ISIS has been using footage from Hollywood movies in short propaganda videos that the terror group uses in its recruitment efforts, according to a report Wednesday in The Hollywood Reporter.
The footage is taken from bootleg DVDs or the Internet.
Footage from Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" was used in a 22-minute propaganda short called "Healing of the Believers' Chests." One short celebrated the 2015 attack on a Paris nightclub by using footage of a falling Eiffel Tower from 2009's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra."
The propaganda videos shared on social media and YouTube also recreate scenes in movies, such as the ISIS video "Shoot to Redeem Yourself 2," which recreates a slow-motion shot in Eastwood's "American Sniper" movie from 2014 of a bullet being fired out of a rifle. Other ISIS shorts have reproduced scenes from "The Hunger Games" and "Mad Max: Fury Road," according to The Hollywood Reporter.
ISIS is using the footage "deliberately and strategically," according to Lara Pham, Counter Extremism Project deputy director. The organization, founded by former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, has checked into 1,275 ISIS media company films.
The pirating of movies and copying of techniques is a main strategy of Al-Furqan Media, an ISIS production company. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Al-Furqan became notorious in 2014 for videos that contained beheadings of American, British, and Japanese citizens. Its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, was killed last year in an airstrike, according to the BBC.
Since ISIS fighters are not allowed to watch American movies, Pham said in the Reporter that she found it "ironic" that the group is using the movies to draw people in to their organization.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Sunday that the United States has now shifted its strategy against ISIS from "attrition tactics" to "annihilation."
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