American Killed While Fighting For ISIS Seemed Increasingly Radical On Social Media

An American who grew up in Minnesota joined the Islamic militant group ISIS and was killed along with two other foreign fighters in Syria, NBC News reports, citing activists linked to the Free Syrian Army. 

Douglas McAuthur McCain, 33, was killed in clashes between ISIS and other Syrian opposition groups. McCain, who branded himself "Duale ThaslaveofAllah" on Facebook and "Duale Khalid" on Twitter, was considered an unlikely jihadi by those who knew him.

Remembered as affable and friendly, one former high school classmate at Robbinsdale Cooper High School, in New Hope, Minnesota, referred to McCain as a "goofball."       

However, it appears through social media that McCain became radicalized at some point. McCain's Twitter bio reads "Its Islam over everything," and his most recent Twitter activity was a series of retweets in support of ISIS and jihad.

Since the spring, McCain started to follow a number of jihadis on Twitter. Due to his activity, McCain had been placed on a U.S. terror watch-list. 

At one point, McCain retweeted an English translation of a speech given by Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the ISIS spokesman. McCain's jihadist-inspired tweets came after a four-month break from Twitter. Before the break, McCain mostly tweeted about seeing friends, smoking hookah, hip-hop, and occasionally about Islam. 

On Facebook, McCain's pictures featured the black flag of ISIS and an illustration stating "They are coming back, soldiers of Allah." At the time of writing, it appeared that photos from his profile page were starting to be removed.  

McCain's Facebook photos paint a portrait of a young man who was religiously observant, while also being interested in a "gangster" lifestyle. 

As time progressed through 2010, McCain posted progressively more suggestive photos of glorified violence and weaponry. 

By the end of the summer of 2010, McCain was posting photos of men raising the black flag that has come to be associated with ISIS. 

In January of 2013, McCain changed his profile picture to a picture of Troy Kastigar. Kastigar was a fellow Minnesotan who converted to Islam and traveled to Somalia to join an extremist group before ultimately dying in 2009. Kastigar and McCain both graduated from Robbinsdale Cooper High School in 1999.

McCain is not the first American to die fighting for jihadis in Syria. In May, an American from Florida became the first American suicide bomber in the conflict. In total, there may be over 100 Americans currently engaged in fighting alongside ISIS and other jihadi groups in Syria. 

Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, estimates that "Syria is attracting more foreign fighters than Afghanistan did in its heyday." That heyday he was referring to was the 1980 Soviet occupation that helped form the basis of al-Qaeda. 

ISIS and other jihadist groups value foreign fighters for their potential symbolic and progoganda value. 

SEE ALSO: ISIS demands a $6.6 million ransom for release of a 26-year-old American woman

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