Embedded with the Fundies: How ISIS, a.k.a. the Islamic State, Recruits Children (and Bullies Adults Into Submission)

Yesterday, Vice News posted a completely engrossing documentary by a team in Raqqah, Iraq, the provisional capital of the new Caliphate that the fundamentalists of the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, are trying to establish.

Warning: The video is full of the kind of overbearing, power-drunk antics we may expect when True Believers are emboldened by the temporary successes brought about by their own violent revolution. Woven into the Vice material is brief other footage of newscasts and images of slaughter, including ISIS enemies’ heads displayed on spikes (so this is definitely NSFW and probably NSFL):

What’s remarkable about the Vice video is the access. The camera team appears to be literally embedded with some of the fighters, including a Ray-Ban-wearing press officer, Abu Mossa, who isn’t above traveling to government strongholds to personally fire a rifle at his foes.

If you have only ten minutes, watch this excerpt that focuses mostly on the good-cop-bad-cop tactics that the Islamic State employs to indoctrinate and recruit young children.

Disturbing, mind-bending stuff.