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A Revolutionary Message

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Posted: March 9th, 2016

By Ambassador Alberto M. Fernandez

Ambassador Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice-President of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). He was a career Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State for three decades specializing on the Middle East and Africa and served as the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications until his retirement in 2015.

German U-Boat commanders called a period in 1940-41 when they were more or less unfettered and free to attack at will, “the happy time.”  For the Islamic State, the “happiest time” was certainly the period between the summer of 2013, beginning with the gradual fall of the Syrian city of Raqqa, to August 2014, when the United States began its bombing campaign. That was also the period when ISIS was largely unhindered in its access to social media and could propagate its message freely, utilizing an aggressive online community of interest to amplify it.

Both the military advances of the Islamic State in its Syria/Iraq heartland, and the outreach of its media operations, have slowly lost steam since then.  The last successful ISIS military offensive was in August 2015 against Al-Qaryatayn in Syria, while a recent report richly documents the decline of ISIS on Twitter, the most emblematic media tool used during its rise to prominence in 2013-2014.    

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