Don't attack us please

[ParanoidAndroid]

Darat,

Fair enough; thanks for your clarification. I'm still not convinced that any tangible effects will be realized (or that if there are that they will be positive ones), but I think there's obviously no way to tell that definitively until after the campaign has been in play for a while, if at all. I hope you're right, though.

 

[gumboot]

The problem with attempting to use propaganda against Islamic Extremists is they are much better at it than us. I have no doubt they can spin this to their advantage.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

That is my perspective as well.

 

[funk de fino]

The terrorists in the IRA were UK subjects fighting the English.

And ignorant rubbish like that is why people in the US raised so much money for the IRA to murder innocent civilians for years.

 

[sackett]

It might work on the useful idiot crowd

This line struck me: "The campaign...will be targeted at ‘15-25-year-old males who are less than well-educated and worldly wise....'"

Just surmising here, but I think that yobs of that sort could be favorably affected by a skilfull ad campaign, simply because they'd be flattered by British attention. After all, most of the world doesn't give much of a damn about peasant boys and what they think. The jihadis' success in recruiting from that neglected -- often despised -- demographic derives in large measure* from their willingness to cater to otherwise disregarded young guys who can never aspire to much of anything.

The Raj lasted a long time. The English still have a kind of prestige in that part of the world. Maybe if Uncle J. Bull talks in a kindly way, it can sweeten the bitterness of being a 15-25-year-old male in a backward, impoverished, and, unfortunately, pretty hopeless country.

* Listen to me talk like an expert. But at least I can empathise -- hell, in a way, sympathise -- with trampled-on country boys.