Mother Jones
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Here’s one way the US government is trying to combat terrorism without the use of controversial explosions. A tiny portion of your tax dollars—just a few million dollars annually—is funding the State Department’s trolling of jihadists on Twitter.
One of the State Department’s official (and verified) Twitter accounts, called “Think AgainTurn Away” and going by the handle @ThinkAgain_DOS, is devoted to speaking “some truths about terrorism” online. If you follow the account, you’ll notice that this truth often manifests itself in the form of the State Department directly tweeting at Islamists and their supporters in English, and countering their beliefs.
This kind of thing isn’t unusual for the State Department. The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications was established in 2010 to coordinate messaging to target violent extremism on the internet, especially that of Al Qaeda and affiliates. CSCC (an interagency center that is housed at State) initially focused on non-English online forums where the State Department saw jihadists attempting to recruit and raise money (message boards, comments on Al Jazeera Talk, etc.) Late last year, CSCC made a move into English-language websites, with the small team of analysts and microbloggers expanding their fight on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere, under the banner of the US State Department. @ThinkAgain_DOS is just one of their tools in this digital-outreach turf war. (CSCC has used the phrase “Think again. Turn away” on other online posts.) Here’s a sample:
.@NasserJan2 You can best show your sincerity by not murdering women and children with suicide bombers #thinkagainturnaway
— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS)
.@s7bhijratain teaching small, innocent children how to kill & get killed isn’t Jihad. Where is your moral judgment? #thinkagainturnaway
— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS)
.@AlNusrah Do they know why #alqaeda is killing them while selling oil to #Assad? #thinkagainturnaway
— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS)
(Here is the context for the Al Qaeda-Assad oil accusations.)
See original article here:
The State Department Is Actively Trolling Terrorists on Twitter
