Shorter David Brooks, "How ISIS Makes Radicals", New York Times, December 8 2015:
The crucial issue in the terror attack in San Bernardino is really, how is it possible for an Islamic State headquartered in some stranded desert post in Syria to radicalize a couple in the Inland Empire of southern California, what "technology of persuasion" flings its influence all the way from there to here?
(1) The best place to look for an answer is still Eric Hoffer's 1951 book, The True Believer, because although it doesn't perhaps have anything to say about winning hearts and minds by remote control, it certainly provides us with stuff I can spin out for ten paragraphs worth of paraphrase and direct quote;
(2) Probably they use the Internet.
I have a strong feeling I know how he got to the celebrated longshoreman philosopher of the 1950s, Eric Hoffer, to find out that he was the "best source of wisdom" on the radicalization issue, which is namely the
autogooglotic technique, or self-googling. Because the last time he published an explanation of how people get radicalized,
in February,
John Huckans at Book Source Magazine picked up on it in his own piece on, precisely,
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, in reference to a quote from Hoffer:
