Social media a rendezvous for terrorists according to intelligence official

The Western world are now looking at social media in order to frighten its citizens, and keep them on guard. According to a top European intelligence official, terrorists have changed their management stye, and it is making them a more threatening prospect. In the past, decisions were left to be made by a top-down hierarchy, but now the decisions are being made by a collective “swarm,” and this has been aided by the power of social media.

Source: mashable.com

These are the words of Rob Bertholee, who is the head of Dutch Intelligence, and he further stated that up until recent years, jihadi groups operated through “vertical communication.”

“The leader spoke to his followers and then they would all do what he said,” Bertholee stated. He added thatthe rise of the Internet and social media have seen a rise in “horizontal communication” in these groups.

“So what we see now is what you could call a group dynamics, swarming, or the idea of swarming, where many individuals, without a visible leader, actually lead themselves and decide on themselves which way they go.”

“You know they all fly in a swarm, there’s no leader there. There’s nobody who says yeah we have a map and we have to go this way. But amazingly they all go the same way. That is what we see.”

Despite Mr Bertholee appearing to see “terrorists” as inferior to himself and his allies, by using language by degrading his fellow human beings, such as assuming that they only use a map when navigating, and expressing shock at the fact that there is no visible leader, he must take them seriously. Opposition to Western culture have become very competent in areas such as social media strategy, and technological advances.

The use of social media by opposition groups has bolstered fundraising and recruitment, and at the same time, has made life more difficult for figures such as Bertholee as they try and combat such groups both at home and abroad.

Source: spinsucks.com

“If you can single out a leader then you know where to attack, where to move, where to focus you attention to,” Bertholee said. “If you don’t have a leader, if you have a swarm that is self-guiding and self-deciding, it’s much harder to focus your attention, your efforts.”

These are fascinating words from Mr Bertholee, as he is merely acknowledging that people are using social media. This is the way the world works now; communication is made easy on a global level now, due to theimpact of social media on millions of people. Yes, there are people who want to cause distress and harm to others, but Mr Bertholee is another example of how people are being influenced by the media.

He uses animalistic comparatives and war rhetoric in order to make the reader believe that there is an army of insurgents coming to cause havoc on the lives of many. Whilst doing this, he paints a bad picture of social media, by asserting that networking is the biggest weapon for opposition groups, and if people take that in and choose to believe it, then social media as a whole will be viewed as a bad thing.

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