Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson warned on Fox News Tuesday that the Democratic Party’s embrace of figures like Zohran Mamdani signals a deeper ideological shift.
Mamdani is a self-avowed socialist who built his campaign around wealth redistribution, expansive government programs, and class-based politics. Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle,” Hanson said modern Democrats led by progressives such as Mamdani and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez push policies that contradict human nature and repress people.
“Historically, socialists always come in after capitalists have made prosperity, and then they offer and improve prosperity,” Hanson told Laura Ingraham. “And it’s contrary to human nature. People like initiative. They like pride in their property. Some people like to work a lot and get compensated.”
Hanson said that when the state controls innovation and productivity, it inevitably crushes dissent and freedom.
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“It gives you that freedom of opportunity. And then the society at large benefits, Laura, from all these millions of agendas and ideas that improve, that people are free to innovate and to take experiments and risk. But when the state monopolizes all of that, it’s contrary to human nature, and then it has to be repressive,” Hanson said. “So all of these social experiments, even if they’re democratic, they end up repressive. At the worst form, it’s no accident that the greatest mass murderers in history were Mao [Zedong] and [Joseph] Stalin, 30 million, 60 million, and they were radical communists, and even people like Hitler, National Socialist Party.”
Hanson added that every socialist system creates a privileged elite exempt from its own policies.
“Talented people who can help the economy, who are successful or demonized, they flee. People who want things for nothing come in. There’s open borders,” Hanson added. “They destroy personal liberty, and they stamp out any dissent or criticism. And there’s always an elite, the billionaire Castro brothers, Chavez and Maduro. They always are never subject to their consequences, their ideology. Here in California, we are becoming socialist.” (RELATED: ‘Stop Tweeting At Me And Do Your Job’: Leavitt Puts Newsom On Notice For Election Integrity Problems)
As Mamdani’s campaign gained traction after clinching the Democratic mayoral nomination in June, prominent party figures gradually lined up behind him. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul voiced her support in a September New York Times op-ed. By October, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries publicly endorsed Mamdani after months of sidestepping questions about his candidacy.
Mamdani, who was elected mayor of New York City Tuesday, said he will push for sweeping economic reforms — including a $30 minimum wage, city-operated grocery stores, and higher taxes on what he described as “richer and whiter” neighborhoods.
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