Bob Garfield interviewed Charlie Winter a researcher at the International Center for the study of radicalization and political violence about the recent decline of ISIS propaganda. Winter claims that ISIS propaganda is declining and that the decline can be contributed to a couple of things. First social media sites are being more vigilant at identifying accounts that may be linked to terrorists and/or ISIS and shutting them down. Second the US military has successfully killed or captured much of ISIS' leadership in the past year this has caused disarray in ISIS.
My thoughts as I listened to this is if ISIS is weakening, then why is there still so much debate on how to defeat them? It seems to me like our strategy of cutting them off on social media and targeted drone attacks is working. The memory of 9/11 and the psychological context of the entire "war on terror" might be what is driving that feeling that we aren't doing enough to defeat ISIS and/or that what we are doing isn't working. It could just be Trump constantly talking about ISIS that is causing the misperception. In my opinion both the memory of 9/11 and the recent ISIS attacks as well as Trump's nonstop rhetoric evoke a psychological response within us that makes us feel like whatever we do to combat terrorist organizations is not enough. The fear of the next attack makes us disregard whatever real progress we are making in this fight against terrorism.
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