The Pornography of Jihadism

In his 2008 book Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, the historian Michael Burleigh observes in passing that jihadist martyrdom videos have a similar structure to porn movies. He doesn't dwell on the point, although he does allude to the climactic “money shot”: in the jihadist case, the moment when the bomber detonates his explosives.

In light of the many ISIS propaganda videos that have circulated this summer [2014], Burleigh's point deserves further analysis and refinement. One of the most striking aspects of the more violent among these videos— especially the beheading videos of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff— is their pornographic quality. They are primal and obscene and gratuitous. And, like most modern porn videos, they are instantly accessible at the click of a mouse. Indeed, ISIS videos have attracted such a large audience online that the U.S. State Department recently launched its own YouTube channel to counter their appeal, superimposing words of mocking condemnation over graphic images of ISIS's brutality, entirely missing the point that ISIS appeals to potential recruits in part because of its exorbitant violence.

Jihadists proclaim a fierce opposition to Western modernity, condemning it as soulless, corrupt, materialistic and depraved. But this has not prevented them from exploiting modern technological advances in fields from weaponry to communications. Nor, evidently, has it stopped them from watching porn. The stash of X-rated material recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad after his killing by U.S. commandos in May 2011 may have raised eyebrows among some Western journalists, but it was scarcely news in counterterrorism circles. C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, wrote on her Facebook page at the time that the U.S. government “has recovered terabytes of the stuff from terrorist computers.”

In any case, the conventions of jihadists’ hardcore film productions unmistakably resemble those of porn. And just as porn has evolved over time, so too has the jihadist propaganda video.

In a 2001 essay on the American porn industry, the British novelist Martin Amis makes a distinction between two types of mainstream American pornography: features and gonzo. “Features,” Amis explains, “are sex films with some sort of claim to the ordinary narrative: characterisation, storyline.”