Two Sides of the Same Coin : A Comparative Study of Salafi Jihadi and White Nationalist use of History of Religion in Propaganda

Abstract: This master’s thesis is a comparative propaganda analysis that studies the use of history with a religion dimension, similarities and framing of propaganda messages in the Islamic States propaganda magazine Dabiq and Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto The Great Replacement. The propaganda has been analysed with Jowett and O’Donnell’s propaganda model, combined with Jan Assmann’s theories about cultural memory, historia sacra and cultural semantics. The results show that both actors use history with a religious dimension to frame their messages, but that Tarrant uses more cultural aspects than religious. Both actors also project similar messages such as referring to supranational communities, the sacred history of ancestors, ancient enemies, new foundational history and a call for organisation by their target audience.