On January 21, 2015, a pro-ISIS Twitter account reported that John Maguire, a twenty-three-year-old university dropout from the Ottawa Valley town of Kemptville, had been killed fighting Kurds in the Syrian city of Kobani. A few weeks before, Maguire had appeared in a YouTube video threatening Canada for bombing ISIS forces in Iraq. He is one of the dozens of young Canadians who have chosen to fight in a vicious conflict that has little to do with them or with Canada.

ISIS is now a go-to cause for alienated young people in the Islamic world and the West. This book examines the lure of this radical Islamist movement: its religious beliefs, sophisticated propaganda and vast social media networks. Does it offer answers to troubled young people? Are ISIS’s crimes—slavery, murder, rape, repression and the destruction of heritage sites—an attraction in and of themselves? What do we do about the people who take up ISIS’s cause but stay in their home country? What do we do with the ISIS recruits who come home?

The Killing Game examines what draws young men and women to join violent social and political movements. It looks at the psychology of young men and women today and the propaganda used by all sides in the Middle East conflicts, as well as the security laws and political initiatives that have been implemented to prevent Canadians from becoming radicalized.

MARK BOURRIE holds a PhD in Canadian media and military history; he is a National Magazine Award–winning journalist and has been a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1994. He has written hundreds of freelance pieces for most of the country’s major magazines and newspapers, which have resulted in several awards and nominations.

Bourrie lectures on propaganda and censorship at the Department of National Defence School of Public Affairs; media history and propaganda at Carleton University; and Canadian studies at the University of Ottawa, where he is also working on a Juris Doctor degree.

Bourrie’s book The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada’s Media in World War Two was the first examination of Canada’s wartime news-control system. It reached number six on the Maclean’s bestseller list. His academic paper “The Myth of the 'Gagged Clam': William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Press Relations,” published in Global Media Journal in 2010, is considered the authoritative analysis of the media strategies of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. In 2011, Bourrie was invited to contribute to a collection of papers written by Canada’s top military historians. His essay “Harnessing Journalists to the War Machine” was published in 2012 in Canada and the Second World War.

Bourrie lives in Ottawa and is married to Marion Van de Wetering, a corporate lawyer working for the federal government. They have three children.

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