[ April 22, 2024 ]
Good analysis of ISIS in Vegas:
What a Pro-ISIS Account’s Las Vegas Reaction Says about the Group’s Inner Workings
Site Online, By Rita Katz, October 4, 2017:
On the morning of Monday, October 2, 2017, Americans were struggling to understand the mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas the night before. And as the public received the first details about attacker Stephen Paddock, a 64 year old with no known history of radicalism, people were (and still are) far from certain of his motives.
Story continues below advertisementMeanwhile, Islamic State (ISIS) supporters on Telegram were already celebrating. Included in this activity was a peculiar amount of promotion made for the account of “Turjuman Asawirati,” a name most people wouldn’t recognize, but that any ISIS supporter with an internet connection has long known.
The attention given to Turjuman Asawirati and other high-profile pro-ISIS accounts in such events provides glimpses into the way ISIS operates online, highlighting the gray areas of who and what is officially of IS, and what is merely supportive of the group.
Rallying Around the Channel in Wake of the Las Vegas Attack
IS social media campaigns, while grass-roots-powered in much of their content, are in many ways coordinated from the top-down. Related directives, like designated hashtags or even prompts to start the campaign itself, are not issued directly from IS, but rather indirectly through IS-linked accounts. Such IS-linked accounts have been identifiable prior to the group’s claims for attacks like Paris (2015), Brussels (2016), and even Las Vegas, giving the nod to supporters prior to the group’s claim.
Turjuman Asawirati’s online activity leading up to ISIS’ claim of the Las Vegas attack demonstrates this process. ISIS supporters began forwarding invite links to the Turjuman Asawirati Telegram channel well before 9:00am on October 2. The following invite link, forwarded from the channel at 8:45am that day, was accompanied by an Arabic-language message:
Peace and blessings be upon you all from Allah
We remain to make them sleepless and support the Islamic State
Allah welcomes you to the new channel
Yours lovingly
Turjuman Asawirati
Unexpectedly, the Turjuman Asawirati channel was already loaded with celebratory and threatening images pertaining to the Las Vegas attack, such as the following message made in English and Arabic, asking Americans, “Where is your security in Las Vegas?”
The Turjuman Asawirati channel was rapidly posting new content, essentially functioning as a library for ISIS supporters to forward content from amid unraveling social media campaign for the Las Vegas attack.
Content pulled directly from the Turjuman al-Asawirati channel at 9:03am.IS claimed the Las Vegas attack through its ‘Amaq News Agency at 9:52 EST, over an hour after ISIS supporters had already implied its connection by promoting Turjuman Asawirati’s channel and commencing their celebration. After the claim’s release, the celebration only intensified.
A “Face” of the ISIS Online Community
Since no later than 2014, Turjuman Asawirati has been a prominent, if not the most prominent “face” of the ISIS online community. The undetermined number of individuals behind Turjuman Asawirati also operate a media group, similarly named “Asawirati Media,” which creates pro-IS videos, posts, and graphics.
Promotional images for Asawirati Media videos.Asawirati Media productions are often graphic in nature, such as the following picture depicting famous British IS executioner “Jihadi John” striking Former President Barack Obama with a knife:
Active across platforms like Twitter and Telegram, Turjuman Asawirati accounts are recognizable by a recurring photograph of famous jihadi fighter and IS official Abu Khattab al-Tunisi, and banner images promoting the number of its account suspensions and subsequent relaunches (Turjuman Asawirati has created hundreds of accounts on Twitter alone).
Beyond Popularity
Turjuman Asawirati accounts are immensely popular among IS supporters, and receive ubiquitious support and promotion across the community. When Turjuman Asawirati’s hundredth Twitter account was created, ISIS supporters on the platform celebrated it with a campaign dubbed, “IslamicState100.”
Turjuman Asawirati’s account regeneration even appeared to get an indirect mention a few days later in a March 9, 2015 official video from ISIS’ Raqqah Province, which discussed the importance of ISIS media online. In the video, an interviewer asked of the United States’ “millions of dollars [spent] to fight the Islamic State through the media,” and one ISIS fighter answered:
Among some of the mujahideen brothers on the internet, their accounts have been deleted, then they re-opened them, then their accounts were deleted, until some of them, their accounts reached the hundredth or more, but they held firm and were patient, and did not allow but to support Allah, Glorified and Exalted be He, and to support their brothers in the Islamic State.
Turjuman Asawirati has even received direct praise from high-ranking Austrian ISIS official and former Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) member Mohamed Mahmoud (AKA Abu Usama al-Gharib). Mahmoud, a long-time famous face of the global jihadist movement, has been either linked to or attempted to motive attacks in the West. He was even featured in an August 2015 ISIS video executing a prisoner after calling for terror attacks:
My brothers, either you follow us here with the mujahideen, or wage jihad in Germany or Austria. It does not require much; take a large knife and go to the street and slaughter every infidel you find.
Turjuman Asawirati and Mahmoud would communicate frequently on Twitter. Between July 13 and October 12 of 2014 alone, Mahmoud tweeted to one of Turjuman Asawirati’s handles (@AsawirtiMedia) 56 times. Mahmoud told Turjuman Asawirati in one of these tweets, “I love you for the sake of Allah my beloved brother.”
Notably, in one pair of tweets made on July 17, 2014, Mahmoud included Turjuman Asawirati’s handle (along with others) when requesting that ISIS supporters spam an individual with pro-ISIS content and/or threats, attempting to use Turjuman Asawirati’s popularity to bolster the message:
O you beloved ones, don’t be lenient and intensify the “Spam” over him so that he would be an example to others
The devious began to scream and cry, we spoke to you before politely and you refused so we had to treat you forcibly, you reaped what you have sown
ISIS’ media operations are structured in a way that its media workers are, in a public sense, isolated from the larger ISIS community online. This distance is kept to keep the production and publication of official IS media distinct from unofficial pro-ISIS media.
Though ISIS does not provide a designated account for contact or submissions, members have stated that individuals can still contact officials within the organization. By this indirect method, some IS supporters send original essays, graphics, social media campaign announcements, and other items to individuals known to have connections to the group and/or its media workers. Conversely, ISIS officials have done the same, as seen in tweets by Mahmoud.
Support for Turjuman Asawirati has even included a Twitter account which translates all of its tweets. A screenshot of this Twitter account, taken in October of 2015, shows the Twitter account designating a “#Turjman_English” hashtag for their translation:
The same Twitter account also retweeted a tweet by “Skafisti,” an English-writing social media alias once very active within the IS community online, promoting an archive of English-translated tweets by Asawirati Media:
The collected tweets, still standing on Internet Archive, are compiled in plain text, PDF, torrent, and other file-types.
To assess the extent to which an individual(s) like Turjuman Asawirati is a member of ISIS would require a specified definition of ISIS itself: Is it comprised of just its officials and fighters? Or is ISIS also its supporters online spreading its message?
In a larger sense, the influence that Turjuman Asawirati has wielded over the ISIS online community regardless makes it an undeniable staple, which in many ways cannot be entirely separated from the group’s official structure.
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22 Comments
6 years ago
true american patriots should believe the FBI not a terrorist organization like ISIS which misunderstands the teachings of islam and mohammad
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
Can’t say that I believe the FIB anymore, either. I KNOW that there are good men and women within it, but it is so Big, now, that there are Rogue elements within it, as well. They can’t keep track of them all. It NEEDS a Good Pruning!
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
Seems ISIS has a firm grasp of the core of islam, terrorism. For over 1400 years these 7th century sand savages have been masquerading as a religion while at the same time demanding everyone else must: “Convert or Die”
6 years ago
Reply to
Mike
GW Bush lied when he said that the word “Islam” means Peace…..in actuality….it translates to “subjugation”……meaning everyone must subjugate to Mohammed and Allah. However, the Bushs have been linked to the Saudis for decades….GW’s roommate in college was a Saudi Prince….
Also, I see a lot of Black women and men out here in Vegas in Muslim garb in Walmart and other stores. Someone needs to tell them in Arabic the word “black” has several meanings….and one of them means “slave”….think about it. Black people….just think about it.
6 years ago
Reply to
ladywarrior
How about “merchandise”? The east end of the slave trade was run by Mohammedans [sometimes Arabs, or not] while the west end was part of a trade triangle that involved slaves, rum, and products from the Caribbean area including sugar run by whites.
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
The quran and other islamic scriptures make very clear that mohammed was no prophet but certainly a terrorist thug exactly like ISIS. The warmongering he started (e.g. quran 59:2-7) has continued ever since and still ongoing just about everywhere, “rohingya” just the latest “victims”.
D
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
Muhammad was WHITE!
http://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2340/
Muhammad was a dwarf and fat!
http://sunnah.com/abudawud/42/154
6 years ago
Reply to
Bikinis not Burkas
True. There are only 3 races on the planet….White, Black,and Asian….I want to pull my hair out when I hear people say things like…the Hispanic race, or the Middle Eastern race…..they are Caucasians, you idiots….our education system has clearly failed.
6 years ago
Reply to
ladywarrior
Well, according to the Air Force in 1973, there were several different kinds of “Asians”, Pacific Islanders, South Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, Hispanics, Native Americans, but only one kind of “white”. They threw in a code for “other” but not for mixed. Since they left out “i” and “o” for data processing reasons, that meant that 23 different kinds of people were recognized, plus “Other” which had an “x.” code. I checked the “x.” block.
6 years ago
So one off IS propaganda is fine for Twitter but Milo tweets he didn’t like the Ghostbusters remake and banned. Why I am on gab.ai
6 years ago
Reply to
Jackie
Generate good cash weekly… It’s fantastic part-time job opportunity for anybody… Best thing about it ,work from your couch at home and get paid from 100 to 2000 bucks each week … Apply for the job now and have your first payment at the end of the week—–>>>> http://linkadda.com/uf3
6 years ago
Reply to
Jackie
The killer is a Anti-Trump democrat and Antifa activist also claimed by ISIS http://bit.ly/2xb9Js2
They Do not want truth to come out.
6 years ago
Reply to
Suresh
By “they” you mean Vegas authorities and our intelligence people? If so, I agree.
Anyone would have to be in a coma to not know it’s Antifa teamed up with radical Muslims….funded by Soros/Killary foundations.
Someone posted a UK Mail story yesterday that was a couple of months old that named several cities that would be the next big attack. One of those cities was Las Vegas…..
And after the Scalise attack Antifa made the statement that violence and attacks were called for against anyone who disagreed with them.
And anyone who thinks Paddock’s Filipino girlfriend is just a wilting flower who knows nothing is easily fooled. The Philippines are a hotbed of Islamic activity and violence. And she and Paddock traveled all over Europe in the past 18 months? Including the Middle East? Sure…..because most people go there to see the scenery and relax these days. Sarc.
And her saying he would lay in bed and moan and thrash around…give me a break. And allegedly a Vegas doctor gave him a prescription for anxiety that was filled in Reno….again, to paint him as an out of control nut job……if I was hooked up with Antifa and about to pull off the biggest mass shooting in Vegas I would be anxious also….but only because I couldn’t afford to fail for the CAUSE. Afraid to be discovered before I could do what I was expected, and radicalized by the Fascists of Antifa to do.
Hitler had secret teams of people like this causing shootings and killings to convince the people of Germany to give up their weapons to make Germany “safe”. After they did give up their weapons….he took over.
I’m expecting we won’t know the whole truth for a decade…or unless a leaker comes forward and let’s us know.
The Muslim/Marxist Obama stacked the Deep State (including the military and intelligence officials) with Anti-American Globalists and Muslims. Our system is lousy with them.
It will take two terms with President Trump and two terms with Mike Pence to rid our country of these America haters and drain the Swamp. I pray for their safety every night and day.
6 years ago
Reply to
Suresh
I’m coming to the conclusion that BLM, Antifa, Never Trump, and IS are not mutually exclusive. So, it’s kind of like smorgasbord; a person can be just one, a combination of two, three or all four at the same time. So, it would not be unreasonable to tag this fellow as a Never Trumper that also played in the IS camp. Remember, at this time, it is still speculation and we may never know at the end.
6 years ago
Over at Prison Planet, a reporter is claiming that Antifa is going to Syria to be trained by ISIS. Don’t know how accurate that reporter is, but it would certainly account for a lot of the odd details of the case, if true. In short, the worst of all possible worlds.
6 years ago
Reply to
ahem
There have already been reports of Antifa using the same methods as ISIS and the Mexican Cartel. They announced a few weeks back that violence is perfectly acceptable against anyone who disagreed with them…..
….I will go to my grave believing Paddock was Antifa……
6 years ago
Reply to
ladywarrior
Compare ANTIFA and Indivisible tactics to Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. A lot of similarity there.
6 years ago
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6 years ago
Why are these communications permitted in the U.S.? This is NOT a freedom of the press or free speech issue. This is terrorism!! If we cut our communications with these SAVAGES, it would greatly reduce terrorism here.
I am sure the MOTIVATION was Islamic Terror, I believe the FBI is hiding this Las Vegas SAVAGE’S true motivation. The FBI should change their name to FIB, because that’s all they stand for now.
6 years ago
ISIS and DNC working together to abolish America’s 2nd Amendment, just like Drug Cartels worked with Obama and ATF tried with ‘Fast and Furious’ program, funneling guns into Mexico, blaming our guns laws !!
D
6 years ago
Is waterboarding the best we could come up with?
