Ömür Harmanşah is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois and in his article ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media he analyses the recent phenomenon of destruction of heritage played out by ISIS.
As an historian, Harmanşah, has a peculiar critical point of view on this topic that is really interesting, and it gives a lot of good ideas for further thoughts; in order to do this, there is the necessity to understand why and how ISIS’s deplore archeological heritage, and these are the two key questions that gave life to the article itself.
The definition of heritage according to the Cambridge Dictionary is “ features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance”, and based on this, the first aim of the article is to understand if the destruction of the heritage that ISIS is carrying on can be seen as an attempt to eradicate the local sense of belonging.
Secondly, the author tries to argue that the so-called Islamic State is aiming to create mediatic spectacles since it is the creator and coordinator behind the videos that go viral online.
The two objectives of the article are actually deeply related because, according to the author the power that the destruction of heritage has, is also due to the high-tech mediatic representations which are shared all over the world with just one simple “click”. This happens because even if people usually refrain from sharing on social networks images showing violence on human bodies or pornography for instance, when it comes to videos showing the demolition of a museum, or archeological sites, it seems acceptable to spread it around. Unfortunately, this is only helping ISIS in humiliating local communities and in finding new recruits through the communication of their religious fanaticism because young people without a past and without a future who have never received attention by anyone can identify themselves with the ISIS’s cause and they can suddenly "feel important". Moreover, it gives a fundamental contribution to propaganda machine created by the fighters.
It is relevant to mention the episode that took place at the Mosul Museum and at the archeological site of Kuyunjunk; in this occasion the ISIS’s fighters recorded themselves while they were destroying the sites and afterwards they published the video, that obviously became immediately viral because even if people wanted to show resistance against ISIS with the act of sharing it, they only made it more popular.
In fact, more worrisome than these acts of violence spread around, according to Harmanşah is that people (and also Professors) are completely accepting the images that ISIS publish as authentic documents, when actually no one verified them. Hence, concerning the destruction of heritage, he also affirms that there is a flourishing market of antiquities, therefore is probable that the fighters of the so-called Islamic State destroyed copies instead of the original antiquities.
All this mediatic process created around the violent acts of ISIS exists only because their main aim is the production of the show that helps them finding new fighters and at the same time create this sense of fear that people feel in their everyday life. The mediatic impact that ISIS has is the core of their strategy.
The article brings good arguments on the table, but more than this, really stimulate the critical thinking of the reader. Even if, as stated before, people most of the time refuse to share the videos in which physical violence is clearly shown, it is still true that ISIS fighters are recording video of themselves while executing people in order to publish them. The question that comes naturally is, why they do it?
The use of the amplification of the communicative power of terror, with the intention of attracting attention and audience around the fear of terror itself, is called meta-terrorism; Adam H. Jhonson defines it as the terror spread from the nonstop replay of old terrorist attacks and the continuous speculation on the future attacks. Meta-terrorism, algorithmic safety (analysis of statistical data to prevent attacks in the future), unregulated use of drones belong to the consolidation of the fourth industrial revolution, to the world of robotic and digitalized information, where the justification of the war passes now through mechanisms of selling the victim or selling the threat.
It seems fair to think that ISIS is trying to create this sort of hyperreal reality show that the world has to watch because the aim is to disseminate terror and anxiety among people so that they will stop doing the activities that they like because of the fear of an attack.
Behind the destruction of heritage there is the intention of expropriate local communities of their own culture and traditions, and even if it is on a different level, the same intent can be found in terrorist attacks; this is executed through the production of ISIS’s show, available for anyone at any time especially due to the relevance that media give to these kinds of news.
This perverse spread of fear is exploited by ISIS, which continues to receive free advertising. But, again, what is the real purpose? The goal is always the same: as soon as possible to sow insecurity and hatred to justify new investments that feed the war economy on which the West stands.
To conclude, the article focusing on the destruction of heritage gives valid and solid conclusions which help also for understanding the strategies that the so-called Islamic States uses in general to increase the level of fear.