Victor Davis Hanson: What I Fear Worse Than Socialist Democratic Government

In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson lays out why the spread of radical Islam concerns him much more than the spread of socialist democratic government.

This content was recorded prior to Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30.

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

JACK FOWLER: We’re going to look at another dust up, and let’s pick the growth and spread of radical Islam—that’s one side that’ll keep you awake at night, keeps me awake— versus socialist democratic government, which seems to be in some ways an ascendancy, at least in some places in America. 

Maybe it’s overstated because it’s always on the front page of the New York Post. But socialist democratic government versus the growth and spread of radical Islam: Victor, which is the worst of those two? 

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I’m far more worried about radicalism for two reasons, negative and positive. Why did [Zohran] Mamdani get elected, and why do we have these socialist candidates in blue states, and why now? 

You’ve got to remember that Barack Obama was a socialist, and when he left office, he lost the House, and he lost the Senate, and he lost 1400 state and local offices that were Democrats. He destroyed the Democratic Party. essentially. He did. He made it possible for [Donald] Trump to win. 

What happened that resulted in this phenomenon? We’ve to remember that [former New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio was just a dull form of Mamdani. I thought he was, you know it better in New York. He was a socialist. He wasn’t as bold, but he was a socialist. He was just more incompetent. But we don’t know how incompetent Mondami is. He’s slick. 

What I’m getting at is these socialists are a phenomenon of the last largely four years in Obama years, but especially the last four years when we borrowed eight trillion dollars, we had an aggregate inflation rate of 21%, 5.25% a year, and more importantly the things that count—insurance, electricity bills, natural gas bills, gasoline at the pump, cars to buy, eggs, staple foods—that was up about 25 to 30% over four years. 

And we did not get over 2.5, 3% [growth]. We didn’t get the growth that would have increased wages. Real wages went down. And housing went way up over 30%. So that was a reaction to the Biden [administration]. 

So, the corrective is 4%, 4.2% in the third quarter? And that is despite the shutdown? 

I won’t be surprised, Jack, that in January when the fourth quarter [is announced], because the third was belated because of the shutdown, the fourth quarter could be 4.5% and the first quarter next year could be 5.5%. And so, if the economy’s growing and inflation is going down, that socialist argument will have less resonance is what I’m saying.

And you know, Insider Advantage—they make fun of it like Rasmussen and Trefalgar. They’re all excellent polls— and today it had Trump at 50%, 42. And it had a better record in 2024 than Harvard, Harris, than all the rest, Gallup, everyone. So, I’m not worried.

But radical Islam, we have a quarter million students from the Middle East. And it’s open season on Jews. They kill them at museums. They kill Jews at museums. Harvard and Yale don’t want to do anything about it. 

Where I am at Stanford, I watched them tear down the Jewish hostage posters. I saw their encampment, radical Islamic pro-Hamas encampment, for four months on campus. I was on campus when they ransacked the president’s office, 12 of them did, pro-Palestinian protesters.

Going back to Major [Nidal] Hassan, “Allah al-Akbar,” killed 13 soldiers. The San Bernardino slaughter. What we saw in Bondi Beach, slaughter. I don’t know what the Brown [University] shooter’s motivation, the Portuguese guy, we’ll find out—probably not—but there were initial reports not substantiated that he might have yelled something like “Allah akbar,” but we don’t know [whether] he was just an outlier.

But that’s going to increase because The West in Europe where they’re getting up to about 15 to 16% illegal alien, non-native born immigrants; illegal, poor, angry and not assimilating in Germany, in France, in Britain, not 16 in Britain but getting on that trajectory in Spain, in Italy. [Italian Prime Minister Georgia] Meloni just deported some imam.

And they’re emboldened, and they do things like behead the head of a priest, or they make the French cower and cancel their Champs-Elysees Christmas parade. They do it in Germany.

Here in the United States, you can’t say antisemitism without “Islamophobia.” [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz says that they’re picking on Somalia. So, here you have the Somali community. It has a large number of people here illegally. Their representative, Ilhan Omar, most certainly, almost certainly married her brother and committed immigration fraud. 

She’s a multimillionaire. How she did that, I don’t know. And they have embezzled somewhere between two and nine billion dollars right under the nose of Tim Walz and [Minnesota Attorney General Keith] Ellison. And anybody who explains this in a rational fashion is an Islamophobe, racist, et cetera.

Radical Islam thinks that we are decadent, leisured, and they want to come over here, and they want to create enclaves that are not assimilating or integrating, and they feel that demographically they’re going to enlarge. And their first targets are Jewish Americans which are about 6% of the population. They think they’re already at three or four and they’re going to …

Put it this way. And I’ll shut up.

Ten years ago, [imagine] if Tucker Carlson wanted to give a talk at Charlie Kirk’s then nascent organization and he said, “Why are we picking on Muslims? Why are we picking on Muslims? I don’t understand that.” Well, Tucker, we’re not picking on Muslims. I mean, why would you say that right after Australia? Or why would you say that after what we’ve seen on campuses? Why?

But he wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago.

He said it now because the Gulf money is much more emboldened in funding things in the United States. Al Jazeera is even more powerful. There’s a quarter million students. Many of them stay on.

It used to be unthinkable that somebody would openly root or wear a green Hamas headband or flag. You see it on campus all the time. So, it’s changing, and that’s dangerous. It really is.

I think the worst is what we’re seeing in Britain, where you have grooming and mass rape of young native-born English women, teenagers by Pakistani immigrants for the most part. And no one indicted, prosecuted, convicted and jailed them. And they’re a protected group. And they will censor your speech if you disagree. That’s where we are. 

FOWLER: Do you see the videos of the mayor of London where he meets with the council and some of the members of the Conservative Party, and they say essentially what the h—‘s happening here with these grooming gangs?

And he will sit there and go, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you please define what you’re talking about? He plays this dumb game, but he’s not dumb when he’s doing it. He’s being very calculated and very condescending. And to think that that great city is in the hands of this … I’m not going to say the bad word.

HANSON: Let’s be more blunt. The two greatest cities in Western civilization and Christendom, historically in population, are New York and London. And they’re both going to be run by overt Islamicists, I think. And Mamdani, one of his first appointments, had to bow out because she had a history of wretched antisemitism in her social media account. 

He’s just hired a California exile who oversaw multi-billion-dollar fraud in California and the State Department of Labor.

So yeah, that scares me a lot more. 

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