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ABSTRACT
ISIS propaganda differs from that of other (Islamic or non-Islamic) religions or cults as it is not so much concerned with imagination and exotic fantasies but accentuates the maximal exploitation and demonstration of available technology. The Islamic State does not only excel through the extensive use of high-tech weapons, social media, commercial bot, and automated text systems; by putting forward the presence of speeding cars and tanks, mobile phones, and computers, ISIS presents jihad life as connected to modern urban culture. The article shows that the aesthetics of the Islamic State is "futurist" by comparing it with Italian Futurism. Futurism glorified cars, industrial machines, and modern cities while praising violence as a means of leaving behind imitations of the past in order to project itself most efficiently into the future. A profound sense of crisis produces in both Futurism and jihadism a nihilistic attitude toward the present state of society that will be overcome through an exaltation of technology. The futurist project to integrate life and art is paralleled by ISIS's desire to integrate life and religion. In both cases the result is achieved through violence.
KEYWORDS
Islamic State; Italian Futurism; aesthetization of politics; terrorism; Islam; propaganda; Marinetti; Walter Benjamin
"We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs."
These are the first sentences of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Founding and Manifesto of Futurism." Soon the idyll is disturbed by the "famished roar of automobiles" and the group decides to leave the mosque chasing "after Death" like "young lions" (Marinetti 1909, cited in Rainey, Poggi, and Wittman 2009, 49-50). The juxtaposition of an orientalist idyll, a modern techno-world, and death is intriguing and reminiscent of the aesthetic universe most recently produced by the propaganda of the Islamic State (ISIS).1 ISIS does not only excel through the extensive use of high-tech weapons, social media, commercial bot, and automated text systems. By putting forward the presence of speeding cars and tanks, mobile phones, and computers, ISIS presents jihad life as connected to modern urban culture. I want to show...