Victor Davis Hanson: Europe Refuses To Enforce The Rule Of Law

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler: First of all, there have been protests—significant protests—against the murder of Henry Nowak in England and the attempted beheading of the gentleman, whose name I forget, forgive me, in Belfast. So throughout Ireland, throughout England, and including Scotland—Glasgow—there have been these protests. 

So, here’s what I think is a typical response from your typical Eurocrat. This is John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland. Here’s the headline from The Scotsman newspaper over there: 

“Scotland must stand against racism, hatred and intimidation.” 

“First Minister John Swinney has said Scotland must stand against racism, hatred and intimidation after protests following a knife attack in Belfast. 

“In a post on social media, Mr. Swinney said, ‘The scenes we saw in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayr last night are unacceptable. Scotland is a welcoming nation, and those who choose to make their lives here are valued members of our community. Racism, hatred and intimidation have no place in Scotland. We must stand against it.'” 

Don’t you— 

Victor Davis Hanson: Where do they get this? Do they have an AI thing that always turns out this boilerplate? “This has no place here. This isn’t who we are.” All that stuff? 

Why doesn’t he just admit that there’s no audit of the people coming into the U.K.? They come in illegally for the most part. They come from areas that are governed illiberally. They come with religious differences. They have ideas about women and homosexuals, other tribal people, people not of their tribe. They have very negative views of them. 

And they won’t assimilate, integrate, or acculturate at a pace that would be expected of any other immigrant. So, they have gotten the message that they’re going to be subsidized with housing, education, food, and medicine, and they feel that the host owes them that. 

Then, when they’re deterred from the consequences of their behavior—whether it’s a rape gang or walking down the street and hitting somebody—they go to the next level. 

Now, “they” is a collective stereotype and generalization. But this demagogic politician doesn’t say anything about this. But he wants to give a soapbox platitude so that he feels good about himself. But he doesn’t understand that no one is listening to him anymore. 

There’s an entire European movement, and if they don’t intervene and say, “We expect every single person in the U.K. to have come legally, and they must reside legally. If you’re an immigrant, you must be self-supporting and fully employed, and you will face the full force of the law just like subjects of the Crown. If you can’t do that, would you please leave?” They can’t say that. I don’t know why they can’t say it. 

I don’t know how they got in this position where some cities are 20% to 30% non-Indigenous people, but it’s not working, and it’s going to spread. 

The next thing that’s going to happen is that if they won’t address it in a sober and moderate fashion, people are going to get frustrated. We saw those two girls, I think they were from Scotland, remember? They were defending themselves from that predator. 

Fowler: With the knife and a hatchet? 

Hanson: Yeah. And she was trying to protect, was it her sister or her friend? 

Fowler: Her sister. Her sister. 

Hanson: Yeah. Everybody demonized her and said, “Oh, this is…” You know. 

Then he was found guilty the other day of actually trying to attack them or solicit them in some fashion. 

But if you allow grooming gangs and you don’t do anything about it, people are going to get frustrated, and they’re going to get violent. 

You have to treat everybody equally under the law, and you have to have the rule of law. That’s where we learned the rule of law—from the Western tradition via Britain. 

And if there’s no rule of law… 

You know, here in the United States, there was just a poll that said it was overwhelming. Seventy percent wanted everybody deported who was here illegally and committed a crime. 

I thought, “Well, that doesn’t do anybody any good. Who wouldn’t?” 

Then I read down further: 56% of the population wants everybody deported who came here illegally.  

How could that be when we’re told by the leftist media that all these people who are spitting at ICE, throwing rocks at them, and waving plastic phallic symbols represent the public? 

Well, the public is tired of that. They look at the ICE agents and don’t see demonic figures. They see largely minority people who want a living and want to protect their communities, which are the most impacted by illegal immigration. 

Fowler: Yeah. Look, why is an elitist type—whether in government or media in England—who believes he has the right to say, “You lower-middle-class white dude are a racist for this and this reason”? 

So, they have some racism calibration, but they won’t apply it to immigrants who have racial— 

Hanson: Because they have this Marxist, Foucauldian, Lacanian, Derridean, postmodern, Frantz Fanon idea that there is a binary. There’s no middle. There’s a victim and an oppressed person, and there’s a victimizer and an oppressor. 

And the duty of all good Marxists is to—and they have redefined this. Marx didn’t talk about race. He talked about class. They said class doesn’t matter because many people on their side of the binary are wealthier than the so-called oppressor side. 

Barack Obama is much, much, much, much wealthier than Joe Biden. His children are in much better shape than Hunter Biden. 

Yet they are on the oppressed side. Nobody can define it. We don’t know what makes a person part of the oppressed side. I guess it’s one Confederate drop, one-sixteenth non-white blood, non-Christian faith, or whatever standard they use. 

Once they went down that road of racial essentialism, they had to have something. 

Even Native American tribes who went down that side said that nobody can be in charge of this casino unless they have tribal blood. Well, in our society, what does that mean? It means they have to have DNA, and I think it’s one-sixteenth or one-eighth. 

You can see how absurd this is. It’s going back to the antebellum South. And that’s what they’re doing.  

You can be very, very wealthy. You can be very privileged. You can have every advantage. 

Cory Booker’s parents were corporate grandees. He grew up in a very upscale environment, and we’re supposed to think he is a champion of the oppressed? 

Jasmine Crockett has two accents: one that reflects her middle-class, upscale private schooling and another that she puts on when she wants to be authentically inner-city. 

It’s a joke. The whole thing is performance art, and everybody’s tired of it. 

So, this guy is going to get up and lecture, lecture, lecture. But he should ask himself: If you say “black” today, or “non-white,” it’s usually in a positive sense.  

But if you hear a government bureaucrat, a media figure, or a celebrity say “white,” it’s almost always in a negative context. It’s a pejorative. 

And people who are somewhere between 67% and 71% of the population— 

By the way, I think it’s a ridiculous rubric anyway. I live in a Hispanic area, and in the summer I am darker than many of my Hispanic friends. I see people at the bank every day speaking Spanish and they’re pure white. 

I don’t know why we call them non-white. I don’t know why anybody calls anybody white or non-white. But that’s another story. 

The point I’m making is that it’s always used as a pejorative, and that’s not sustainable. People will not put up with that. 

When you  add “deplorables,” “irredeemables,” Peter Strzok saying, “I smelled them all at Walmart,” the CNN commentator saying, “I have more teeth than everybody at a Trump rally,” Joe Biden saying, “ultra MAGA,” “semi-fascists,” “garbage,” and “chumps,” and then Barack Obama saying they cling to their guns and religion— 

It’s time to quit that because there’s a big revolt, and you don’t want it to get like it is in Europe. 

When you have the young Ukrainian woman butchered, and this conniver DeCarlos Brown is now suing the FBI, and then you just recently had the young kid walking outside his home in Philadelphia who was murdered, and the woman set on fire in Chicago—these high-profile black-on-white crimes—and then the reaction is… 

I don’t know what the reaction is, but in the case of Karmelo Anthony, you had counter-demonstrations where they basically said he was the victim and the man he murdered was the oppressor. 

When you have AI imagery of people urinating on Austin Metcalf’s supposed grave—I guess it was manufactured by AI, but the message was still hatred. 

We have got to get rid of this university idea that if you’re on the victim side of the binary, you’re incapable of racism or oppression. That’s just a get-out-of-jail-free card. That is just an invitation to be racist. 

The only thing that keeps us from behaving badly is some kind of deterrence, whether that’s religious, legal, social, or shame. 

But if you remove those deterrents, you’re going to see human nature in the raw, with the veneer stripped off.

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