohio. The Internet is everywhere.
“It’s exactly what al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are shooting for.”
SEEKING MEANING IN LIFE
Cornell’s family said he converted to Islam sometime after graduating from Oak Hills High School in 2012, grew a long beard and changed his name to Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. According to the FBI, he soon became a willing participant in the jihadi propaganda machine, posting videos and advocating attacks on American soil.
In one message the FBI says it intercepted, Cornell wrote, “I believe that we should just wage jihad under our own orders.”
Abrahms said the ideology that attracts someone like Cornell, who wasn’t raised in the Muslim faith, often is less important than the belief the ideology will somehow bring meaning to the person’s life.
Terrorist groups have relied on that appeal for generations, whether it was the anarchists of a century ago, left-wing radicals in the 1960s or right-wing radicals, such as Timothy McVeigh, in the 1990s.
“Islamist thinking is really the ideology du jour,” Abrahms said.
Among the differences today are the tools of the recruiter’s trade. The Internet is full of opportunities to share and package propaganda in ways never before possible.
Hard-core believers and sociopaths can find inspiration from grisly videos of beheadings and executions. The alienated and impoverished might feel kinship with Islamist rappers who extol the virtues of violent jihad.
Others, including non-Muslims, could find common ground with anti-government rants or the gussied-up content found in magazines like Inspire, which is the official publication of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The goal of all those approaches is the same: recruit people to kill the enemies of radical Islam. It’s just that sometimes the message sounds like a primal scream, and sometimes like reasoned debate.
“You can recruit people who aren’t necessarily Muslim. You can make it look like we’re fighting the same fight,” said Ian Amit, a vice president at ZeroFOX, a social media risk management company.
“It’s easy to appeal to other grievances, other causes, and use that as a hook,” he said. “I would compare it to marketing. If you’re a company and your goal is to market to a certain audience, you’re going to look for what messaging works.”
VIOLENT MESSAGE, SLEAKER LOOK
Inspire magazine is a case study in selling radical Islam. Scrolling through the pages, it could be easily mistaken for any number of mainstream publications.
Slow down and read the content, however, and it’s a different story.
A question and answer feature includes a reader’s request for advice on how to kill himself in battle. “I have a desire to give my life in the Way of Allah â?¦ and get martyred,” he writes.
The car bomb article is a four-page, step-by-step primer on not only how to build the bomb, but how to kill the most people with it. “The right man in the right place devastates the enemy,” the writer says. “CHOOSE WISELY.”
The words appear over a photo of a busy intersection in an American city.
Much of the jihadi online material, at Insight and elsewhere, focuses not on bringing recruits to the Middle East, but on encouraging them to strike close to home as a so-called “lone wolf” terrorist.
The FBI says that appears to have been Cornell’s goal when he purchased two semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition at a gun store Wednesday morning.
FBI agents, fearing he might follow through with his alleged online talk of jihad, arrested him in the parking lot. He now faces trial in federal court and, if convicted, decades in prison.
Whether he actually would have waged jihad isn’t known, of course. But American homeland security officials fear others one day will, just as the Boston Marathon bombers did two years ago and the assassins who killed staff members at a satirical newspaper in Paris did two weeks ago.
“The perception is there are shadowy cells out there,” said Robert McFadden, senior vice president of the Soufan Group, a New York firm that advises companies on terrorism and security.
But he said the bigger threat may be from “the earnest self-recruit,” the guy living down the street who, for reasons all his own, has been radicalized by Islamist propaganda.
“It’s so readily available on the Internet,” McFadden said. “Those kind of potent images can have an impact on a young life.”
Contributing: Kimball Perry of The Enquirer
Copyright 2015USAToday
Read the original story: Terror groups ramp up online marketing to find recruits
Terror groups ramp up online marketing to find recruits
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