On his Twitter account, Kerry said he met with some of Hollywood’s top executives to discuss ways to fight the group Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
The meeting, which was reportedly off the books was held at Universal Studios, according to Hollywood business website Deadline.com.
Media learned about the gathering when Kerry tweeted a photograph of the meeting at 4:07 p.m.
Great convo w studio execs in LA. Good to hear their perspectives & ideas of how to counter #Daesh narrative. pic.twitter.com/AGhesmg1zK — John Kerry (@JohnKerry) February 17, 2016
The meeting took place about two months after Redlands couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who had been radicalized for years and ultimately pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook, killed 14 people in a mass shooting at Farook’s holiday work party in San Bernardino. It was the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9-11.
ISIS’s messaging methods are very sophisticated and their videos are of “Hollywood quality,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.
“They have the most sophisticated handle on propaganda media of any entity in the history of terrorism by a long shot,” Levin said. “What Secretary Kerry is doing is important because the government is not the most effective cultural messenger in free society. In Hollywood, they not only have the artistic talent but the distribution expertise as well.”
Recently, top Obama administration officials met with leaders from Silicon Valley’s major technology firms, including from Google and Facebook, to discuss the issues of security and terrorist messaging, Levin said.
“This is not a new effort but this expanded effort recognizes the need for coordinated action across both the private and public sector to counter messaging that exploits American-based platforms,” Levin said.
Kerry has steadily worked to build global support in the fight against the Islamic State extremists.
©2016 the Daily News (Los Angeles) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
