«Dabiq» e «Inspire»: magazine jihadisti a confronto

[Autom. eng. transl.] Never as in recent years has the threat of jihadist terrorism appeared to be concrete and looming. If in the first decade of the new millennium it had ended up being associated with attacks of great symbolic and media impact that immediately recalled the events of 11 September 2001, over the course of time the nature of the phenomenon has changed significantly, assuming forms and dynamics less and less sharp and defined. al-Qa'ida (AQ), the organization responsible for the operations that have significantly changed the balance of the post-cold war world, has passed through an evolutionary process that has led it to abandon the pyramid form assumed in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 in favor of a strongly decentralized structure. This choice allowed the movement founded by Osama bin Laden to survive the pressure exerted by security agencies across the world, but it has strongly changed its nature and modus operandi. Lacking a unitary command and control center and unable to manage the system directly, the historical leadership of AQ had to gradually give way to its regional nodes. A passage and repositioning all the more important if looked at in the light of the new margins of maneuver and operativeness opened to the organization both in terms of armed struggle and with respect to the dimension of propaganda. It is in this context that the threat has assumed, at least in the Western case, an increasingly blurred and "disconnected" form from the formal Qaidist structure, which has seen the emergence of actors characterized by weak, if not completely non-existent, forms of cooperation with the jihadist "mother house". This is the case of the famous "lone wolves" and of the formally non-affiliated groups responsible for attacks carried out in the name and on behalf of al-Qa'ida, but not by order of the latter. Far from diminishing in intensity, this phenomenon has taken on an even greater importance with the emergence of the self-styled Islamic State (IS), especially when the overwhelming rise of the latter in Syria and Iraq has suffered a serious setback to between 2015 and 2016. Although these results are to be ascribed to very different paths between them and in many cases linked to “traditional” methods of “enticement”, indoctrination and training (ie through the action of a recruitment, logistic network and more or less defined operational), an increasingly important role in the processes of radicalization culminating in the identification with the jihadist cause was played by the web. It is in fact within this horizon that we intend to place the analysis of the two main Jihadist online magazines in English: Inspire and Dabiq. With respect to the vastness of the material produced, ranging from the sphere of short twitts, to isolated official communiqués, videos of various kinds and topics, posts on Facebook, to the multiplicity of exchanges of images and conversations between affiliates and sympathizers, Inspire and Dabiq stand out sharply. They are carefully studied and realized, they have a redaction behind them and a recognizability given by the respect of a definite narrative line (letters of the publisher, dedicated columns, recurrent sections, "advertising", martyrology, et.) To which is joined the element of the official given by the "trademark" imprinted by the logos of the two communication agencies of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and of the self-styled Islamic State (IS). The present contribution intends to proceed with a comparison based on the analysis of the underlying objectives and of the reference constituency of the two magazines. The purpose, as in the case of other contributions made on the same theme, albeit with different declinations, is to provide useful tools to the