I didn’t need Slavoj Žižek’s New York Times op-ed to tell me that ISIS isn’t a group of commendable anti-colonialism freedom fighters but just a band of gutter-level losers–thanks for the 411, Doctor IQ–but the theorist does make a good point about the fugazi fundamentalism of the Rolex-wearing, new-media savvy savages. These beheaders aren’t emblematic of the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims who are peaceful, productive people all over the world, but are instead a perverted pastiche of the present and the past. From Zizek:

“The well-known photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, with an exquisite Swiss watch on his arm, is here emblematic: ISIS is well organized in web propaganda as well as financial dealings, although these ultra-modern practices are used to propagate and enforce an ideologico-political vision that is not so much conservative as a desperate move to fix clear hierarchic delimitations. However, we should not forget that even this image of a strictly disciplined and regulated fundamentalist organization is not without its ambiguities: is religious oppression not (more than) supplemented by the way local ISIS military units seem to function? While the official ISIS ideology rails against Western permissiveness, the daily practice of the ISIS gangs includes full-scale grotesque orgies, including robberies, gang rapes, torture and murder of infidels.”