Thread by @sfrantzman

Thread: Interesting narrative here, the concept of “western” clothes and how shopping and appearance makes someone “one of us”...of course it obscures the larger question of how many people, despite “western clothes” travelled to join and support extremism

It might be that there is no connection between shopping on “Oxford street” and being an extremist...nor that “western clothes” make someone either good or bad.

There were some 5,000 or more ISIS volunteers from EU countries, many Yazidi and other victims reported that the foreign volunteers were often cruel and even worse than locals. So “western clothes” might not be a deciding factor here.

We understand the message in some western media is that if you wear t-shirt and jeans then somehow that is news. For the victims of ISIS I’m not sure whether perpetrators wearing “western clothes” was important as they were being enslaved.

Same media that runs to document “western clothes” and “can she shop on Oxford street”...oddly doesn’t seem so interested in the attire of ISIS victims in refugee camps.

I’ve met a lot of victims of ISIS over the years. Some wore jeans also. But there were no media around to write whole stories about it.

Anyway I don’t buy the theory that clothes make one this or that. Many people in the Middle East, regardless of how they dress, didn’t run to join extremists. Many westerners did.

I guess for me, I feel more safe in places like the mountains of Kurdistan among people who, however they dress, didn’t support extremism, than on Oxford street. I guess I just don’t need to see “western” clothes to indicate extremist/moderate...

In the end, regardless of the fashion options or Oxford shopping ability...the western wealthy states must take responsibility for their citizens who are in eastern Syria and who they dumped there and who they expect the local authorities to hold forever

Western countries need to stop exporting extremists to the Middle East, whether or not they wear “clothes like us”. It’s the extremism and the abuses of local people that is the problem. Not the clothes. Attire is largely meaningless. Just ask Eichmann and his henchmen.

The goal here is transparent, it is to bring her back...and now the theory presented is to show her in “western” clothes to change hearts and minds at home in UK. That’s a ham handed approach over “it’s our responsibility to repatriate those we exported”

The whole story is emblematic of the bizarre relationship media has had with westerners who went to ISIS lands in the first place. Humanizing, romanticizing, excusing. Not so many headlines for the victims.

Countries have to protect themselves against western exported extremists and not become a victim of them. Poor people in Syria and Iraq were victimized snd got almost no support from western countries for the victims. That’s the wider story.