1. Been trying to compile the history of memeing the Islamic State, and yea, it does start with al-Qaeda before anyone asks, just think it’s underrepresented as a thing, probably because no one really cares, so just dropping some random thoughts on this here. A thread. 2. The memes of al-Qaeda and the early years of the Islamic State are what Zawahiri may have thought was funny, overly wrought and often carbon copies of popular memes in the Middle East, lots of Yao Ming imagery, or Tom and Jerry.

1. At the onset of the invasion of Ukraine, RTArabic's website had 2x the visitors as panregional state media in the Middle East. Over the past 3 months its popularity waned, and is now domanited by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, troucing RT's regional offering by 2000%+. Thread. 2. This is isn't to state/absolve the panregional TV stations of not suscribing to similar narratives, but it does highlight that the intial months of the invasion were a boon period for the Russian site across the region, and that the gains never stuck.

1. We tracked over 30 different pro-Islamic State News outlets across 5 different social media platforms, for over a year, we watched them get taken down, and then we watched them rebuild. The Islamic State news brands built to last. Thread.
isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio… 2. At any given time the pro-Islamic State news outlets outlined in this report, are running duplicate pages and profiles, it not only staves off take downs, it allows them the ability to run different bureaus, like the Africa bureau, or the Afghanistan bureau.

1. Ted Kaczynski, and Kaczynskism, has gained traction across the Middle East. His manifesto has been a consistent feature of a regional brand of “traditionalism” for about 5 years now. The series in his name led to translations by publishing houses and Nazis. Story follows. 2. 2020 was weird. A lot of people spent more time online. It incidentally coincided with the return of the Manhunt series in the region, drumming up interest in the Unabomber. Below is the Google Trends report dating back to 2017 for Ted Kaczynski in Arabic. March 2020 was the

1. As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 nears, think it’s important to see how a younger generation of al-Qaeda and Islamic State supporters depict Osama bin Laden on social media. Over the past year I collected 150 screenshots doing just that. Here are some learnings, thread. 2. A younger generation of Salafi-jihadist supporters online see bin Laden as the ultimate “Sigma” male, quiet but still “Alpha.” He is still in many ways revered, and speaks to a generation that sees him as “based.” These generation z supporters were children in 2001.