Niels Schattevoet
In the first months after the proclamation of its ‘caliphate’, the Islamic State (IS) executed by beheading local inhabitants, soldiers, as well as Western hostages. James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Hervé Gourdel, Alan Henning, and Peter Kassig—the lives of all these men ended in the Syrian desert while being clothed in orange jumpsuits. By dressing its to-be-executed hostages as such, IS reminds its audiences of how the United States humiliates Muslim prisoners at Guantánamo (Richey & Edwards 2019). They mirror the way in which the US violates the human dignity of their captives. What IS communicates through this archetypical form of aggressive imitation is that the US’s claims to human rights and moral superiority are nothing but a façade. Aggressive imitation, here, is not just a justification for IS’s violence but also, fundamentally, an expression of its worldview—of restoring Muslim honour by avenging the humiliation Muslims have suffered, in Guantánamo and elsewhere.
Imitation in Human and International Relations
The ability, (unconscious) willingness, and tendency of human beings to imitate “constitutes the fundamental structure of human existence” (Brighi 2019:126). In his work Les lois sociales (1898), French sociologist Gabriel Tarde demonstrates how imitation shapes human society and relations. Most human beings, Tarde argues, “are forever imitating someone else” unless they themselves create an innovation, “an event that rarely happens” (1898:23-4). As such, imitation is not a premeditated strategy but rather a structural but ‘spontaneous’ feature of human social life. Indeed, René Girard (2000:310) writes, “no existence is free from imitation”.
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