I've written many times about the Islamic State's ingenious use of social media - or, as they've brilliantly transformed it, anti-social media. These guys really are on - what's the phrase? - the cutting edge. By contrast, the 12-year-old zeitgeist-surfers running communications at the Obama Administration are clumsy, cack-handed, and worse than useless. Even though it's a mere droplet in the bottomless sinkhole that is the US federal budget, I deeply resent having to pay for the halfwit embarrassments of "Think Again Turn Away" - the State Department's social-media outreach strategy for countering "violent extremism".
Here's a recent Tweet from the geniuses at State:
In open societies, all faiths enjoy freedom of speech; under #ISIS rule, no such thing as freedom of expression.
And beneath it was the photograph at right - "a group of burqa-clad women promoting Sharia law", under the approving slogan:
Muslims coming out inviting society to #Islam
That's one way of putting it. In fact, the body-bagged crones are asserting the superiority of Islam over your society - that's to say the superiority of Sharia over what they call "man-made law".
The women are promoting Sharia not in, say, Turkey or Indonesia, but on what appears to be a street in Britain*.
Why is the State Department promoting Sharia for the United Kingdom?
And, given that that the "man-made law" in question is English Common Law, which is the basis of American law, why by implication is the State Department promoting Sharia for the United States? Aren't they supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States?
Sharia is incompatible with that constitution, as it is with the entire legal inheritance of western civilization.
You might make the case that the US Government is simply demonstrating how absolute is its commitment to free speech - although given that President Obama and Secretary Clinton got that video-maker tossed in jail and did a cringe-making ad for Pakistani TV apologizing for him, I would doubt that.
But, even so, our enemies are not interested in our "fairness"; they're interested in winning - which is one reason why they attract tens of thousands of the west's nominal citizens. And, when the best you can do to counter that is tell them, "Hey, why go all the way to Syria and Iraq when you can stay home and hollow us out from within?", they rightly conclude we're a bunch of losers.
After all, what's the underlying message of the State Department Tweet? We've no problem with your end, we're just a little bit squeamish about your means.
That's not enough for me. I don't want to live under Sharia. And, if you're in favor of Sharia, by definition you are incapable of being a citizen of a free society. So, when the global superpower can muster no better argument than "the great thing about western civilization is that we're open to letting you destroy it", it's a wee bit demoralizing. The State Department's Tweet tells our enemies we're losers, and we're happy to lose, as long as you let us lose incrementally.
As I say, I wish all those Obama hipster pajama boys were as good at social media as they tell themselves.
*UPDATE: Re that British street, SteynOnline reader Alasdair Green emails:
They are on Kingsland High Street in East London.
Hmm. It doesn't look as if it will be the King's land much longer.
