The School of Journalism and Communication is pleased to host author Mark Bourrie, PhD to discuss his new book The Killing Game: Martyrdom, Murder, and the Lure of ISIS.

What: Talk by author Mark Bourrie, PhD
When: March 17th, 2016 from 9:00AM to 10:30AM
Where: University Centre room, room 182

Excerpt from the book’s synopsis:
This book examines the lure of this radical Islamist movement: its religious beliefs, sophisticated propaganda, and vast social media networks. ISIS is now a go-to cause for alienated young people in the Islamic World and the West. Does it offer answers to troubled young people? Are ISIS’s crimes -- slavery, murder, rape, repression, and the destruction of heritage sites -- an attraction in and of themselves? What do we do about the people who take up ISIS’s cause but stay in their home country? What do we do with the ISIS recruits who come home?

The Killing Game examines what draws young men and women to join violent social/political movements. It looks at the psychology of young men and women today and the propaganda used by all sides in the Middle East conflicts, as well as the security laws and the political initiatives that have been designed to stop Canadians from being radicalized.

From the irresistible lure of Marxist-Leninism of the 1930s through the ‘60s and ‘70s, and including the appeal of Nazism to young Germans in the 1930s, this book also investigates what it is that draws young people to join and fight for causes as different as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and the Red Brigades of the 1970s, but with an emphasis on the attraction of ISIS and radical Islam in our own time.