ISIS are back…and they’re faker than ever.

Kit Knightly

In just the last few days ISIS – Islamic State or ISIL or Da’esh or whatever – have hit the headlines in publications from all over the world. A strong resurgence for a narrative that’s been more than quiet for the last few years.

To do a quick recap, when last we heard from our cartoonish black-flagged head-choppers they were telling their suicide bombers to “steer clear of coronavirus-stricken Europe”.

An announcement that, pre-“pandemic”, would have been among the silliest headlines I’ve ever read…but in a post-Covid world it probably barely scrapes the top twenty.

Either way, that marked a hiatus for ISIS, an exit from the world stage as the “war on terror” made way for the “war on Covid”. In fact, a “reduction in violent terror events” was even sold as a potential plus-side of lockdowns, according to a study done by Yale.

…but now here we are. Three years on, and ISIS is back with a bang, or rather several bangs. Like a balaclava-wearing bear, they’ve emerged from their hibernation feeling grumpy.

The mainstream started laying the ground work for it back in January/February, with the aforementioned Yale study and then US politicians suddenly warning that ISIS was a “simmering powder keg” and underlining that the War on Terror is not over.

Then the US started nailing “senior ISIS leaders”, offing two in two weeks in April and a third in July. Syria got in on the act too, dropping an ISIS leader of their own.

Through the summer, ISIS “affiliates” claimed responsibility for attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uganda. These were followed with more “the war on terror is not over” messaging.

But things have really started to heat up the last few days.

On August 11th CBS reported that ISIS were behind an ambush in Syria, killing 20 Syrian soldiers.

On August 12th the Washington Post reported that ADF, an “ISIS affiliate” in the Congo apparently, was “becoming deadlier”.

On August 13th it was reported ISIS was “deploying cryptocurrency to continue its reign of terror”.

Oh the humanity!

On August 14th the Iranian government officially blamed ISIS for an alleged terror attack on a shrine in Shiraz, and TimesNow reported that an ISIS “expert bomb maker” was planning an attack in India.

And just yesterday, The Mirror warned that ISIS and al-Qaeda were “back in Afghanistan”. Meanwhile Indonesian police raided a terror-suspects home and found an ISIS flag

The cherry on top is the UN releasing a report yesterday morning, warning that ISIS still posed “a serious threat”, with 5000-7000 fighters in Syria and Iraq. And in case anyone was curious, they also attempted an  explanation for  the lack of ISIS activity the last few years too. It wasn’t at all a result of the global elites having other (covid) fish to fry. No sir. It was a “deliberately adopted” strategy

to reduce attacks, in order to facilitate recruiting and reorganization.”

Makes sense, right?

But then the ISIS narrative has never done that.

In fact ISIS were maybe the first completely fake narrative, – comic-book villains with impossible reach and unknowable goals, a concept creation of marketers and PR firms rather than any geopolitical reality.

Someone obviously just threw a bunch of money at a roomful of ad executives and bad TV writers and told them to go nuts – and ISIS got born.

They had fleets of svelte matching trucks, always staying true to the Toyota brand affiliation. They never went anywhere without their personal branding. They were “smuggling” literally hundreds of tons of oil out of Syria every day in miles-long convoys (or even on muleback according to some), which were allegedly impossible to spot or stop, and funding themselves on tons of stolen antiquities that could never be seized.

They had glossy end of year reports, bank and social media accounts that never got closed, their own android app, a 5 year plan for world domination. Even their own currency.

Oh, but they never got silly. They never interfered with any really big elite agenda.

And even they always supported vaccinating your kids.

In the old days, there were two sides to “ISIS”.

On the one hand they were a NATO-backed proxy force waging war on the Syrian government.

But on the other they were the phantoms created by those ad executives and failed screenwriters – to scare westerners into allowing their governments “temporary emergency powers”;  an elaborate concoction of overheated bad guy memes designed to incite fear and pave the way for an agenda. An official “reality” that had virtually no actual “real” in it at all and didn’t hold up to even a moment of clear-eyed scrutiny.

You could say ISIS was Covid before Covid.

But then they were dropped by the wayside when the “pandemic” rolled out ahead of the Great Reset and “united world” narrative.

In their new, post-pandemic iteration, ISIS are just another sign that the “multipolar world” is a lie. After all, rather than spreading fear of the mythical ISIS, the governments of India or Afghanistan could be refusing to play along, and calling out ISIS as a West-backed chimera.

Either way, we should be asking “why would they want to bring back “the war on terror” now?”

Well, there’s a few possibilities.

Firstly there’s the D word – distraction. No further explanation needed.

Second, there’s…well another D word actually – damage control. They played their Covid cards expecting to clean up and walk away from the table, but the game isn’t over and they need to find some more aces.

Third, there’s…damnit…another D word – division. Just like the culture war, the war in Ukraine and other hot-button topics, the “war on terror” can be used to further disintegrate  the new anti-establishment movement created by the Covid hoax. Splitting it along old-fashioned party lines.

Maybe there’s more to the story, yet to be revealed. Some elaborate long con.

Maybe someone will suggest a UN “anti-terror army” or some other international legislation – something like China’s Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, perhaps – and we’ll be another step along the road to global government.

Maybe ISIS will be revealed to be anti-vaxxers, or new “anti-terror legislation” will be mooted in terms of combatting ISIS, but will have clauses concerning “medical misinformation” or “anti-government sentiment” or “conspiracy theories” hidden in the text.

This is all supposition, of course, but whether one, all or none of those theories turn out to be true, ISIS’ sudden re-entry to the story at this late hour reeks of yet another D word: Desperation.