A mannequin leans against the wall of ISIS's former headquarters in Sulaiman Pek, Iraq. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

In his 2008 book Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, the historian Michael Burleigh observes in passing that jihadist martyrdom videos have a similar structure to porn movies. He doesn’t dwell on the point, although he does allude to the climactic “money shot”: in the jihadist case, the moment when the bomber detonates his explosives.

In light of the many ISIS propaganda videos that have circulated this summer, Burleigh’s point deserves further analysis and refinement. One of the most striking aspects of the more violent among these videos—especially the beheading videos of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff—is their pornographic quality. They are primal and obscene and gratuitous. And, like most modern porn videos, they are instantly accessible at the click of a mouse. Indeed, ISIS videos have attracted such a large audience online that the State Department recently launched its own YouTube channel to counter their appeal, superimposing words of mocking condemnation over graphic images of ISIS’s brutality, entirely missing the point that ISIS appeals to potential recruits in part because of its exorbitant violence.

Jihadists proclaim a fierce opposition to Western modernity, condemning it as soulless, corrupt, materialistic, and depraved. But this has not prevented them from exploiting modern technological advances in fields from weaponry to communications. Nor, evidently, has it stopped them from watching porn. The stash of X-rated material recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad after his killing by U.S. commandos in May 2011 may have raised eyebrows among some Western journalists, but it was scarcely news in counterterrorism circles. C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, wrote on her Facebook page at the time that the U.S. government “has recovered terabytes of the stuff from terrorist computers.”

In any case, the conventions of jihadists’ hardcore film productions unmistakably resemble those of porn. And just as porn has evolved over time, so too has the jihadist propaganda video.

In a 2001 essay on the American porn industry, the novelist Martin Amis makes a distinction between two types of mainstream American pornography: features and gonzo. “Features,” Amis explains, “are sex films with some sort of claim to the ordinary narrative: characterisation, storyline.” Or, as a porn industry executive explained to Amis regarding features: “We don’t just show you people fucking. … We show you why they’re fucking.” Gonzo, by contrast, doesn’t: “It shows you people fucking,” Amis writes, “without concerning itself with why they’re fucking.” He concludes: “Gonzo porno is gonzo: way out there. The new element is violence.”

Violent jihadist propaganda videos can similarly be classified in terms of features and gonzo, with narrative-rich depictions of typically goal-oriented violence in the former category, and narrative-light displays of ostentatious destruction and killing in the latter.

The origins of jihadist features can be traced to the wave of martyrdom videos that came out of Palestine in the mid-1990s. These productions tended to be long—some running to more than an hour—and obeyed a narrative of revenge in which the weak and righteous ultimately triumph over the powerful and unjust. Invariably, the movie featured a bomber whose family had been killed by the Israelis and who plays the role of avenger and martyr. You knew where he was headed and how it would end, but you also knew why, because the bomber himself would tell you: He would look into the camera and read his scripted testimony.

These videos are commemorative and celebratory, focusing on the life and sacrifice of the martyr, who is lionized for his courage and honor. In The Road to Martyrs’ Square, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg’s rich ethnography of Palestinian suicide bombing, the authors write, “You will never understand anything about the lure of martyrdom, the centerpiece of intifada cosmology, until you realize that someone who has decided to take that path as his own sees himself not only as an avenging Ninja, but also as something of a movie star, maybe even a sex symbol—a romantic figure at the very least, larger than life.” Martyrdom videos, which command huge audiences in Palestine, are instrumental in promoting and sustaining this whole illusion.

Gonzo productions are of a more recent vintage and appear to have their origins in Iraq just after the American-led invasion in 2003. These videos are short—some lasting no more than 12 seconds—and low-budget, making use of a single camera and only the most rudimentary editing skills, mirroring the rank amateurishness that is a hallmark of gonzo porn. They typically depict IED attacks on American or Iraqi government forces, but they don’t overly concern themselves with why those attacks are happening. Rather, the emphasis is on the spectacle of destruction itself, often replayed over and over, mirroring a technique utilized for the “money shot” in gonzo porn. Reviewing a random sample of videos produced by 10 insurgent groups in Iraq between 2004 and 2006, Arab Salem of the University of Arizona’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and his co-authors reported in 2008 that a large proportion showed IED or rocket attacks. These videos, they wrote, were “often filmed in real-time”—showing attacks as they happened—“instructive ... and low budget.” Nine of the 10 groups they examined produced these kinds of videos.