Ross Douthat Quotes

How did ISIL grow? It's real simple: social media.

It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.

I think today that politics registers very late things which society manifests through other channels, and I feel that often politics distorts and mystifies reality.

The left-leaning thinking that dominates the movie business follows a common liberal instinct to deny the spiritual dimension to every problem, thereby profoundly compounding the difficulties.

It is the thing that keeps me up at night - the notion that you have individuals in the United States who are looking at computer screens and who are becoming radicalized.

It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.

The moment you have massive social and political commentary trying to explain a phenomenon, then you know we are no longer dealing with a strictly psychiatric question.

People of my generation in Portugal fell into the magic potion of political ideas. What was very funny about this revolution was that it did not bring wealth to the Portuguese. But it brought language, ideas. You'd go to the fish market, and all the women who were selling fish would call each other fascist, communist.

It’s the confrontation with modernity that produces terrorism.

We have reached the point where politicians aren’t supposed to be political and the parties aren’t supposed to debate issues.

Politics consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all.

The politics of character tend to drive out the politics of substance.

We know what causes terrorism. Terrorists cause terrorism.

I dread the reveries of you philosophic politicians.

Ever since Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. election, I've been trying to expand my scope to understand the thought processes of people who don't see the world, or humanity, as I do.

The Internet creates more space for extremism, and the echo chamber effect accelerates the process.

We ask how did ISIS members become radicalized? How did the shooters in El Paso or Orlando or Las Vegas become radicalized? Well, the answer very often is the Internet. The digital land of make-believe. The same pipeline that helps my children learn, helps you connect with your loved ones also poisons some adults and distorts their reality.

Social media serve as the propaganda machine of 21st century terror, and this is apparent in the Middle East.

There are trends in our societies... that can lead to some political decisions in America and in Europe that can give some ground to the radicalization discourse.

It's unfathomable that Twitter would be so brazenly complacent, allowing Hamas to use its platform as a terror command and communications center of dangerous propaganda.

At some point in the last 20 years, the left moved to the center, and the right moved into a mental institution.

I don't see Republicans flipping their lids trying to burn down buildings in Ninja outfits when a Democrat, progressive, or socialist tries to speak.

ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.

The thing is, it's much easier to be a rightwing populist than a leftwing one, because the left always have to explain why things are the way they are. The right can just blame the foreigners.