Terrorists want people to die and lots of people to watch. Videos of Islamist attacks are disseminated in the West for training and recruitment by jihadist organizations.The May 2026 vehicle-ramming attack in Modena, Italy, carried out by Salim El Koudri, a 31-year-old Italian citizen of Moroccan origin, and the March 2026 attack in which Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, drove a pickup truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, followed a blueprint for carrying out jihad on Western soil that has been systematically taught, refined, and disseminated by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and affiliated jihadist organizations.In the Michigan attack, Ghazali targeted Michigan’s largest Jewish temple while more than 100 children were attending school inside. The tactics used in both attacks closely resemble methods promoted through jihadist operational publications, encrypted platforms, and online propaganda networks.Terrorism is a specific methodology, not simply an act of violence, and to meet its definition certain conditions must be present. The targets are usually civilians with no direct connection to the government or military the attackers oppose. Italian pedestrians on a Saturday afternoon had no role in Middle East policy, and the Jewish families attending synagogue in Michigan had no connection to Israeli military operations in Lebanon.Striking people who are manifestly uninvolved maximizes fear across the broadest possible population. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) Global Terrorism Database defines terrorism as the use of violence against civilian targets to achieve political or ideological goals “through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”The objective is to destroy the public’s sense of security in the places most familiar to them. Attacks on ordinary spaces, where no one expects to be a target, generate the perception that no protective measure or counterterrorism effort can prevent future attacks.Footage of the carnage is then disseminated across jihadist channels, social media platforms, and encrypted messaging applications. It serves a dual purpose. First, it signals to potential victims that they are vulnerable. Second, it functions as a recruitment tool by demonstrating to potential fighters that lone individuals can strike at the heart of Western societies.This is why terrorist organizations claim responsibility for attacks even when the operational connection is indirect. They want both audiences, the terrorized and the recruitable, to know who is responsible.El Koudri drove his car into pedestrians before crashing into a shop window. He then exited the vehicle and stabbed whoever stood in his way. The vehicle-then-knife sequence follows a methodology disseminated through ISIS’s Rumiyah magazine and documented in multiple attacks across Europe and the United States.In Michigan, Ghazali waited in the parking lot for more than two hours before driving the truck far into the building, hitting a security officer, then exchanging gunfire before shooting himself. The FBI confirmed he had consumed pro-Hezbollah and Iranian militant propaganda for months and planned what he called a “special operation” aimed at causing mass casualties.His internet searches in the days before the attack included specific terms such as “what is the largest gathering of Israelis in Michigan?” The FBI’s Detroit field office designated the attack a “Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposefully targeting the Jewish community.” His brother Ibrahim had been identified by the IDF as a Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike one week before the attack.On New Year’s Day 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran from Texas, drove a Ford F-150 Lightning into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans after posting five videos on Facebook proclaiming his support for ISIS. In the first video, Jabbar explained he originally planned to harm his family and friends but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on “the war between the believers and the disbelievers.”An ISIS flag was recovered from the back of the truck. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with police after barreling through the crowd over a three-block stretch. His own words confirm that the goal was never the body count. It was the audience.That doctrine was first formalized by Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation in his 1974 paper International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare. Jenkins argued that “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.” He framed terrorism as theater, with attacks choreographed for maximum audience rather than maximum casualties.Attacks were staged in public places where civilians felt at ease. Schools, shopping centers, bus and train stations, and restaurants were selected precisely because they attracted large crowds. That framework governed Palestinian hijackings, IRA bombings, and much of the political terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s. These groups used carefully calibrated violence to avoid the backlash that excessive brutality would invite.The emergence of religiously motivated jihadist terrorism replaced that calculus. Walter Laqueur identified what he termed the “new terrorism,” characterized by decentralized organization, religious justification, and the deliberate pursuit of mass casualties. This stood in contrast to the calibrated, publicity-focused violence of earlier terrorist groups.Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, both former National Security Council counterterrorism directors, reformulated Jenkins’s famous observation. Bin Laden and his adherents, they warned, “want a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead.” The strategy had shifted.The operational pipeline runs through professionally produced, globally distributed publications. AQAP’s Inspire magazine, published since 2010, is best known for its “Open Source Jihad” section. The publication has included instructions for using a variety of weapons and ideological justifications for killing civilians.AQAP also produced Inspire Guide, which analyzed lessons learned from recent attacks in the West, including attacks unconnected to al-Qaeda. The publication encouraged readers to study and apply the operational guidance it provided.ISIS’s Rumiyah focused on encouraging Muslims already living in the West to carry out lone-wolf attacks against non-believers. Its “Just Terror” section provided guidance on vehicle-ramming and knife attacks that closely resemble methods used in attacks in London, Stockholm, Nice, and Modena.The shift to Telegram as a distribution platform broadened the scope further. Photos, videos, audio recordings, and operational-security guidance became readily accessible to would-be perpetrators.Attack footage is central to this infrastructure. Unlike earlier terrorist organizations, ISIS constructed a narrative that touched on all facets of life, including career opportunities, family life, and a sense of community. It blended traditional media platforms, glossy publications, and social media campaigns capable of going viral within seconds.ISIS videos were designed to reach young men already conditioned by first-person-shooter video games. The videos replicated video-game editing styles, weapon progressions, drone footage, and on-screen graphics. In doing so, they normalized the visual language of violence and made it more familiar to potential recruits.The recruitment pool targeted by this infrastructure is well documented. More than 60 percent of ISIS foreign fighters from Western countries are second-generation immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.Research by Benmelech and Klor, which examined approximately 30,000 ISIS foreign fighters from 85 countries, found that foreign recruits largely come from prosperous, ethnically homogeneous, and linguistically homogeneous societies. Their findings suggest that social isolation within such societies, rather than poverty, is a primary driver of radicalization.Countries with comparatively small Muslim populations but disproportionate numbers of ISIS fighters, including Finland, Ireland, and Belgium, ranked among the highest when adjusted for Muslim population size. These findings are consistent with theories that the difficulty of assimilation, rather than economic deprivation, contributes to the supply of radicalized recruits.The attacks in Nice, Berlin, London, and Westminster followed remarkably similar profiles. On Bastille Day 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France, rammed a 19-ton truck at high speed into a crowd of families and tourists on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. He killed 86 people and injured more than 450.On December 19, 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian whose asylum application had been rejected, hijacked a lorry and drove it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people. He then fled to Italy, where he was shot dead by police.The June 3, 2017 London Bridge attack was carried out by Khuram Butt, a Pakistan-born British national known to police; Rachid Redouane, a Moroccan who had lived in Ireland; and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent. The attackers drove a rented van into pedestrians before stabbing bystanders. They killed seven people and wounded 48. All three were shot dead by police.On March 22, 2017, Khalid Masood drove at speed across Westminster Bridge, killing four pedestrians. He then entered the grounds of Parliament and fatally stabbed PC Keith Palmer before being shot dead by armed officers. The entire incident lasted 82 seconds.ISIS deliberately designed this cycle of attacks to be self-sustaining. Foreign fighters who returned from combat to their Western countries of origin were often effective at building networks and sleeper cells. The strategy was also calibrated to provoke anti-Muslim backlash in Western countries, which in turn increased the supply of radicalized volunteers.The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point noted in March 2025 that high-casualty vehicle-ramming attacks produce a “demonstration effect.” Past high-casualty incidents have generated surges in copycat attacks, and the center warned that security agencies must be particularly vigilant following each high-profile event.Of the 18 terrorist vehicle-ramming attacks recorded between 2014 and March 2025, 83 percent were carried out by jihadists. The attacks in Modena, West Bloomfield, and on Bourbon Street are the product of a system that is methodologically consistent, ideologically coherent, and deliberately designed for an audience far larger than those present at the scene.The post Exporting Jihad: Instructions and Propaganda Driving Attacks in the West appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.