“You did it! You really finally did it, you maniacs! You blew it up, damn you!”
The Statue of Liberty is half-buried in the sand now, and Charlton Heston is yelling at it because of what New York City just decided to do.
By an overwhelming margin, New Yorkers handed over the financial center of planet Earth to a Marxist pro-jihadist named Zohran Mamdani, who has never held a real job.
It&#8217;s a bold strategy, Cotton. We&#8217;ll see how it works out for them.
Mamdani is not hiding the ball. He intends to implement major changes in America&#8217;s financial center, the financial center of planet Earth. He intends to make a new system that is going to destroy capitalism. 
Will he be able to accomplish that? There are some checks on him. 
Many of the promises he has made are like a third-grader running for school president who promises: “Free ice cream for everybody and no homework” was basically his campaign. If he said “affordability” over and over and over and then threw out a bunch of random things that he would never be able to do, he would be elected mayor.
It worked.
We now live in a political era characterized — on both sides — by people accurately diagnosing problems and then not proposing any real solutions while saying, “If you give me ultimate power, I will solve it for you.”
It never works.
Democrats are resistant to the idea that Mamdani is the future of the party. Hakeem Jeffries suggested that he was not the face of the party. But I&#8217;m old enough to remember when Democrats said AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib were not the face of the party.
And now they are.
It will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party treats him. Do they treat him as an outsider? Do they say that he&#8217;s “sort of quirky,” the way they treated Bill de Blasio, or do they embrace him and try to draft off of the energy that he obviously captured in the middle of this campaign?
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2311"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
One of the lies that is constantly told about socialist candidates like Mamdani is that they are the people who get blue-collar voters, that they excite blue-collar voters. But America and Europe are different; historically speaking, European blue-collar workers tend toward socialism, but that does not happen in America. In America, blue-collar workers have always been fond of capitalism because it is what provides their jobs. Even in the early union days of the United States, the unions were quite actively anti-communist in the United States in a way that they simply were not in Europe. That remains true today.
What drove Mamdani to victory were immigrants, extreme leftists, and college-educated young women. Some of the latter is because Mamdani, with the smarmy grin and the inability to bench-press 135 pounds, seems particularly non-threatening, as opposed to Andrew Cuomo, who was ousted from office over his inability to keep his hands off the asses of women.
If this is the future of the Democratic Party, go for it, guys. It&#8217;s playing with fire. New York City is playing with fire. Mamdani’s policy proposals are trash. If he implements any of them, the city is in serious trouble.
There are systemic checks and balances that prevent Mamdani from single-handedly destroying the city. If he wants to raise taxes, he has to go to the state level. And the state legislature is very unlikely to want to increase taxes again. He says that he wants to make all the buses free, and he&#8217;s going to pay for it. How&#8217;s he going to do any of this stuff?
He won&#8217;t be able to get any of that stuff done, and then he will rail against the system.
Mamdani will make the business climate disastrous. Crime will go up. His proposals are foolish in the extreme.
Typically when you win, you tend to quote the founding ideals of the country. Mamdani did not. His entire victory speech was about how America historically is trash and how all of the fundamental principles of America are trash, and how he&#8217;s here to change things on a radical, fundamental level.
He quoted Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate from the 1910s and Nehru, the socialist leader of the non-aligned India in the post-partition era. There was no Washington; there was no Jefferson; there was no Lincoln. He said there&#8217;s a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can “afford.”
All of these plans are trash.
He says that there&#8217;s a “mandate for change.” There&#8217;s always a mandate for change. That&#8217;s what elections are.
I&#8217;m very much looking forward to never having to pay for a hotel again in New York. I&#8217;m just gonna ride the buses around. I&#8217;ll just get on and ride them for free. Why the hell not? As long as I don&#8217;t get stabbed in the face, which may very well happen in a city of New York governed by Zohran Mamdani, who thinks that the police are inhibitors of human freedom.
H.L. Mencken, the famous columnist from the early 20th century, once said that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
I hope you enjoy what you wrought, New Yorkers.
And I&#8217;m glad that I have some Florida real estate that is available at a fetching price.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-VOTE-NEW YORK-MAMDANI

New Yorkers Take The Bait

Ben Shapiro

Democratic Socialism

Elections

Leftists

Manhattan

Marxism

Mayor

New York City

Opinion

U.S. Politics

Zohran Mamdani

In 1979, Iran’s revolutionaries — an <a href="https://institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/ideology-and-irans-revolution-how-1979-changed-world">alliance</a> of Marxists and Islamists — rose on promises of justice and equality. They <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/5/the-ayatollahs-unkept-promises">pledged</a> to give citizens free water, free electricity, and free housing. The slogans captured a nation’s imagination, uniting two ideologies that despised each other but shared the same illusion: that moral purity and government control could replace economic discipline. Within years, the illusion <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/30/world-news/islamic-republic-close-to-collapse-in-iran-civil-war-possible-report/">collapsed</a>. Inflation exploded, jobs vanished, and the regime they created silenced its own believers.
Half a century later, in a different world and under a different flag, the same rhetoric echoes in New York City.
Assemblyman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/zohran-mamdani">Zohran Mamdani</a>, now running for mayor, calls for “people-powered politics” and promises “free” public services — fare-free buses, frozen rents, and new programs that would expand government dependency under the banner of compassion. It’s a playbook familiar to anyone who has studied <a href="https://diamond-democracy.stanford.edu/speaking/speeches/when-does-populism-become-threat-democracy">revolutionary populism</a>: identify inequality, moralize the problem, and promise paradise without explaining the cost.
Analysts <a href="https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/traffic_and_transit/2025/07/10/free-buses-could-slow-speeds-and-cost-more-">estimate</a> that making city buses free would erase about $700 million a year in fare revenue. Replacing that money would either require massive new taxes or more state debt. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) already <a href="https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/traffic_and_transit/2025/07/10/free-buses-could-slow-speeds-and-cost-more-">loses</a> roughly $1 billion annually to fare and toll evasion, including more than $500 million on buses alone. The Independent Budget Office <a href="https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/comments-on-new-york-citys-executive-budget-for-fiscal-year-2025-and-financial-plan-for-fiscal-years-2024-2028/#:~:text=With%20these%20adjustments%20based%20on,$13.00%20billion%20in%20FY%202028.">projects</a> multi-billion-dollar city deficits through 2028. To date, Mamdani has offered no serious proposal to offset the hundreds of millions in lost revenue.
That mindset is not new. In 1979, Iran’s revolutionaries <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/18468/#:~:text=In%201979%2C%20Ayatollah%20Khomeini%20gave%20his%20first,disappeared%20from%20the%20public%20archives%20in%20Iran.">said</a> oil revenues would pay for everything; in 2025, New York’s progressives say “the rich” will. The numbers never add up, but the slogans keep working because they appeal to emotion, not reason.
<div id="attachment_995421" style="width: 749px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-995421" class="size-large wp-image-995421" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2659698-739x576.jpg" alt="The Iranian Islamic Republic Army demonstrates in solidarity with people in the street during the Iranian revolution. They are carrying posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian religious and political leader. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" width="739" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2659698-739x576.jpg 739w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2659698-300x234.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2659698-768x599.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/GettyImages-2659698.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 739px) 100vw, 739px" />Keystone/Getty Images</div>
Adding to the picture, the Washington-based lobbying group <a href="https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/how-the-iranian-regime-seeks-to-build-its-power-upon-american-naivete">NIAC</a>, often criticized for mirroring Tehran’s foreign-policy positions, recently <a href="https://x.com/NIACouncil/status/1982919590310011092">announced</a> its official endorsement of Mamdani. The symbolism is striking: the same organization that has long echoed and defended the Islamic Republic now throws its support behind a socialist-leaning candidate in America’s financial capital. The thread that connects them is ideological, a shared belief that moral virtue justifies economic fantasy.
This convergence of left-wing utopianism and moral absolutism should alarm anyone who cares about the survival of pragmatic politics. When ideology replaces arithmetic, cities fall into the same trap that ensnared nations. The faces and languages change, but the structure remains: emotional populism promising equality through control.
Iran’s tragedy began with chants about justice and dignity. Within a decade, the alliance between communists and clerics disintegrated, replaced by censorship, executions, and an economy under siege. The rhetoric of equality gave way to ration cards and ideological policing.
New York is obviously not Tehran. But when candidates promise unlimited benefits and moral purity while ignoring budgets, they are playing the same dangerous tune. No city, no matter how rich, can outspend reality. Populism always runs on borrowed time and borrowed money.
The warning isn’t about religion or class. It’s about patterns. In every era, radicals on the Left promise that compassion can be legislated and that economics will obey moral will. It never does. When leaders treat economics as politics and politics as faith, collapse follows.
In 1979, Iran’s revolutionaries told people to look up, and many claimed to see Ayatollah Khomeini’s face in the moon. The illusion was complete. New Yorkers shouldn’t make the same mistake on the skyline. Charisma is not competence, and utopia is never free.
* * *
Dr. Aidin Panahi is an Iranian-American research professor, energy expert, and political activist. He is the co-founder of the “From Boston to Iran” initiative, and his analyses on security and policy issues have appeared in outlets including The Jerusalem Post, Washington Times, the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Middle East Forum, Homeland Security Today, and Visegrád24. X: @Aidin_FreeIran
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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NYC Early Voting Surges Ahead Of Nov. 4 Mayoral Election

Iran Tried Mamdani’s Ideas 45 Years Ago — It Ended In Ruin

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran

Islamists

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final installment in the series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.”
In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">Part IV</a>, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao’s communist uprising — exposed the radical communist roots of Democrats cringey attempt to seem cool by using profanity.
Today, the authors look to the future, and explore how radical leftist movements rewrite history, not just to justify their actions and demonize the cultures they want to destroy, but to change how people think about their past, present, and future. 
***
Every nation lives by its landmarks. These are not merely dates on a calendar, but signposts dividing history into “before” and “after.” They anchor collective memory and shape how a people understand themselves.
For Americans, the great landmarks have long been clear: 1492, the discovery of the New World; 1776, independence; 1861, the Civil War; 1929, the Great Depression; 1964, the Civil Rights Act. To speak of “before” and “after” these events is to tell the story of a nation striving toward freedom, law, and self-government.
In recent years, however, new landmarks have been imposed by ideological fiat. The most striking is the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which declared that America began not in 1776 but in the year enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia. With that shift, the axis of history moved: “before and after independence” became “before and after slavery.” Liberty and law were redefined as hypocrisy and oppression. More dividing lines quickly followed: before and after Jim Crow, before and after George Floyd, and so on.
These changes are not merely academic. When the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949, it imposed a single ultimate landmark: “before liberation” and “after liberation.” Five thousand years of recorded history were collapsed into a morality tale. Everything before was painted as darkness; everything after as light. The word liberation itself became a judgment on every person and institution. Those who had prospered before were condemned, often destroyed.
The CCP has never ceased wielding this powerful weapon to manufacture historic milestones. After the disastrous Mao era, it crafted yet another milestone by dividing its own history into ‘before Reform and Opening-Up’ and ‘after.’ The Mao years were rebranded as ‘decades of arduous exploration’ in search of a better China, erasing the atrocities that claimed tens of millions of lives.
The post-Mao period, by contrast, is exalted as the Party’s crowning achievement: lifting the Chinese people out of poverty and transforming China into an economic superpower. And the ultimate aim? To enshrine the CCP as the eternal liberator of the Chinese people. This is not just propaganda but a wholesale transformation of society. History was rewritten, language reshaped, culture remade. The “before” was demonized; the “after” glorified. Ordinary people adopted the new vocabulary, willingly or not. And once language changed, thought and memory changed too. The Chinese people, once bound by a magnificent civilization, were divided into “good” and “bad” classes — oppressors and oppressed, loyalists and enemies. Hatred of the designated groups was not just tolerated but demanded.
America is not a one-party state. Our institutions remain democratic. Yet the project of re-framing — what might be called Cultural Marxism — has advanced here with surprising speed. The narrative of American exceptionalism, rooted in liberty, law, and individualism, has been replaced by a narrative of slavery, racism, and oppression.
The Left has shown itself to be even more cunning Cultural Marxists than the Maoists. They have redefined and “simplified” American history into a new binary: before and after. In their telling, the “before” is our present — defined solely as slavery and white oppression — rendering the Civil War irrelevant and erasing the achievements of countless Black Americans, including Barack Obama. The “after,” meanwhile, exists only in the future. And how is that future to be reached? By dismantling the entire system, which they insist is built on racism, bigotry, and injustice. 
History’s landmarks are never neutral. They can unite or divide, elevate or diminish. To say “before independence” and “after independence” is to conceive of ourselves as citizens — free, equal, and striving for self-rule. To say “before slavery” and “after slavery” is to fix identity forever in terms of bondage and resentment. One story moves toward freedom; the other freezes us in grievance.
Nations cannot thrive on grievance. A shared history, however imperfect, is the glue that binds generations. To rewrite that history into a tale of villains and victims is to dissolve the glue.
The real question is whether we will continue to allow new landmarks to redefine us. Will we pass on to our children the story of a free people, equal under God, struggling but advancing toward justice? Or will we hand them a fractured narrative that teaches them to see one another as permanent enemies?
History is never only about the past. It frames the future. What we choose as our “before” and “after” will decide who we become.
READ MORE:
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence?</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-wheel-of-misfortune-victims-victimhood-and-victimization?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=Opinion&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=The+Wheel+Of+Misfortune%3A+Victims%2C+Victimhood%2C+And+Victimization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part II: The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/from-red-guard-to-blue-hair-why-leftists-destroy-womanhood?author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=From+Red+Guard+To+Blue+Hair%3A+Why+Leftists+Destroy+Womanhood">American Maoists, Part III: From Red Guard To Blue Hair: Why Leftists Destroy Womanhood</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">American Maoists, Part IV: Proletarian Profanity: Why Democrats Want To Trap Voters In A Linguistic Ghetto</a>
Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Erasing History: The Real Cultural Marxism

1619 Project

Commerce Department

History

monuments

The first rule of a Marxist revolution is that it must always eat its own. We&#8217;re beginning to see that even before Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, which has a very high likelihood according to the betting markets.
The supposed heartburn is already setting in because here is the problem: Once people begin to govern, there are actual rules to governance. You have to be a person capable of carrying out the office of the mayor, and there are obstacles to that.
Thus, all of the bizarre, radical signaling that Mamdani has been doing runs up against reality. Make no mistake, Mamdani has embraced Marxism and jihadism. This is a person whose parents are radical; he&#8217;s a second-generation radical. His father compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler.
Mamdani came to America as one of the privileged scions of an immigrant family. His father is a Columbia University anti-American professor; his mom is an anti-American producer, both of whom believe in a racial hierarchy of victimhood.
POLITICO reported:
<blockquote>Zohran Mamdani and New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America will have some relationship issues to iron out if he’s elected mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis. The DSA has been integral to his success.</blockquote>
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a revolutionary movement. They&#8217;re not interested in governance. They&#8217;re interested in revolution. They want to overthrow capitalism. They want to overthrow the Constitution. They hate all of these things.
But the problem is that once they get people elected to office, those people have to operate within some boundaries.
More from POLITICO:
<blockquote>How the arrangement will work should Mamdani win on Nov. 4 is uncharted territory. “One of two things will happen: They will give him a grace period and let him get his sea legs and recognize that compromise is a way to get something done, or they become one of his biggest obstacles,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “And if that happens, he’ll be fighting people from the right and the left.”</blockquote>
It is clear that that he is going to be moderate in some areas because he doesn&#8217;t want to completely destroy all credibility with the New York population; he wants to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch; he&#8217;s committed to following through with the city&#8217;s plan to build for new jails to replace Rikers, which is something that both he and the DSA had previously opposed.
We&#8217;ll see if the DSA will give him any space. My theory is that they will give him some space, that they will allow him to be as revolutionary as he wants to be within the format that has been provided to him, and then they will gradually hollow out the movement.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2308-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
What the DSA is realizing is something that people from all sides of the political aisle are realizing: If you maintain your extremely radical ground, but you operate within the party system, you&#8217;re able to more quickly take power than if you operate outside the party system and browbeat people. Hijacking a party is far easier than forming your own, and then ideologically twisting and turning it.
All this heartburn, this angst, is going to be overplayed.
The hard-leftists know exactly who Mamdani is. They know he&#8217;s a revolutionary, and they are perfectly happy to travel with him, knowing that his heart is in the revolutionary place.
Perhaps he ends up stopping short. Maybe they end up turning on him when he&#8217;s no longer useful to the movement. Marxist movements have a real habit of doing this.
They will turn on absolute butchers like Leon Trotsky if it turns out that he is now inhibiting the next step of the revolution.
But I think they will give Zohran Mamdani an awful lot of rope with which to hang the city of New York before they make those sorts of moves. The Democratic Party has now built itself around the radicals, which is why you see Ilhan Omar out there as a chief advocate for Mamdani, on the basis that he is being attacked for his Islamic religion, not for the pro-jihadism or the pro-Marxism, or for the fact that he&#8217;s never held a real day job and that he&#8217;s one of the great leeches on the butt of American society.
The revolution is the only thing that matters here. The truth doesn&#8217;t matter. That&#8217;s true even for many voters in New York. There&#8217;s a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15235585/mamdani-poll-terrifying-nightmare-new-york.html">brand new poll</a> out, talking about what New Yorkers think is going to happen if Mamdani is elected. The poll shows that many New Yorkers who do not support Mamdani are convinced he&#8217;s going to destroy New York. They think that his mayoralty will mark a return to the urban decay of the 1980s, when the city was blighted by poverty, rampant crime, crumbling infrastructure, and abandoned buildings.
It&#8217;s not as though New Yorkers are unaware of what&#8217;s happening here. New Yorkers are perfectly aware. It&#8217;s just that they are willing to risk it. They&#8217;re willing to risk it because they want to make a revolutionary statement.
The bottom line is that a plurality of New Yorkers understand things are going to be bad, but they don&#8217;t have the strength to stop him. That is the real key to this election.
Many mainstream Democratic figures have swirled and swiveled behind Mamdani and decided that it&#8217;s perfectly fine for him to take a leadership position.
This is what happens when the so-called moderates are more invested in the success of the party than they are in the principles of the party. They give way to people who are more interested in shifting and moving the principles of the party than they are in the success of the party.
* * *
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NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Campaigns Ahead Of Next Week’s Election

The Democratic Socialists Of America Prepare For Victory

Editor&#8217;s Note: This is the second installment in the five-part series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.&#8221;
In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence">Part I</a>, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao&#8217;s communist uprising — explain how extremist movements plant the seeds for revolution by slowly acculturating ordinary citizens to political violence.
In today&#8217;s installment, the authors explore something all too familiar to anyone who&#8217;s seen the American Left in action: the endless cycle of victimization, which fuels perpetual revolution.
***
History is full of paradoxes. None is more striking than the revolutionary promise to rescue the downtrodden, only to end in destruction for all.
From the French Revolution to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the pattern is familiar: revolutionaries first elevate “the victims,” granting them moral superiority. Those newly anointed victims are then encouraged to victimize their designated enemies. What begins in the name of liberation almost always degenerates into tyranny.
It is a story as old as revolution itself. The Jacobins invoked the poor and the persecuted, then set the guillotine to work on nobles, priests, and eventually their own comrades. Lenin vowed to free workers and peasants from Tsarist oppression, only to unleash the Red Terror that consumed millions, including many of his followers.
Mao empowered the youths to denounce their teachers, parents, and neighbors. In those frenzied years, almost everyone alternated between being a victim and being a victimizer, and frequently embodied both roles simultaneously. As Georges Danton, himself a leading figure of the French Revolution, devoured by the machine he helped build, lamented: “Revolution devours its own children.”
In China, we witnessed this cycle firsthand. The story of Bian Zhongyun, the first teacher beaten to death by her students in August 1966, illustrates it in all its cruelty.
Bian had been a faithful revolutionary. She joined the Communist Party in 1941 and later helped carry out land reform in a village where she was involved in the stoning to death of four landlords — including a woman who once cared for her child. She was later rewarded with the post of principal at Beijing’s most prestigious girls’ high school, which primarily served the children of CCP elites.
Yet her students, daughters of top Party leaders, killed her within hours in the first frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. They were fueled by Mao’s call to “rebel.” That month alone, thousands of teachers across China were killed. Millions more were publicly humiliated and beaten.
What became of the new victimizers? After serving as Mao’s instruments, the rebelling youths were discarded: the girls were sent into exile in China’s remote regions for grueling labor. The cycle turned anew. 
This wheel of misfortune follows a grim logic. Authorities pick assumed “victims” and designate enemies. The chosen victims are given power beyond the law, while enemies are stripped of any protection. Victimhood becomes not a misfortune but a privilege. People scramble to claim it — often by victimizing others. The scope of enemies then expands endlessly. Eventually, the beast devours everything.
We would be foolish to believe this tragic dynamic cannot repeat here. In recent years, America has seen smaller but chilling echoes: the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, pro-Hamas and anti-ICE protests, and so on.
Who are the victims? Those once deemed “victimizers” — men, White people, and law enforcement personnel. Though our democracy tempers the scale, the revolutionary zeal is real, and has already produced a vast number of victims. 
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger recently exhorted her supporters: “Let your rage fuel you.” Rage justifies escalation: exaggerated allegations, destruction of reputations, looting, even violence. We saw the consequences in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
The other fuel is thrill. Lenin once called revolution the “festival of the masses.” It is intoxicating to watch hierarchies topple, reputations destroyed, enemies dragged into the public square. Today, whole groups are urged to define themselves by grievances, while the list of oppressors grows without limit. Yesterday’s ally becomes today’s enemy; yesterday’s victim becomes today’s victimizer. Unfortunately, a society built on grievance politics collapses under its own contradictions.
China paid dearly: Mao’s Cultural Revolution killed tens of millions of people, including revolutionaries themselves, and brought the country to its knees. In America, Leftist ideology has condemned inner-city communities to crime, drugs, and welfare dependency that deepens poverty rather than relieves it. The paradox endures: revolutions that begin in the name of justice often end in greater injustice. Movements that elevate victims often produce mass victimization. Ideologies that promise to heal history’s wounds often end up deepening its scars.
The lesson is clear. A healthy society must recognize suffering without weaponizing it, redress injustice without creating new ones, and honor dignity rather than grievance. If we fail, the cycle will repeat — as it has so many times before. And once again, revolution will devour everyone, including those who started the revolution.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence">READ MORE: American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence?</a>
Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Untitled design (54)

The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization

China

Communism

Numerous organizations have latched onto the homelessness crisis in the United States to advocate for &#8220;Marxist, anti-capitalist, or anti-American ideologies,&#8221; according to a report published last week by conservative watchdog, Capital Research Center (CRC).
In the 113-page <a href="https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/Infiltrated-Report-1.pdf">dossier</a>, CRC identifies multiple groups that are part of &#8220;extremist ideological movements advocating&#8221; for certain policies to address homelessness. The report refers to this network of leftist groups as the &#8220;Homelessness Industrial Complex,&#8221; which helps shape policies that are &#8220;counterproductive&#8221; and fail to address the root problems of the homelessness crisis.
&#8220;Many of the groups over time have moved away from a focus on directly serving people who suffer to advocacy, which is to say political fighting,&#8221; CRC President Scott Walter told The Daily Wire, adding, &#8220;Some groups have gotten seriously radical.&#8221;
The report, which CRC put together in cooperation with the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank, combs through numerous organizations and highlights how they have pushed some of the most extreme leftist talking points. The report also analyzes the financial data of leftist networks and identifies how they have spent billions of dollars in their supposed effort to address homelessness, while the crisis has only spiraled further out of control.
Researchers with CRC looked into dozens of nonprofits that signed onto a Supreme Court amicus brief in last year&#8217;s Grants Pass v. Johnson case, opposing arrests and fines for homeless individuals who violated city ordinances. In that list of organizations, researchers found many groups that don&#8217;t focus solely on addressing homelessness, but also push radical leftism on other issues.
The National Harm Reduction Coalition, for example, supported defunding the police and told drug abusers that “no one knows what’s best for you better than you. Whatever drugs you use, we want you to be safe and healthy.&#8221; In 2022, the National Harm Reduction Coalition received 73% of its $12.8 million funding from government grants.
San Francisco Rising, another leftist organization that signed onto the Grants Pass v. Johnson amicus brief, is open about its political activism, calling itself an “electoral alliance” working “to build political power with working-class communities of color.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights filed another brief for the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, urging the court to oppose the city&#8217;s efforts to enforce the law against homeless individuals. The Center for Constitutional Rights <a href="https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/legal-group-israeli-colonial-domination-necessary-context">defended</a> Hamas&#8217; October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, arguing that “Palestinian resistance fighters” had the right to “carry out attacks on military targets.”
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The Western Regional Advocacy Project, another nonprofit highlighted by CRC, espouses anti-capitalist rhetoric and has made <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_k3KChdZ1/">calls</a> to &#8220;Abolish Police.&#8221; The group&#8217;s executive director, Paul Boden, <a href="https://thestreetspirit.org/2025/05/07/the-roots-of-neoliberal-fascism-in-america-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/">wrote</a> an article in early 2025 arguing that the Trump administration is instituting &#8220;neoliberal fascism&#8221; in America.
&#8220;The essence of extreme radicalism is fury that America is a horrible place, and for those people, they want to exploit the homeless because they can point to the homeless as supposed evidence that the country is horrible,&#8221; Walter said. &#8220;If that is what you&#8217;re doing, you don&#8217;t want there to be fewer homeless people. You want their suffering as vivid and as widespread as possible. And if they were in an institution that was helping them with their mental or their substance abuse, instead of being out on the streets, that&#8217;s not very good for your PR campaign.&#8221;
Other far-Left groups that are involved in housing and homelessness advocacy have openly pushed Marxism. The Autonomous Tenants Union Network <a href="https://atun-rsia.org/who-we-are">says</a> that it fights &#8220;for a world without landlords and without rent&#8221; and then adds that it wants to &#8220;end capitalism itself.&#8221;
Stomp Out Slumlords, a D.C.-based member of the Autonomous Tenants Union Network, <a href="https://www.stompoutslumlords.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/SOS-2023-report_web.pdf">wrote</a> in 2023, &#8220;We’re not going to get to communism without moving people to talk to their neighbors first, and more importantly, doing it ourselves. Here in DC, exercising tenant purchase rights or pushing for rent freezes aren’t going to immediately decommodify housing, true. But these are the small-scale sites of disruption from which we can build working-class power into something much bigger.&#8221;
The Manhattan Institute&#8217;s Christopher Rufo, who has written extensively about America&#8217;s homelessness issue, said in the foreword to CRC&#8217;s report, &#8220;The rhetoric of &#8216;housing is a human right&#8217; and &#8216;abolish homelessness&#8217; is seductive, but it functions as a smokescreen.&#8221;
&#8220;Behind it lies a set of interests dedicated to dismantling enforcement, expanding bureaucracies, and keeping streams of funding flowing into activism rather than into effective service delivery to those in desperate need,&#8221; Rufo added.
The Trump administration has sought to address the homelessness crisis by focusing on law enforcement and rehabilitation. President Donald Trump also signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/">executive order</a> in July that aims to move &#8220;homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment&#8221; to &#8220;restore public order&#8221; and to redirect federal funds toward &#8220;Effective Methods of Addressing Homelessness.&#8221;
&#8220;Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens,&#8221; the order stated. &#8220;My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.&#8221;
The Trump administration has faced backlash from leftist groups over its move to clean up homeless encampments. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another group that has inserted itself in the homelessness debate while advocating for leftist ideologies. The SPLC has frequently been slammed for smearing conservatives. CRC found that the SPLC often &#8220;engages in homelessness policy by submitting amicus filings that oppose enforcement.&#8221;
After Trump signed his July executive order, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/resources/guides/trump-executive-order-homelessness-faq/">argued</a> that the order &#8220;promotes unlawful and out-of-date approaches that are rooted in anti-Black racism and bias against people with disabilities.&#8221;
Walter said that rooting out the &#8220;Homelessness Industrial Complex&#8221; in the United States remains a &#8220;huge challenge&#8221; that &#8220;will take years.&#8221;
&#8220;It will take years because there&#8217;s so much money and inertia behind the current bad industrial complex on this,&#8221; Walter added. &#8220;So much of this is state and local, not federal. The federal money is often funding bad state and local things, so it&#8217;s not like the feds have no role or no leverage, But if Portland and Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles want to continue to be foolish and hurtful, it will not be easy to change because they are the tip of the spear for dealing with this.&#8221;

Homelessness

Leftist Groups Exploit The Homelessness Crisis To Push ‘Anti-American Ideologies,’ Watchdog Says

Leftist Groups Are Using The Homelessness Crisis To Push 'Anti-American Ideologies': Watchdog

Anti-American

Homeless

Leftism

Trump Administration

There&#8217;s been a lot of talk lately about the radicalism problem on the Right. It is, indeed, a problem that exists.
But is it nearly as mainstream as it is on the Left? Has it been imbibed? Has it been ingested? Has it been sucked into the great maw of the party and turned into the mainstream position on the Right?
The answer, of course, is no.
But on the Left, the answer is very much yes.
The Democratic Party has decided to let the radicals run the show. This has become extraordinarily clear over the course of, not just of the past couple of election cycles, but the past few months, now that Zohran Mamdani has been vetted by the entire Democratic Party as the future of the party.
All of the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party refuse to dissociate in any way from Mamdani, who is, in fact, a terror sympathizer; who is, in fact, a Marxist radical; who is, in fact, a complete, useless ne&#8217;er do well of a human being who has somehow managed to manipulate himself into a position to become the mayor of the financial center of planet Earth in New York City.
Mamdani is a Marxist with jihadist leanings. That&#8217;s the reality. And in the modern Democratic Party, that is a feature, not a bug.
There are a lot of people in the media who&#8217;ve been struggling to figure out how Mamdani was able to win a primary despite having these radical positions. I&#8217;ve been saying since he won the Democratic Party primary that his winning is not a bug; it is a feature quite popular among Democratic primary voters, because the Democratic electorate has basically split between moderates who are increasingly bleeding over into the Republican Party or into the independents, and the hardcore Democrats, who are increasingly moving ever further to the left.
We are now two generations removed from the specter of communism via the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union fell 35 years ago, and that means that there are a lot of people who don&#8217;t remember the Soviet Union or the risks of communism. When they think of socialism, they actually are thinking of mixed states, capitalist states that have a significant welfare portion in places in Europe.
But the solutions that they are proposing are full-scale nationalization projects, Marxist projects directly from the Soviet, Cuban, Venezuelan handbook. And they don&#8217;t even know they&#8217;re doing that — or they don&#8217;t care.
What that means is that the candidate who signals the furthest to the Left in many of these areas in the primaries is actually quite likely to win. That’s how someone with Mamdani’s positions on the Middle East and terrorism and jihadism — only 24 years removed from 9/11 — can be elected mayor of New York.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2298-mamdani-aoc-and-bernie-oh-my?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
 New York City is likely to elect as mayor somebody who has sympathies for Al-Qaeda. I don&#8217;t mean he&#8217;s sympathetic to the actual terror attacks of 9/11, although he&#8217;s quite sympathetic to the terror group Hamas. I mean he believes that the Osama bin Laden-articulated grievances of 2001 against the West are mostly correct.
There are people who&#8217;ve been trained for generations in this country to believe that Western civilization is responsible for everything bad that happens on planet Earth, that third-world countries are third-world because of exploitation by the first world. They believe that terror centers are terror centers, not because of a deeply steeped radical Islamic ideology, but instead because somehow the West has been cruel to people.
That’s the kind of garbage Mamdani is preaching, and it is finding a ready audience among Democratic primary voters.
Very few Democrats have had the stones to simply say, “No, this is a bridge too far. The answer here is no.”
What&#8217;s amazing about that is that the risk factor in making such a statement is relatively low. Imagine that you are a mainstream Democrat, an elected official from Kansas, and somebody asks you about Mamdani. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that guy&#8217;s too extreme. I would not vote for him. I&#8217;d vote for Andrew Cuomo.” Would that cost you anything?
Let&#8217;s say that you&#8217;re a purple state Democrat. Or let&#8217;s say that you&#8217;re a blue state Democrat. You&#8217;re just not a New York City, far-Left Greenwich Village Democrat. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that dude is too much for me. I understand the primary voters chose him, but the reality is that is not representative of America.”
<div id="attachment_987879" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-987879" class="size-large wp-image-987879" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-864x576.jpg" alt="Andrew Cuomo, New York City mayoral candidate, from left, Curtis Sliwa, New York City mayoral candidate, and Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayoral candidate, during a mayoral debate in New York, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. Millions of dollars are pouring into the mayoral election with less than four weeks to go until New Yorkers go to the polls. Photographer: Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Instead, the Democratic Party has decided they must draft off of the Mamdani energy. And that&#8217;s why you&#8217;re seeing nationally a reflection of Mamdani politics via the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
Mamdani is a child of the Bernie Sanders revolution because Bernie obviously is not just a socialist when it comes to domestic policy. He is also a Howard Zinn, anti-American extremist when it comes to American foreign policy. Mamdani is just following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders. But he&#8217;s adding a more diverse backstory.
People think Mamdani’s radicalism about the Middle East is somehow an inhibitor to his political success.
Wrong.
In New York City, with its Democratic primary base, his radicalism is an aphrodisiac. The Democratic Party base wants this signaling. They want the extremism. They want the Howard Zinn-ification of American foreign policy.
Israel pulls out of Gaza, and Hamas immediately starts consolidating control by literally pulling people out of their houses, lining them up, putting them on their knees, and shooting them in the head. There are videos of this happening.
And Mamdani has nothing to say about this. Not only does he have nothing to say about this, he&#8217;s asked whether Hamas should disarm now and he won&#8217;t even answer a question as to whether Hamas ought to be disarmed.
New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was asked by a New York Times reporter, “I&#8217;m a reporter for the Times. I&#8217;m writing about Elise Stefanik’s comments in response to Mamdani’s Fox News interview, Mamdani’s campaign has said that her comments calling him a jihadist were Islamophobic. Please let me know if you want to respond.” 
Stefanik <a href="https://x.com/EliseStefanik/status/1978943584867860643">responded</a> publicly on X:
<blockquote>I call Zohran Mamdani a jihadist because he is. Zohran Mamdani is a raging antisemite. Mamdani is the definition of a jihadist as he supports Hamas terrorists which he did as recently as yesterday when he refused to call for Hamas terrorists to put down their arms &#8211; the same Hamas terrorist group that slaughtered civilians including New Yorkers on October 7, 2023. 
He is Kathy Hochul’s endorsed jihadist Communist who she has empowered to destroy New York City. It’s why the New York State Democrat Party Chair refuses to support him. It’s why multiple Democrat Members of Congress refuse to support him. It’s why Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have still not endorsed him. Because Zohran is a jihadist who will destroy New York.</blockquote>
Why aren&#8217;t Democrats dissociating from him?
None of them will say it because they are trying to draft off the jet fuel that is radicalism and nut-jobbery inside the Democratic Party.
Bill Ackman <a href="https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1979000490563432948">stated</a> on X of Mamdani:
<blockquote>It is now abundantly clear he is completely full of it. The whole thing is an act. Just look at the identical practiced smile with which he ends each answer. After watching him recreate his fake smile, your skin will start to crawl. Mamdani exudes inauthenticity and smugness. He denies or disavows any of his previous public statements that he knows will now cost him votes. The only takeaway is that he is an extremely articulate inauthentic actor. You can’t trust one word out of his mouth. And that’s before you get to his policies which make no economic sense.</blockquote>
This is the nature of the modern Democratic Party.
And they are moving in this direction at light speed.

New York City Mayoral Debate

Radicalism Isn’t Fringe Anymore In The Democratic Party

Andrew Cuomo

Democrats

Elise Stefanik

Islamic Jihad

After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on a CNN town hall to discuss the government shutdown—and repeatedly attacked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) while issuing demands for President Donald Trump to meet—Johnson fired back, “With every ounce of Christian character that I can muster &#8230; bless her heart.”
Ocasio-Cortez accused Johnson of “choosing to punish the American people,” declaring that she would not “enable it by acquiescing and enabling the behavior of bullies.” She added, “So it ends today,” and warned, “If I were Mike Johnson, you should be in that office negotiating with Hakeem Jeffries every damn day until we reopen this government.” Ocasio-Cortez also demanded, “I will not accept a measly one-year extension of the ACA,” and argued that “health care is a human right &#8230; the minimum wage should be a living wage in this country &#8230; [and] public colleges and universities should be tuition-free.”
“Does AOC, does she have both oars in the water here, thinking that the president is going to bow down to these demands?” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham asked Johnson.
“With every ounce of Christian character that I can muster, Laura, let me just say, bless her heart,” Johnson replied. “This would be comical if it were not so dangerous. You’re looking at the two leaders of the modern Democratic Party. We say all the time, ‘This is not your father‘s party.’ It’s not. These guys are full Marxists. You hear how vapid their ideology is; what empty suits they are.”
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“But they are the leaders of the party,” he continued. “They are dragging the rest of the old guard, the old party leaders, around by the nose, and they are subservient to their wishes. Chuck Schumer has picked a fight over this very simple clean CR to just keep the government funded for 21 additional days, till November 21, seven more weeks, so we can get this appropriations process done. And the reason he did it is because he’s afraid of that voice you just heard on that stage. He’s afraid AOC  is going to challenge him.”
“There’s a rise of Marxism in the party; it’s happening in New York, in their state, and he’s terrified. That’s why everybody around the country is feeling such pain right now, because of this nonsense,” he concluded.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨“Bless her heart.”
“This would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous. <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> and her fellow Marxists are dragging the Democratic Party into chaos while Schumer panics to keep his job.” — <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerJohnson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SpeakerJohnson</a> <a href="https://t.co/DdGQ3pAcfN">pic.twitter.com/DdGQ3pAcfN</a>
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) <a href="https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1978972928789073984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

MixCollage-17-Oct-2025-11-26-AM-4521

‘Bless Her Heart’: Speaker Johnson Torches AOC After She Attacks Him, Makes Demands On Trump

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Bernie Sanders

Congress

Donald Trump

Government Shutdown

House Speaker

Mike Johnson

Politics

When people say “political violence is wrong,” does that change the underlying substructure of thought that leads to a massive elevation in violence in the country of the political variety?
I don&#8217;t think it means anything to just say that political violence is wrong, because there are actual substrates of thought that lead to the elevation of the violence that compel fringe actors to go out and do things like murder Charlie Kirk.
Thus, having our politicians simply go out there and say, “We&#8217;ve got to take down the temperature; we all have to use better language,” is absolutely true, but it isn&#8217;t specific enough.
Chuck Schumer said, “The bottom line is this is a time that all Americans should come together and feel and mourn what happened. Violence, which affects so many different people of so many different political persuasions, is an affliction of America, and coming together is what we ought to be doing, not pointing fingers of blame.”
Hakeem Jeffries said, “This moment requires leadership that brings the American people together, as opposed to trying to further divide us. Political violence in any form against any American is unacceptable, and should be denounced by everyone. And moving forward, we have to figure out a better way to come together, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.”
All of this is correct.
But all of this is incredibly vague.
I want to talk about something that we all know is true, but nobody seems to want to say: Not all ideologies are equally prone to violence.
When there is a shooting, a mass shooting at a synagogue, a mass shooting at a church, when Charlie Kirk is shot, everybody&#8217;s mind immediately goes to this: What are the likeliest probabilities in terms of who did the shooting? 
Everyone does this. We cannot pretend that we are blind to the realities of the world. When there is a shooting at a synagogue, I can tell you my mind goes to two places: radical Muslim or white supremacist. Those are usually the options. If there&#8217;s a shooting at a church, your mind might go to a trans radical or a radical Muslim. 
That&#8217;s where your mind is going to go. And this is leaving aside people who are generally mentally ill or where there&#8217;s no political ideology involved. If there is a political ideology involved, your mind immediately goes to the movements that are likely to drive people toward murder.
Not every ideology is prone to this. No one thought that when Charlie Kirk was shot, it was because of his stance on low taxes. No one thought that. We differ on all sorts of politics in this country. Nobody thought that a debate about marginal tax rates was why Charlie was shot. Nobody believes Charlie Kirk was murdered because of his stance on energy policy. 
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2279-breaking-charlie-kirk-assassin-in-custody?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
In order for an ideology, for a movement to coalesce in such a way that it allows for violence — the sort of bubbling of violence that lies at the outskirts of a movement — there have to be some preconditions.
I&#8217;ve been talking a lot about lions and scavengers. What we are seeing here is the scavengers at work. 
The basic philosophy of the scavenger is very simple: All models and civilizations are merely guises for power. My failure is a result of one of those corrupt power systems. There&#8217;s a great conspiracy out there. I am the victim. I&#8217;m being targeted. I am the actual victim. 
And thus, if there is a great conspiracy that is targeting me for destruction, I must respond in kind with violence.
This is how you get to the idiotic notion that speech is violence. 
Those are the three elements: “Morals and civilizations that I don&#8217;t like are simply guises for power,” “My failure within that system is a result of that great conspiracy and I am the victim,” and “It is an existential threat to me and therefore I must act out with violence and harm somebody.”
Let me give you three examples, and I&#8217;m going to take them from the top death threats I received. 
I receive an enormous number of death threats. I have 24/7 security on me, on my family. I literally go nowhere without an entire team of security at this point in my life. And that is because of things like what happened to Charlie.
There are three main wings that I get these threats from: Trans ideology/Marxist ideology, white supremacists, and radical Muslims. 
I want to go through each one of those and explain why these particular ideologies, why these particular movements are likely to generate violence. 
A trans ideology says that your argument about biology, that there is simply male and female, is, in fact, a guise for power. You&#8217;re doing it because you hate me; you wish to erase me. I am a victim of your failure to accept my identity, such that you&#8217;re erasing me. You&#8217;re engaging in a “trans genocide,” and therefore, you are threatening me. Your speech is a form of violence. It is wiping away my identity. 
And therefore violence ought to be met with violence.
Marxist ideology, which is derived from the same general area, is the idea that the governmental system, the free market system, is an imposition on me. It is a conspiracy from above to harm me, to destroy me. My failures inside the market are actually not my own. They&#8217;re the fault of the system. And you, as an advocate for the system, are victimizing me. You&#8217;re erasing me. You&#8217;re destroying me. And I must act with violence. There&#8217;s a reason why Marxist movements are so violent. They say that speech, advocacy for the free market, is, in fact, a system of power. It is to be met with violence. 
White supremacy: I know that there&#8217;s an attempt to pretend that this doesn&#8217;t exist, but it absolutely exists in online spaces. Pretending it doesn&#8217;t is bulls*** and everyone knows it. I know it because I&#8217;ve had to have the FBI arrest somebody who was doing this while threatening not just me, by the way, but Donald Trump Jr. 
That ideology says that white people are being put upon in the United States by an entire system. And if you&#8217;re an advocate for that system, you are threatening me with destruction, with erasure, with white genocide, and thus you must be killed. Violence is a proper response to an attempted genocide. That is the argument that is made, at root, by many white supremacists. 
I&#8217;m not talking about what the Left calls white supremacy, which is anything to the right of Hillary Clinton. I&#8217;m talking about actual, honest-to-God white supremacists. I get an awful lot of death threats from them.
Group number three, radical Muslims, who believe that the failures of the Palestinians, for example, are the result of evil Western systems. And thus, if you are an advocate for those systems, it&#8217;s because you want to erase the radical Muslims and you want to kill people and you want to commit genocide, and therefore it is fine to shoot two Israeli embassy staffers dead in Washington, D.C. That is why it is fine to throw a Molotov cocktail at an 80-year-old woman in Colorado who was protesting Israeli hostages being held. 
We all know this is true. Pretending it isn&#8217;t true doesn&#8217;t make it go away. Not all movements are equally likely to bubble up with violence.
And so when we have politicians saying political violence is bad, if you&#8217;re not speaking out against the movements that use this logic, if you&#8217;re not speaking out against the movements that say that speech is in fact a form of violence, that systems are in fact a form of violence, and that violence is the proper response to that, then you are contributing to the environment in which this kind of stuff happens. 
It is not that there are many radical Muslims in the United States, by the numbers, thank God.
It’s not that there are many white supremacists in the United States.
But by the numbers, the increasing radicalism of the Left in the United States is, in fact, a massive issue. 
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently did rankings of campus free speech. And what they found is that college campuses are replete with the failure to speak your mind. 
Why? Because people are afraid of violence.
It goes all the way back to when I was in college. There&#8217;s nothing new here. I wrote my very first book, “Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth,” in 2004 about the kind of discrimination conservatives faced on campus. And yes, there was the possibility of violence, even in 2004, not being shot, but the possibility of being physically assaulted, which is something that came close to happening to me multiple times, even when I was an undergrad. 
That&#8217;s going back 20 years, when I was warning that this was going to metastasize and take over huge swaths of the political Left. People ignored it at the time. But it was true.
I spoke in 2015 at the University of Missouri during the Black Lives Matter upsurge, after Ferguson. And I remember people asking about safety. I said, “I&#8217;m not worried about safety. There are some police there; I&#8217;ve got a security team now. No one’s going to take a shot at me. This is America. You don&#8217;t get shot in America for saying things on a college campus. This is America. I grew up in this country. This is my country. This is a country I love. This is where our fundamental value is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. No one&#8217;s going to do this kind of stuff. No one.” 
But it&#8217;s becoming more and more common. According to FIRE, a record 1-in-3 students now hold some level of acceptance, even if only rarely, for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech. 
Now, I&#8217;m sure not everybody who believes they&#8217;re using violence thinks in terms of shooting someone to death. But when you are drawing from a pool at this point of legitimately tens of millions of young Americans, who are atomistic and isolated and don&#8217;t touch grass, it is not going to be hard to find some unhinged people who decide to take that to its logical conclusion and fire a bullet through the throat of a man who is simply attempting to speak truth to people in the friendliest possible fashion. 
I don&#8217;t like when people say “They shot Charlie,” because “they” isn&#8217;t a person. A person shot Charlie Kirk, and he shot Charlie Kirk for a deranged reason.
With that said, there are movements in which the substrate of their political thinking leads to an elevation in violence. Period. End of story. That is a reality.
And it is not enough to just say “political violence is bad” if you are not calling out the movements themselves.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-HOMICIDE-MASS-MEDIA-CRIME

Saying ‘Political Violence Is Wrong’ Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Anti-Semitism

assassination

Charlie Kirk

Radical Islam

Shooting

Transgender

White Supremacists

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22E4UEYSZLK9L&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7OpVlvjzAMkKLRoafpVC5BbfjWiiv_d1HNPN1kmFXABtw90xnU8oHEEAF-C1mFSw.m6gzq7MX5HeMeyZUsEzNWkKLTJiFGUtfa6NHjZv0eDw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+war+on+science+lawrence+krauss&amp;qid=1754574679&amp;sprefix=the+war+on+sc%2Caps%2C111&amp;sr=8-1">The War On Science</a>,&#8221; edited by Lawrence M. Krauss (Post Hill Press, 2025), with contributions from Jordan B. Peterson, Niall Ferguson, Richard Dawkins, Gad Saad, and many more. 
* * *
<h3>The Archetypal Fate Of The Universities</h3>
The institutions of higher education in the West are administratively top-heavy, in precisely the manner allowing that very administration to prey upon the future earnings of the students they hypothetically serve. Furthermore, the faculty itself leans very heavily in the radical direction despite being the dubious beneficiaries of administrative expansion. Student-to-faculty ratios have increased dramatically. The status and autonomy of the faculty have been very badly compromised. None of this seems to have made the professors and researchers any more forthcoming in their resistance or any more skeptical about the self-righteous “progressive” ideals they advocate. Finally, the students themselves have been infantilized, as well as taught outright that progressive radicalism is identical to virtue. It is, therefore, very difficult to imagine anything approximating an across-the-board improvement in behavior at the universities, in consequence. There are no imaginable circumstances under which the extant Ivy League institutions, for example, would be likely to dispense with the 80 percent of administrative staff and a somewhat lesser but still high proportion of the faculty that would have to disappear for any real change in orientation to occur. 
There have been recent initiatives, most famously in the states of Texas and Florida, to push back against the diversity, inclusivity, and equity bureaucracy-mob, but a simple name change is no trouble for the serpentine Machiavellians of the radical fringe to manage. This means that the same old corrupt players can just change their ideational camouflage, and at the surface level, just as they did when the revelations of Communist excess became too self-evident to deny in the 1970s, and Marxism metastasized into the intersectional oppression idiocy of today. It is, therefore, highly possible that the academy in the West is rotting because it is, in fact, dead and cannot be revived in anything resembling its current form. In that case, the flame will have to be kept burning at new institutions, whether in the classic bricks-and-mortar and in-person guise, if that proves possible (and I doubt it), or electronically, if the major changes in the conceptualization of education and the technology necessary to offer mass higher learning prove capable of delivering on their obvious but by no means certain promise.
<div id="attachment_958091" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uHHyjHn4r9-5D55ze0R9Gk-xy5AIFtAEK7qQ4oR-WpQLi51rBu79jgtR88ZY5U4VgKNq4guJpjpfz4JBsu0CN4ZKfzsmHlY2xOTX5ypfus0dPolpFU3YLRuD1JycE93FkmrEi8sJQT_-K9sN8c2aXpVu9KANTbLiCQ7kDTygeqz7Oh8iBp7BWNSPZkoE6i9QqlYnHbmAMe8OQScq8S7oi0FoZ5cX6CV4hwRSurj_rO8.zNhWL4XZiBpgI8rDMadnYyGjqoUHGwS4_vcJYlypv18&amp;qid=1754575409&amp;sr=1-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958091" class="wp-image-958091 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Post Hill Press" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-09-35-AM-9729-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Post Hill Press</div>
Is there a way out personally, psychologically, or conceptually? Or, more specifically, what is presently incumbent upon those who are currently or will in the future be engaged in the university teaching or research enterprise? We can turn, once again, to the Enuma Elish account to elucidate the archetypal pattern. It is always in the very darkest hour that the redeeming hero emerges. Deliverance comes to the faithless murderer-children of chaos and order in the story in question in the hero-form of Marduk, the Mesopotamian savior-son-of-God. After Cain and Abel, we are presented with the cataclysm of the flood, as well as the erection of the Tower of Babel, the totalitarian edifice which is a structure of value with the wrong value at its pinnacle. Those are the twin fates of the descendants of Cain, the parasites who will not sacrifice properly and who undermine what even they themselves most truly value and depend upon. What are these fates? The descent of the world into the primordial waters of chaos that reigned before the beginning; alternatively, the worship of the false idols of the Luciferian intellect that likewise produce disunity and confusion — in the latter case, the eventual inability of those who aim wrong to even understand or utter the same words. “What is a woman?” — indeed. What is the way forward in the biblical narrative — perhaps running parallel to the Mesopotamian story? 
Careless pride eternally comes before a fall, but the humility that is its medicament is the attention that leaves nothing out of its purview and can, therefore, perceive the proper course forward. We could consider the account of Jonah, the everyman alerted by his conscience to speak the words of truth that set society straight. He flees, initially, from the requirement — who wants to risk standing against the mob? — but upon encountering the abysmal consequences of maintaining silence when there is something that demands to be said, he reconsiders his cowardice, turns his voice over to the control of the divine, and redeems the corrupt city of his enemies. What is the moral of such stories for the timorous, ideology-addled professors of today — or for those who enable them through their silence or even “allyship”? What might be done by forthright and faithful believers in the redeeming quality of truth and sacrifice when the walls we relied on to protect us have been breached and the barbarians have entered the gates? And have they? Here’s a telling data point: it is none other than the despicable Michel Foucault, darling of the Luciferian radicals, who is by some accounts the most cited “scholar” in the world.
What might be done, indeed? We professors, scholars, and researchers could open the eyes and the mouths God has given us instead of continuing to take each of the thousands of small steps backward that have enabled the devouring ideologues at our institutions. We could forthrightly note the chaos that looms and identify and hold to account its purveyors and acolytes. We could do the duty required of us by the people who have charged the inhabitants of the academy with the responsibility of preserving and seeking the truth, and we could call out the frauds, hucksters, Machiavellians, and outright charlatan-psychopaths of the faux disciplines and idiot theories of oppressor and victim. We could, by so doing, speak the words of truthful magic that redeem the fragmented world and position the foundation back in its place. Alternatively, we could remain frozen in the corner like the petrified rabbits we have far too often revealed ourselves to be and let the parasitical rabble attain their temporary and inevitably self and society-destroying “victory.” What did the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn say so effectively in his all-out and eventually successful assault on the predatory tyrants and parasites of the envious and ideology-possessed radical world? ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. The protected professoriate pays for the opportunity and protection historically granted by the community to the academic endeavor with the vow to protect what is true, beautiful, and good. If we once again found the courage to be the standard-bearers of such value, the mad and ideological mob would be rapidly defeated. 
Will we do what needs to be done? We have failed so far, and it would take a mad bit of optimism to suggest that the course could be reversed. Nonetheless, the situation is far from hopeless. Here is another bit of traditional mythology to consider with regard to such a situation. When Abraham is informed by God of the latter’s decision to destroy the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the great prophet objects, making the case that wholesale destruction is no temperate and proper response to the sins even of the many (Genesis 18: 22–33). God agrees to spare the threatened cities if even fifty righteous people might still be found dwelling within their walls. Abraham persists in his objections, even after receiving such consideration from God, bargaining the divine down to forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty — then ten. What does this strange story indicate? Nothing less than this: an entire polity, and all of its denizens, can be saved even from an impending, dire, and deserved fate if even a tiny number of its inhabitants remain willing to risk the great adventure of the truth.
The moral of the story for the current denizens of the academies of higher education? It would not take a great number of professors, researchers, and students even now to speak and turn the tide. The moral, even more specifically, even more personally? It is incumbent on each and every one of us engaged in such enterprise to risk being one of the redeeming ten. We should remember, too, when considering such things: it is indeed a risk to see what is in front of our eyes and to say what needs to be said. It is also true, however, that willful blindness and failure to speak when there is something to say are ventures with perils of their own. The ten in question may find themselves in trouble when they speak, but they are simultaneously saving themselves and all those around them from the invisible hand of doom, threatening the future. This is an existential fact, alluded to in the great story of Jonah. It is not by mere chance that the fleeing prophet finds himself drowning when he holds his tongue after being commanded to speak — and then, worse, devoured by the beast of the abyss. There is indeed a descent into hell that threatens, both psychologically and socially, when conscience is ignored. It is the wisdom of the ages that the risk of seeing and speaking, all things considered, is much less than the risk of hiding and silence. There may be a price that is to be paid for the former — but the price of the latter is both soul and society. The true spirit of the academy is the prophetic voice that redeems. We abandon that at our great peril and to the detriment of all that depends on education itself. 
See, therefore, and speak — or pay the inevitable price.
* * *
This excerpt is published by permission of Post Hill Press. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Thirty-Nine-Scientists-Scientific/dp/B0DWLP2VTZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22E4UEYSZLK9L&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7OpVlvjzAMkKLRoafpVC5BbfjWiiv_d1HNPN1kmFXABtw90xnU8oHEEAF-C1mFSw.m6gzq7MX5HeMeyZUsEzNWkKLTJiFGUtfa6NHjZv0eDw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+war+on+science+lawrence+krauss&amp;qid=1754574679&amp;sprefix=the+war+on+sc%2Caps%2C111&amp;sr=8-1">The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process</a>,” edited by Lawrence M. Krauss. (Post Hill Press, July 2025).
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-role-of-the-holy-spirit-distinguishing-between-your-will-and-gods-will" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Jordan B. Peterson</a> is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1998 he served as assistant and then associate professor of psychology at Harvard. He is the international bestselling author of “Maps of Meaning,” “12 Rules For Life,” “Beyond Order.” Be sure to order his newest book, “We Who Wrestle with God” (Portfolio/Penguin).
Lawrence M. Krauss is an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, bestselling author, and acclaimed lecturer. A passionate advocate for science and reason, and the public understanding of science, he is the author of twelve popular books, including the international bestsellers &#8220;The Physics of Star Trek, A Universe from Nothing,&#8221; and his most recent book, &#8220;The Edge of Knowledge.&#8221; He received his PhD from MIT and then moved to the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation, Chair of the Board of the Free Speech Union, Canada, and host of The Origins Podcast.

Jordan Peterson

The Academy In The West Is Dead. Speak Anyway.

American Universities

Bible

Books

College

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Woke Culture

Speaking at the America250 kickoff event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday, President Donald Trump took aim at Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor who has made openly communist statements, declaring, “Generations of Americans before us did not shed their blood only so that we could surrender our country to Marxist lunatics on the eve of our 250th year.”
Mamdani has made openly Marxist statements such as “the end goal of seizing the means of production,” while iterating, “we have to continue to elect more socialists.”
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Zohran Mamdani: &quot;Our end goal, seizing the means of production&quot; HOLY F 
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&mdash; End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) <a href="https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1939516740909621286?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
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“As you know, recently we’ve seen some in our political system attempting to overthrow the timeless American principles and pillars of our liberty and replace them with some of the most noxious ideas in human history; ideas that have been proven false,” President Trump stated. “Members of Congress and even former presidents have been openly embracing vile creeds such as socialism, Marxism, and straight-up communism.”
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Then he turned to Mamdani: “In New York, they’re trying to elect a communist, Zohran Mamdani, the guy who wants to defund the police, take over the stores, and run the stores and have the people hand out goods. And when everything falls apart, it always does; it always works that way; it never has worked any other way, anarchy and dictatorships prevail.”
“This guy is a communist at the highest level and he wants to destroy New York,” he asserted. “I love New York and we’re not gonna let him do that. Generations of Americans before us did not shed their blood only so that we could surrender our country to Marxist lunatics on the eve of our 250th year.”
Trump then made a fateful promise, finishing with a flourish: “As President of the United States, I am proclaiming here and now that America is never going to be communist in any way, shape, or form. “
“And that includes New York City,” he concluded.
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Trump’s Freezing Of GOP Primary Field Underscored By Iowa Visit

Trump Tears Into ‘Marxist Lunatic’ Mamdani, Honors American Heroes In Bold Rebuke

Executive

It is amazing to be here in Budapest. I want to talk today about the battle for the heart of Western civilization. But to do that, we have to start with a definition of what Western civilization actually is.
Western civilization, rooted in Man&#8217;s individual liberty and his collective duty; in his freedom of speech and in his duty to act virtuously; in his property rights and in his familial obligations; in the right to the equal application of the law; is unique. It is the wellspring of virtually all human prosperity and all human progress.
Western civilization did not come from nowhere. It came from Biblical wisdom; the wisdom of thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition. It came from the Bible&#8217;s admonition that we ought to seek truth through the light of reason. When we cut ourselves off from the sources of our own civilization, our civilization decays.
And make no mistake, our civilization is now in the midst of decay.
We can see that decay in the anarchic marchers in the streets, chanting on behalf of radical Islamic terror groups by the hundreds of thousands. 
We can see it in the push by intellectual elitists for a bizarre alternative morality that suggests the fundamental, free-flowing nature of sexual identity, where boys can be girls and behavior ought to be separated utterly from the realm of morality. 
We can see it in the push for an ever growing domination of a powerful governmental infrastructure, crowding out familial bonds, crowding out church. in favor of a faceless state that offers money rather than virtue.
We can see it in that crusade against churches that refuse to jettison their values in favor of moral relativism and flying rainbow flags.
What are these forces that have mobilized against our civilization?
The key force is the force of Western post-modern leftism. Sure, we can look at the radical Islamists who have invaded Europe, who support terrorism, who use Western governments to impose effective fatwas against Westerners who speak out against them, people who target Jews and Christians, who openly chant for the downfall of the civilization that they leech upon.
But the question really isn&#8217;t radical Islamists. They, after all, are doing just what they have always done: invading and conquering.
The question is why the West allowed them in.
And the answer is that the West, thanks to that post-modern Left, bears a peculiar and self-defeating blood-guilt. A guilt that says that because the West is too successful, it owes it to the rest of the world to destroy itself.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/battling-for-the-heart-of-western-civilization-cpac-hungary-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Perhaps the most colorful champion of this philosophy was the Marxist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1961, a Francophone rebel named Frantz Fanon wrote a shockingly violent book titled “The Wretched of the Earth,” in which he posited that colonized peoples had a moral duty to kill their colonizers; that they ought to unleash, in his words, “red hot cannonballs” and “bloody knives.”
Frantz Fanon expressed that the colonized man was right to want to rape the wife of his colonizer, to murder him, to take what he had, and Sartre, a Western leftist, agreed. The West, Sartre said, was an inherent colonizer. Its very success in the world, whether through war or through markets, was a sign of its uniquely rapacious and exploitative nature.
Thus, Sartre argued, Europeans had to die at the hands of their victims. He said, “To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor, and the man he oppresses at the same time. Then there remains a dead man and a free man.”
In other words, Sartre advocated civilizational suicide, and the West largely complied.
But why did the West comply? Now, part of the answer lies in the West’s pathological and religiously based adherence to the reality of sin and the necessity of repentance. Our culture, Western culture, is a guilt culture, a culture that focuses on the reality of absolute morality and says that when we fail, we are guilty. This means that we feel bad when we sin.
That&#8217;s actually one of our virtues.
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But there are many other cultures, shame cultures like, say, the Islamic cultures or the pre-World War II culture of Imperial Japan, or the modern Left, that focuses not on any absolute standard of morality or conscience, but on the evil of being humiliated.
For these folks, admitting fault is the weakness. Because we in the West reflexively look to our own sins before those of others, we fall prey to civilizational suicidal impulses.
Our enemies don&#8217;t. They&#8217;re happy to blame us for their problems and unfortunately, we&#8217;re all too happy to blame ourselves. As the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner writes, “The duty to repent forbids the Western Bloc, which is eternally guilty, to judge or combat other systems, other states, other religions. Our past crimes command us to keep our mouths closed. Our only right is to remain silent.”
But why should we feel uniquely guilty? The West seems to bear a unique amount of guilt because we have come to believe a giant lie, a great giant lie about ourselves.
And that lie is that we, the West, are uniquely evil.
We hear this lie all the time. Just a couple of days ago, for example, King Charles visited Canada, a country with a parliament, only because it was once a dominion of the British Crown, and then he read a land acknowledgment to the Algonquin Indians as though the British Empire ought to repent its establishment of the country of Canada.
The very concept is ridiculous. Watching King Charles sit there in all of his royal regalia, lamenting his own empire, is insane. And yet this kind of nonsense is imitated at nearly every college event across the West.
But that&#8217;s the lie: that the West is uniquely evil, and that lie gained an enormous amount of credibility due to the horrors of the 20th century.
We were told often by Marxists like Sartre, that imperialism was a uniquely Western phenomenon, despite the fact that human beings have conquered other people for as long as human beings have existed.
We were told that the Nazis and their allies were natural outgrowths of Western civilization, rather than perversions of it.
We were told that if we abandoned Biblical values in favor of a namby-pamby secularism, we could avoid all the terrible atrocities of the past, even though it was the pagan dogmas of the Nazis and the Soviets, their secular dogmas, not their Biblical adherence that led to their assault on humanity.
We were told that if we mitigated our cultural honor, if we discarded it, we could then expunge our sins, even though it was craven cowardice in the face of transnational Left-wing movements like Nazism and Communism that led to their domination of the European continent and proud, resurgent patriotism that stopped it.
We were told that if we abandoned our borders, we could alleviate our guilt, even though obviously the Nazis and the Soviets had no respect for borders and sought to obliterate them themselves. It was not Western civilization or Biblical values, rule of law, free speech, and private property rights that led to the tragedies and horrors of the 20th century.
It was the rejection of the West&#8217;s core values that led to those horrors.
But too many in the West believed the lie that the horrors were the result of Western civilization rather than a perversion of it. And in believing that lie, we surrendered our own civilization to people who would destroy it. We turned over our nations to consortiums of international elitists who sought to rule us from above and from without. We opened our nations to groups that sought to destroy our history and our unity.
Now it is time to reverse that process. We have to, in all humility, recognize that Western civilization, like all civilizations, has, of course, committed sordid wrongs and egregious evils.
But the truth — the real truth, something we have known for a very long time, since the Garden of Eden — is that all human beings have a capacity for evil. Human evil is a universal truth.
But the glories of Western civilization are not universal. They come from a particular philosophy, a particular history, a particular culture.
Western civilization isn&#8217;t uniquely evil. Western civilization is uniquely good.
Slavery was a human universal. It was Western civilization that ended it.
Poverty is a human universal. It was Western civilization that has exponentially mitigated it.
War is a human universal Western civilization has wildly reduced it.
And the secular, post-modern leftists who refuse to admit this are engaging in evil of their own.
This country, the very country these secular, post-modern leftists seem to despise, a country they label Nazi-esque, is the only country in Europe, perhaps, that is not currently overrun by Islamic radicals.
This supposedly Nazi country is the only country in Europe where I, an Orthodox Jew, can walk in safety and comfort down the street wearing a yarmulke.
It is a country where children don&#8217;t actually have to fear that their innocence will be robbed by a perverse, anti-Biblical Left seeking the spiritual destruction of those children.
Hungary, like the rest of the West, isn&#8217;t perfect because no country is.
But Hungarians are trying to stand up for their civilization, our shared Western heritage and civilization. And that is a thing that is worth fighting for.
And if we fight for it, we will emerge victorious against the forces that seek to destroy our civilization from outside and inside as well.

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Hungary And The Fight For Western Civilization: Shapiro’s Budapest Speech

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