Google to the rescue of Salafist terrorism

The massacres of January and November in Paris did not happen by chance. The destabilization of Syria, which had the announced goal of toppling the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, has turned into an obscure operation, and support, at first, to all opposition forces, including the future « Islamic State ». The evolution of the last few months has been dramatic since the Salafists now dominate the entire spectrum of opposition to the current regime. But this success of the terrorists did not come in a vacuum: it was supported by a significant military capability, a thriving economy within the so-called Islamic State, and a particularly effective propaganda tool abroad. Salafist terrorist propaganda relies both on a strong operational capacity, with the production of hundreds of videos per year, and on an analysis of the targeted « receivers », namely Internet users, disillusioned by this world, tempted by despair and violent action.

However, faced with the webpropaganda of the Salafists, and ready to take over from Western states that seem to be helpless, Google has stepped up to the plate. In 2013, two of its most prominent leaders, Eric Schmitt, its former CEO, and Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, had already unveiled their counterinsurgency policy. Because the web behemoth also wants to be the heir of the « national security doctrine » dear to Pentagon strategists and of sinister memory in Latin America, where it has caused tens and tens of thousands of assassinations and disappearances.

In their highly acclaimed essay in the United States, The New Digital Age⁽¹⁾The two Googlemen explained that in the new digital age, states face enemies, the « revolutionary » and the « terrorist », who now operate on a multiplicity of planes, both physical and virtual: « Connectivity will change the way we see opposition groups in the future. Visible organizations and parties will continue to operate within each country, but the profusion of new players in the virtual public square will reconfigure the activist landscape from top to bottom⁽²⁾. Now, it turns out that Google, which is a particularly effective tool for carding the world’s population as we know since the Prism/NSA scandal broke in 2013, has its own ideas about who the new terrorists might be: « With their new access to virtual space and its technologies, individuals and groups around the world will be able to use the right moment to propagate old grievances or new concerns, with force and conviction. Many of those who will launch these blazes will be young, not only because many of the countries that connect have incredibly young populations […], but also because the mix of activism and arrogance is, among the young, universal. They are convinced that they know how to solve problems, so as soon as they are given the opportunity to express a public position, they will not hesitate.

One can appreciate the finesse of the thought: youth is the demographic breeding ground of the new terrorism. As terrorists develop new methods, counterterrorism strategists will have to adapt to them. Imprisonment will not be enough to contain a terrorist network. Governments must decide, for example, that it istoo risky for citizens to remain « offline », detached from the technological ecosystem. In the future, as today, we can be sure that individuals will refuse to adopt and use technology, and will not want anything to do with virtual profiles, online databases or smartphones. A government will have to consider that a person who does not adhere to these technologies at all has something to hide and probably intends to break the law, and that government will have to establish a list of such hidden persons, as an anti-terrorist measure. If you have no registered virtual social profile or no cell phone subscription, and your online credentials are unusually hard to find, then you should be considered for inclusion on this list. You will also be subject to a strict set of new regulations, which will include rigorous identity screening at airports and up to travel restrictions⁽³⁾. The state of emergency is therefore, according to Google executives, only the normal state of the world, from now on.
All this might seem like a bad dream if Google did not, at the same time, make it easier for would-be terrorists to find the propaganda that will dumb them down — in the strongest sense: « turn them into brutes » — and lead them to commit massacres. Thus, the query for the video game « Flames of War » brings back 37 million web pages thanks to the Google engine. But it turns out that the video touting the so-called Islamic State is also called Flames of War , so it’s a little hard to find among video game sites. Also, Google helps the apprentice terrorist with its famous search suggestions: once you type « flame », the suggestion « flames of war isis » or « flames of war islamic state » appears, and thus allows you to go straight to the salafist propaganda.

However, it would be possible to censor the said video, as the confidential meta-engine Ixquick does, probably alone.

One cannot claim to counter terrorist propaganda and promote it at the same time. But what seems inconsistent at Google is actually perfectly consistent. Indeed, it is clear that Google is seeking to take its share of the global counter-insurgency policy, and to provide its own counter-terrorism experts, simply because of the knowledge it has acquired of the practices of unwary Internet users who use a non-confidential engine. This is a fascist drift and a fundamental attack on democracy. By the hypocrisy of its behavior, Google will indeed only reinforce what constitutes the real breeding ground of Salafist terrorism: not youth, but disgust with the world of the powerful, of which this American company is one of the best incarnations of our time.

Philippe Godard

Author of The Myth of Digital Culture, published by Le Bord de l’eau, 2015.