For decades, the United States has allowed terrorist organizations to frame America's image for a vulnerable portion of the Muslim world.  They have done a masterful job of making sure their audience knows all about the "evil" that is America:  The brutal, wealthy bully that uses power, might and military strength to repress and oppress Muslims around the world.  Naturally, in their version, the terrorists are the good guys, who fight bravely and unselfishly to protect Islam and Muslims on a global scale.   

 

These groups often base a story on half-truths or outright lies, then fill in the blanks with America's actual failures like the catastrophes of U.S. torture, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.  

 

Conspiracy theories like The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion (a fraudulent document that served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism in the early 20th century) and the 9/11 Truth movement (a conspiracy theory that disputes the conventional wisdom of the 9/11 accounts, specifically the part where al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the Pentagon and Twin Towers) are exploited mightily.

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Terrorist groups have achieved great success with their America is Evil narrative primarily through Information Warfare, or "using truth, intelligence, propaganda, psychological warfare, and media in a unified effort to control the way an enemy's own ideology or policies are perceived by the global public." 

 

In the past, terrorists have waged their extremist propaganda war by using everything from CDs to television to radio. Now they have the enormous benefit of the Internet, which gives them the opportunity to reach into unlimited parts of the world. 

 

Enough is enough.  We must – in real time – reframe this highly damaging, globally destructive narrative.        

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Evidence:

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"Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."  Encyclopedia Britannica. 19 Mar 2018

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