ISIS - A Case Study

Feb 17, 2015 - ISIS zombies behead 21 Egyptians for the crime of being Christian

ISIS is death cult* : a perfect example of a dragon being born right before our eyes, apparently from nowhere. It's easy to see ISIS as horrible, inhuman and deeply frightening. Unless you have actually been assimilated by ISIS, this is all very obvious. If you are playing close attention to the reaction in the West, you may also be somewhat dismayed at the hollowness and lack of in-depth understanding of how ISIS stepped on to the world stage.

There is a lot of hand-wringing about it's all the fault of the Western powers (the core leadership of ISIS is not religious - it comes from former Ba'ath party members -- Saddam's party) -- a logical consequence of centuries of meddling in Muslim affairs. This is perhaps true, but only in that ISIS could not exist without an enemy, just as the Third Reich could not exist without the Jews. The US was created as not-England. France was created not by revolutionary idealism but by the coalescence of all of Europe as a military force bent on destruction of France. The birth of Nation-Dragons is usually a bloody and violent affair. They always seem to always need an enemy - if there isn't one, it's easy to dream one up. Although ISIS lusts for an all-out war with the "Crusaders", it actually focuses most of it's bloodthirsty wrath on helpless and innocent victims.

This is not to say that the "West" is guilt-free, but the industrial powers have spent the last four centuries bringing misery to the entire world -- there is nothing particularly unique about the Middle East. Virtually any atrocity can be justified as a reaction against "the West". In fact, however, ISIS justifies its horrors as a re-birth of the Caliphate which pre-dates the "West" by centuries. ISIS is as much anti-al-Qaida, anti-Shiite as it is anti-"West".

After World War II, the US slaughtered inconvenient civilians by the millions (Latin America and Indochina) in the name of anti-communism. The logic is the same and, in many cases, the methods were "up close and personal" in ways that make ISIS look positively civilized.

An excellent article appeared in the Atlantic, that gives a no-bullshit summary of what ISIS wants as viewed from the inside -- what their spokesmen actually say. The article avoids the rant so common in the West that Muslim "extremism" is some kind of mental disease ("radicalization"). Please take time to read the article - I won't be repeating it here. It is worth noting, however, that what ISIS says does not reflect its "DNA", no more than "democracy" reflects the "DNA" of the US Military. ISIS is about plain old power and corruption, an unholy marriage Saddam's reign of terror and al-Qaida rhetoric.

The really scary dragons are usually "cloned" rather than being created from scratch. In the case of ISIS, this is a very conscious effort to re-create the somewhat mythical Caliphate - the Muslim empire that was created in the generations immediately following the death of Mohammed.

Please excuse me if I quote from the Atlantic article (but please read it for yourself!!)

All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

The Atlantic article gets into the "thinking" of ISIS supporters. Everyday reality is left behind as otherwise intelligent people dispute "prophetic" teachings. Such discussions are as relevant to the real world as, say, the strategies of winning chess. Islamic "scholars" intimidate by their knowledge of a mythical world. Weaker minds, unfamiliar with the actual world, are easily sucked into an ersatz universe, which, sadly, tends to communicate with the real world with bombs and bullets. ISIS has supplanted al-Qaida by dramatically lowering its standard of religious purity. It blatantly attracts any frustrated young muslim who can carry a gun and recite a few Koranic phrases.

There are many other examples of dragons being born in this way. For example, the ultra-Zionist State of Israel re-creates the (also mythical) Biblical kingdom of David. Mussolini attempted to re-create the Roman Empire. Hitler created the "Third Reich" (The first two existing mainly in Hitler's imagination).

What makes ISIS so useful as a case study in dragons is that it is born with a crystal clear set of principals -- almost a user's manual.  ISIS (officially)  regards the Koran as the operating manual for the Caliphate, very much like American fundamentalists regard the Bible as an operating manual for the USA (fortunately they have not so far been able to seize power there). Who is and is not to be assimilated to ISIS? How is expansion and destruction of all non-ISIS territory and people to be justified and carried out? Who is to be "in charge" and how shall the leader be bound to the dragon mind, not his own human judgement (how the leader is assimilated and becomes just another zombie)? How are the personal lives and welfare of all persons (assimilated or not) to be swept aside to make the dragon grow and thrive?

The cloning of ISIS is not new, nor is the cloning of deadly dragons in modern times. Following World War II, the US and Britain cloned the fascist states they had just defeated to create puppet governments all over the world. The methods of state terror were copied from the Nazis and improved. In many cases, the actual "defeated" Nazis were transferred to the new puppet states as experts in "anti-communism".

In the name of fighting the enemy, people who have been assimilated into the thinking of the modern "dragon" nations regard elimination of their enemies by any means available as perfectly necessary and justifiable -- in fact it's common for people in these states to think they are saving other nations by killing off their citizens, stealing their resources and destroying their infrastructure. You can learn about these rules and the history of the world's most dangerous dragons in books like "How The World Works" by Noam Chomsky.

It is very important to understand that it is futile to rage against the dragons with moral arguments and criticisms. Dragons have no morality. They are like mindless diseases that exist only to exist. They live by creating zombie armies. by assimilating human beings and absolving them of inhuman cruelty, The individuals who have been assimilated remain accountable for their acts, but the dragon (such as the State) will never be held accountable. Human laws can only apply to humans and the dragon is not human. Like ISIS, the dragon-state actually seeks the death of its zombies.

If we are to slay the ISIS dragon, we must first understand its vulnerability and its strengths. Both come from the fact that the dragon is alive but not human. We cannot expect it to do human things like "reason", "give up" or "repent". But it is also incapable of being "wise". The very nature of the dragon is to suppress the most creative ideas of assimilated "leaders". They refuse to inject realism into policy, to encourage free discussion. They to kill those who dare speak truth to power. Ultimately it is the mindlessness of these dragons that spell their end.

Or so we must hope ...

A more in-depth and up-to-date analysis of ISIS appeared in the Guardian in June, 2015.

Update September 17, 2015

Russia is adding it's military might to the fight against ISIS, moving the ISIS apocalyptic myth a bit closer to reality. ISIS wants to take on the whole world in the name of Allah. From the point of ISIS, Russia's opposition moves us one step closer to Armageddon. Just sayin'.
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* There are haunting similarities between ISIS and the Jim Jones cult and dozens of other cults with death of their believers at the heart of their dogma. The big difference with ISIS is that Islam itself can be seen as a "death cult" -- Islam is all about what happens after we die.