Victor Davis Hanson: Democrat Socialists Think America Is Somehow Worse Than Mass-Murderer Mao Zedong

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**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:38)
We're hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America. My question is compared to what? Mao Zedong concentration camps in China. Most of this criticism of America is not coming from the so-called poor. It's coming from elites and they feel that by mouthing these socialist and communist platitudes, it's a way to get power.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We're hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we've done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday.
This, what is it the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, et cetera, et cetera. But my question is compared to what? Mao Zedong, he killed 70 million people. He was the greatest mass murderer in history. And that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from Qi all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that? Or the million people who are in concentration camps in China compared to historically, to the Aztecs. We're told the Aztecs were great people. They have an empire.
But they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow indigenous people.
Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th century creator of the Zulu Nation? He was responsible for a genocide and crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes.
So what is going on? We have a tradition in the west of self-criticism. That's what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism. And it's quite destructive.
So let's just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. Look at immigration. Why do a million people or two million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former third world that were victims of socialism. Why do they risk their lives coming here every year? Why do all these critics of the United States, AOC, why did her parents want to come here? Why did Ilyin Omar's father want to come here? Why did Rashida Tlaib's father want to come here? Why did Zoran Mondami's parents want to come here? Was it so bad? Can't they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract. The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. We saw that in the World Cup when middle and upper middle class Europeans came over. And unlike to watch the games, and unlike most tours, they didn't just stick on the coast. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, the Midwest, and they found two things. One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab and everything's terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe. And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes, they had air conditioning. The poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost apparently.
There's also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics. And let me just give you an example of a few of them. Hasan Parker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became US citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialist of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murder in history, and then he denounced capitalism. But he didn't denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives, what, $120,000 Porsche. Isn't that a luxury of the bourgeoisie? And then there's Zoran Mondami, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda. A community of ex-patriots, Indians, from India that controls 60 percent of the wealth, and they're only one percent of the population. And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does. But he's a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth five or six hundred million dollars. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a hundred and ninety thousand dollar Range Rover, and he's lecturing us about our shortfalls. And then, of course, we come to Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze. So he said the other day, as this is want, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib that capitalism fails, it didn't work. It worked for you, Gavin. You have a nine million dollar home. You were the, basically, the quote unquote protege of the Gordon Getty oil fortune who backed all of your business opportunities. Graham Plattner, the now disgraced madman who thought he was going to be senator with a Nazi tattoo.