"For Okab, though, the massacre was a blow to his conscience that snapped him from ISIS’s spell.
He was horrified. Who gave this command? he asked the fighters around him. Why are you doing this?
Each time he received the same simple reply: These people are infidels.
He realized then that he would abandon the group — and the idea made him afraid. He began to wonder who might detect his newfound dissent. ISIS reserved some of its harshest treatment, he knew, for its own members suspected of wanting to defect...
Since defectors keep off the radar, their voices are seldom heard, robbing potential recruits of a reality check against the lure of ISIS propaganda and would-be defectors of the examples others have set. But rare interviews with six defectors, as well as two men working to help more escape, reveal the cracks quietly forming in the ISIS ranks...
The militants put him through their infamous indoctrination courses, which instilled an unexpected radicalism in his mind. He had been living as an infidel, far from God, he learned, and obeying ISIS would bring him close. He was soon marching eagerly toward a violent death. He fought in dozens of battles, gaining a reputation as a fearsome warrior as he rose through the ranks. “I cannot explain this feeling, but they teach us that God is waiting for you, and you must go to him. So go and don’t be afraid of death,” he said. “And we wanted to die. Because when we die, all the hard things in this life will end, and we will start again...
Even as the U.S. and its allies work to roll back ISIS on the battlefield, Maher said, they have done little to encourage would-be defectors to leave or to clarify a policy on how they’ll be treated if they come home. “The policy is that if you go to Syria, you die in Syria, or you sort of live your life as a nomad,” he said. “No one has a plan and no one has a strategy. As a result of that, people remain inside.”"
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/how-to-lose-your-mind-to-isis-and-then-fight-to-get-it-back?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Longform%20417&utm_content=Longform%20417+CID_0b43a5edad3812a75f8bcb7323d6385f&utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&utm_term=.hu5BNdJnP#.feZmynkAN
This is how dystopia happens, I guess.
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