London, October 4 – The latest instance of the Islamic State’s use of beheading to intimidate the West serves as evidence that the technique no longer carries the novelty it once did, news outlets reported this weekend, and in fact the world is getting irritated by it.
A British aid worker became the fourth man to have his beheading broadcast through social media over the last several months, the most recent case of Islamist radicals combining graphic brutality with media savvy to further political goals. In this case they “retaliated” for the United Kingdom’s decision to join the air war against IS. While the effect of the images and news remains horrifying, correspondents around the globe are reporting that the initial wave of automatic, detailed attention to the story has run its course, and the impact of each subsequent beheading is likely to shrink. More importantly, they say, agitation for greater, more decisive action to destroy the Islamic State becomes more and more probable as beheading gets closer and closer to jumping the shark.
Experts point to the difference in coverage between the American journalist James Foley’s much-publicized execution and that of Briton Alan Henning, which, while covered broadly across the news media and social networks, commanded nowhere near the same amount of sustained attention that Foley’s did. Moreover, the level of emotive, vengeful reactions evident in the Western press and political worlds has also declined, giving way to expressions of grim determination, indicating that beheading is fast becoming so last week.
Analysts are divided on whether IS will double down on the technique or abandon it in favor of a less familiar or even more brutal form of execution, such as dismemberment or immolation. “It’s not as if chopping people’s heads off doesn’t have any impact,” argues Gil O’Teen. “The fact that the novelty has worn off is to be expected – the question is not whether they need to find new methods to maintain their shock value or whether they simply need to get hold of more prominent victims.” O’Teen suggests the Islamic State will attempt to capture and behead an American celebrity.
Others, however, contend that maximum shock value is essential to IS’s strategy, and sticking with the same old, same old would be at odds with that strategy. “The fact that an American in Oklahoma tried to behead a former coworker because he was disgruntled over being fired demonstrates how beheading is officially mainstream,” says analyst Ann Boleyn. and the media strategists over in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria are probably working hard to maintain their avant-garde edge. When blue collar Midwesterners start trying to cut people’s heads off, I’m sorry, but it loses its ‘indy’ appeal.”
Boleyn argues that IS is most likely to try experimenting with other brutal methods to use on westerners, methods they will first test on Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who do not subscribe to exactly the same tenets as they, all in the name of keeping their hipster bona fides and edge intact.
She concedes, however, that there are several celebrities she would not mind seeing beheaded.
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