Cats, jihad, satire!
February 24, 2015 6:57 AM   Subscribe

A new genre has emerged, the mock jihadi video. This involves short clips with ISIS-ish sound tracks layered on for shocking and/or comic effect.

Here's one relatively inoffensive example, based on a cat video. Other videos can be very upsetting.
posted by doctornemo (34 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's a couple. I feel like there's a big difference in acceptability between just mocking ISIS and unexpectedly subjecting people to actual footage of 9/11.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:04 AM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


Mockery could actually be a very effective tool in neutralizing the influence of jihadi media. It's hard to imagine a more humorless bunch.
posted by indubitable at 7:09 AM on February 24, 2015 [8 favorites]


That Tinkerbell video is hilarious. I think this parody response is appropriate and inevitable. Jihadi propagandists use all the tools and media of Internet culture to craft a profoundly evil message. Seeing it turned back on itself is funny. My only complaint is these videos clearly seem coming from and aimed at a Western audience, they're not going to influence folks in the Middle East. I'd love to see this kind of parody coming from modern Muslims in Muslim countries.
posted by Nelson at 7:17 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mockery could actually be a very effective tool in neutralizing the influence of jihadi media. It's hard to imagine a more humorless bunch.

Related: Anti-ISIS Satire Lampoons Militant Group's Hypocrisy (NPR, Nov. 10, 2014) It's only audio and a transcript, so here's a subtitled trailer for the Iraqi show, "State of Myths," a Kurdish TV parody of ISIS, and a Palestinian ISIS parody with subtitles. The article notes that people involved with the Iraqi show don't have their names in the credits, for fear of violence and retaliation.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:36 AM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


The tinkerbell one is hilarious. It does a great job of mocking the piety and self-seriousness of those videos.

Checking out the subreddit though, most are blunt and unfunny. I agree with East Manitoba's comment, the one mixing in the 9/11 footage is fucked up.
posted by sp160n at 7:36 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


On an individual level, mocking ISIS in videos seems like a terrific way to quickly go from being Just Another Goober on the Internet all the way to Victim of a Horrible Terrorist Act.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:38 AM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]




Also make they're sufficiently ridiculous or you might draw the ire of DOJ.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:50 AM on February 24, 2015


Is there Yakity Sax and some guy getting his beard caught in the feed of a Browning .50?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:04 AM on February 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


I guiltily binged on these recently. Guiltily because not all of them seem to understand that what makes them hilarious is that they're mocking murderous propaganda, not making some "lol Muslims blow up" joke (for example, the skydiver one).

But I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.

The washing machine one.
The glitter bomb one too.
Buzz Lightyear's button.
posted by postcommunism at 8:04 AM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm recovering from a chest infection and the Tinkerbell Jihad one was so funny it just nearly killed me.

On a different note, humour has often played a major role in the kind of videos that have made the US military so popular and respected around the world - from Lynndie England to 'bug splat' etc.

We even have generals who crack one-liners at press conferences about videos of our killing sprees - remember 'here's a video of the luckiest man in Iraq hyuk hyuk'? Even the newsreaders were grinning at that one, which was a video of a bridge being blown up by Hellfire missiles just after a car drove over it. American bombs have cartoons of shark teeth etc on them, don't they? It's all up for grabs.
posted by colie at 8:06 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also: that's what digg looks like now?
posted by postcommunism at 8:11 AM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm recovering from a chest infection and the Tinkerbell Jihad one was so funny it just nearly killed me.

Same happened to me - I've got a cold and watching it brought on a coughing fit so violent I thought it could be terminal. It's just perfect.
posted by Flashman at 8:29 AM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Is it okay to like the Isis theme song? If somebody set it to a bit of music it could be fantastic, maybe as house?

(I liked the Soviet Union song too, oddly.)
posted by Thing at 8:32 AM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's hard to imagine a more humorless bunch.
You must not have been following the American politicians calling for Holy War against them.

a terrific way to quickly go from being Just Another Goober on the Internet all the way to Victim of a Horrible Terrorist Act.
Anyone believing there are enough potential terrorists to 'Charlie Hebdo' a significant number of the Internet Goobers is giving them MASSIVELY too much credit.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:38 AM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Mockery could actually be a very effective tool in neutralizing the influence of jihadi media. It's hard to imagine a more humorless bunch.

Rules for Radicals, anyone?
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 8:38 AM on February 24, 2015




On the wavelength of parody bringing down assholes... How Superman defeated the Ku Klux Klan.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:51 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have a vague memory of a 1970's near-future science fiction novel with the premise that a problematic terrorist group could be defeated through ridicule. Can't find it right now - anyone else?
posted by skyscraper at 9:04 AM on February 24, 2015


Isn't that how you defeat boggarts in the Harry Potter universe?
posted by charred husk at 9:21 AM on February 24, 2015


I think it goes back to Mel Brooks' idea that by turning a horrible figure into an object of comedy, you disarm it and rob it of its power.

I quite enjoyed these.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:21 AM on February 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


Is it okay to like the Isis theme song?
I won't disclose how I was first introduced to terrorist nasheeds (it's a lot less interesting than that makes it sound), but it was back while we were still in the thick of Iraq and at the time I downloaded a whole bunch of them. Some were a bit too grating but I had a nice selection of about 7 that sounded great and that I could listen to over and over. I sent the playlist to my father, who I knew would consider them an interesting find. About a year later, after my father died, I was talking to my mother who had been cleaning out files on their computer. She said she'd found this folder of "ethnic music", men singing/chanting in tight harmonies, interesting rhythms, that it was really good. She downloaded the songs onto her ipod and would play them on earphones while walking laps in the senior center or running errands, I dunno, she might have even been playing them for her friends. She wondered if I knew what the music was or where Pop had gotten it from. I had to explain to her that they were terrorist anthems, that they were singing about Fallujah, and rising up and striking down the enemies of Islam and whatever, that I had downloaded them off of dodgy websites and sent them to him.

I had one as a ringtone on my phone for about two years.

Not all nasheeds are from/for/about terrorists of course. There was an alphabet one I once heard (posted here?) a few years ago that I also really liked. Of course, that one didn't have gunfire in the background.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 10:30 AM on February 24, 2015 [15 favorites]


On an individual level, mocking ISIS in videos seems like a terrific way to quickly go from being Just Another Goober on the Internet all the way to Victim of a Horrible Terrorist Act.

Yes, of course - assuming you live in eastern Syria or northwestern Iraq, in which case you have plenty of problems already. If you live anywhere else in the world, your odds of becoming a Victim of a Horrible Terrorist Act remain down in the statistical basement with lightning strikes, rabid squirrel attacks, and out-of-control carnival rides, whether or not you make internet videos mocking a small, regionally-focused militia on the other side of the planet.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:49 AM on February 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


Sure, Mars, on the one hand, I agree, yeah, of course: the odds are, as we understand them now, quite low.

On the other, ISIS is easily among the most internet-savvy terrorist groups in the world, with a particular focus on how to present their message via short videos online. They are also among the most active among their peers in recruiting people to their cause even in the West and outside their generally assumed demographics.

Personally, I don't think I'd want to be sending pisstakes of those messages into the ether, because I'd hate to find out what they or people geogrpahically closer to me who are or saw themselves as confederates of ISIS might do if one of those went viral and they felt it hurt their cause or was blasphemous.

There is such a thing as worrying too much about getting struck by lightning. But I'm still not sure I'd wave a metal rod in my bare hands at the top of a clearing on a hill if I couldn't be sure what the weather would be like.

I'm not arguing at all with your premise that the odds as we understand them now make retribution from ISIS for such videos extraordinarily unlikely. I'm just expressing a wariness personally of banking on that, even as situations remain fluid.

TL;DR: I agree... unlikely. But still "no thanks" for me.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:50 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think it goes back to Mel Brooks' idea that by turning a horrible figure into an object of comedy, you disarm it and rob it of its power.

Which goes back to Charlie Chaplin and The Great Dictator. He recognized how serious Hitler was before most Americans.
posted by sbutler at 1:53 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


DirtyOldTown, I feel you, not likely at all but an unfortunately increasingly credible fear IMO. People were legitimately afraid of calling out GamerGate on twitter FFS.
posted by aydeejones at 2:39 PM on February 24, 2015


Wait, are we saying that ISIS has the average American cowed enough that we are afraid to criticize them on the Internet?

Wow.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 7:24 PM on February 24, 2015


I agree Juffo-Wup. If anything this is what our teeming masses of angry teens were meant to do with their anonymous social media feeds.
posted by kittensofthenight at 7:47 PM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Palestinian one goes on too long for too weak a payoff. They should have ended with the Christian guy, and tightened it up generally.

I have no idea why MEMRI translated it; I suppose ... they wanted to expose ... the uh, the failings of er... Palestinian scriptwriters? That cause niggling feelings of dissatisfaction among people watching their shows? I'm not saying it's not a valid reason to put a translation out, but I think MEMRI usually aims for more significant targets.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:19 PM on February 24, 2015


On a related theme, Hamas put out a rather catchy theme song
during the most recent Israel/Hamas war. It was apparently supposed to strike fear into the hearts of Israelis but they didn't get any native Hebrew speakers to look over the lyrics, so a lot of it was just gibberish. Anyway, a bunch of Israelis put out parody versions, like this Smurf version and this a-capella version. I can't find a copy of the original, unfortunately, but here's a Tablet magazine story about it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:41 PM on February 24, 2015


Hank Hill Listens to a Nasheed
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 11:52 PM on February 24, 2015




Wait, are we saying that ISIS has the average American cowed enough that we are afraid to criticize them on the Internet?

Nope. We're saying ISIS is not likely to view all forms of criticism as equal. And that using their video tactics against them might catch their eye in a bad way.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:58 AM on February 25, 2015


using their video tactics against them

Do ISIS use humour in their videos?

Anyway, there are already mass circulation magazines like Private Eye that regularly feature cartoons lampooning idiotic Jihad dudes, without mocking Islam as a religion or the cultural figure of Muhammad, and hence they have never been threatened with violence in the way Charlie Hedbo was, repeatedly, before the Paris attacks, which were partly a response to its self-declared 'we hate religion in and of itself, not just jihad' stance. Among Muslims I know, the 'fundamentalist idiotic mate' was a comedy standard figure 20 years ago.

Private Eye printed an amusing 'Jihad-vent Calendar' cartoon at Christmas.
posted by colie at 11:27 AM on February 25, 2015


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