Newt Gingrich: ISIS Just Part of Larger Picture of Terrorism

The war against terrorism is not only a fight against the Islamic State, but against an underlying movement toward Islamic supremacism, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday, and there is a definite contrast between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to interpreting the dangers.

"We are in one of those very difficult historic moments, where the ideology and the interest groups of the Democratic Party literally blind them," Gingrich told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" host Martha MacCallum. "It's almost a psychosis from seeing reality."

The reality is, said Gingrich, that "ISIS is simply one of a series of companies. Think of them as organizations. There is an underlying movement toward Islamic supremacism which says you submit to Islam or we kill you."

The movement is frightening, he continued, but also historic, and millions of people in the Muslim world, "not most, but millions," believe it.

"Notice what we are learning with France," said Gingrich. People have to ask themselves if somebody is born in Belgium, grows up in the Belgian welfare system. Goes to Belgium schools and lives in the Belgian economy, what is it that's going on that they decide killing people is a better future?"

In the Paris area alone, Gingrich said, "There are 47 mosques . . . that are teaching Sharia and teaching you have the right to kill people if they don't submit. The French, if they're serious, will have to look at home, not just overseas."

"There are 21 people who left Minnesota to go back to become fighters against Western civilization," Gingrich said. "Are they from the same mosque? Is there somebody who's a central connection point?"

But fighting back will mean the United States will have to "have the nerve to enforce the law," as it's clear that "they will kill us unless we adapt to this new reality," said Gingrich, predicting that Obama will find it "extraordinarily painful to recognize what's happening."

Meanwhile, said Gingrich, the airstrikes that have been taken against ISIS are nothing but "public relations."

"The problem is not a supply dump in Syria," he said. "The problem is on the Internet, it is the spreading of an idea of ideology and the spreading of hatred and the willingness to kill people."

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