The “company” specializes in collating the latest jihadist memes from across the internet with three primary interests: attacking the leadership of rival terrorist organizations, mocking the United States and its global “ineptitude” in the face of domestic civil unrest, and pining for the now-demolished caliphate.
SPONGEBOB ARE YOU GAY MEME SERIES
Their largest Facebook page is the 11,000-follower strong “Company for the ‘Clanging of the Memes’,” which is in and of itself a play on ISIS’s notorious “Clanging of the Swords” video series released in 2012, as equal parts snuff film and recruitment effort. They’re readily available on Facebook, the world’s largest social media company.
Unlike the terror network’s official propaganda portals, which are still limited to earnest and messianic content, these memes aren’t hosted on encrypted platforms. ISIS fanboys love Breaking Bad, SpongeBob Squarepants and Iron Man. Not ones to be outflanked by the alt-right, QAnon, or MAGA-minded militiamen, ISIS supporters have spent the last half-decade or so creating their online community complete with its own winking argot, much of it derived from seemingly counterintuitive items lifted from American popular culture. In fact, ISIS’s virtual caliphate has grown exponentially since 2014, when black-clad terrorists stormed into the Iraqi city of Mosul, facing little resistance from the Iraqi military. Since the loss of the Islamic State’s physical caliphate two years ago, ISIS supporters have been grappling with their diminished relevance online, reinventing their propaganda through a range of bizarre strategies, from pornographic ultraviolence to meme-based shitposting. Not his music, but his now omnipresent internet meme showing contrastive images of the rapper reject something in disgust and then welcome something else as just the ticket.