--- title: The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria | TIME description: Aryn Baker discusses how fighters on both sides of the war post videos of beatings, torture and executions to incite fear canonical: https://time.com/video/eOY0sIfb/ og:title: The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria og:description: Aryn Baker discusses how fighters on both sides of the war post videos of beatings, torture and executions to incite fear og:url: https://time.com/video/eOY0sIfb/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eOY0sIfb/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria twitter:description: Aryn Baker discusses how fighters on both sides of the war post videos of beatings, torture and executions to incite fear twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eOY0sIfb/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria [Watch (HLS stream): The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eOY0sIfb.m3u8) (2:50)  _Published 2013-05-17. Aryn Baker discusses how fighters on both sides of the war post videos of beatings, torture and executions to incite fear_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:35 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Should You Fear Russia?](/video/xZky4liD/) ### Should You Fear Russia? [YouTube Families: The Effects of Growing Up Online](/video/vRqyEE4t/) ### YouTube Families: The Effects of Growing Up Online [Fear and Ignorance Spread Ebola](/video/KlA2XSgt/) ### Fear and Ignorance Spread Ebola --- ## Transcript This is a war that is, is seen on video tape. It's intimate violence. It's not like vast battlefield scenes, it's one on one beatings and torture. And the violence broadcast in this way, has changed the tenor of the war. I was working on another story interviewing a couple of rebels, and one of them happened to have this video on his desktop. It was quite striking, I mean horrific actually. And I was, I was so overwhelmed, I, I just sort of sat on it. And then I started thinking about it and what it meant in terms of the whole scope of the war. And I think what makes this particular video stand out is that, we're not helping the regime. We, the Americans, we, the West, we're not supporting the regime. We are not talking about aiding the regime. But we are talking about aiding and supporting the rebels. Either diplomatically speaking or financially, or with weapons. People are quite concerned that this is tarring all of the rebels with the same brush. Even his colleagues, his, his, fighters, the, the sources that led me to him, they also point out that he is one man that's doing something quite extreme and that he doesn't even represent perhaps his own brigade. Video is another weapon to, to use fear. I mean, look, it's not unique to this war. Look at the Mexican cartels that are beheading, and then they're filming these beheading videos. I mean, it's a way of saying, don't mess with us. And if you do, this is what will happen. So I think, and both sides are doing this. I mean, I've just been looking at a whole litany of videos where the regime forces or Shibea, which are the thugs associated with the regime are beating up civilians or possible snitches or rebel fighters. And they're saying the same thing. They're saying this is for Ahmed, or we're doing this because of what you did. So there is this act for act, what you do, we're gonna do to you. What these videos expose is that nobody's an angel here. And so really brings the question up like, how and should we help these rebels. And if we do, what are we contributing to. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The YouTube War: Online Videos Spread Fear in Syria","description":"Aryn Baker discusses how fighters on both sides of the war post videos of beatings, torture and executions to incite fear","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/eOY0sIfb/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-05-17T13:54:22.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eOY0sIfb.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/eOY0sIfb/","duration":"PT2M50S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/eOY0sIfb/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```