Description
This article examines how masculine humiliations function as a tactic of violence and social control in revisionist state-building by non-state armed groups. The analysis focuses on the Islamic State’s (IS) occupation in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. Using a semiotic analysis of images from the group’s English-language propaganda magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah, we show how violent struggles for power utilise masculine humiliations as a mechanism of social control and through which to reorientate hegemony. The study draws upon Klein’s triangle of humiliations, which relies upon the interaction of a humiliator, victim and witness. We find that IS militants - as humiliators - acted to “civilise” civilian men through both direct victimisation and witnessing the violent intra-communal punishment of a deviant “Other”. Recognising that humiliations are shaped by societal gender norms, the novel analysis brings together masculinity scholarship from across conflict and terrorism, human dignity studies and psychology literatures.
