The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Why Western Leaders Won’t Acknowledge ‘Radical Islam’
Episode Date: December 22, 2025The disastrous way in which public officials handled the Bondi Beach massacre begs the question: Why are authorities hesitant to call out radical Islamist violence when it occurs? From a mass shoot...ing in Australia to canceled Christmas celebrations in Paris, Victor Davis Hanson argues these incidents are not isolated. Instead, they reveal deeper pathologies facing Western societies: open borders without assimilation, ideological blinders driven by DEI dogma, and a broader cultural, spiritual, and strategic decline. He breaks it down on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “In the case of these incidents, it means, if the perpetrator is from the Middle East, there's a feeling, a general feeling, that you cannot identify him. Or, if you do identify him or you say it's a radical, Muslim, you have to then say, ‘We deplore all violence. We don't—we deplore antisemitism’—which is the case in point in Australia—‘but we also deplore Islamophobia, of which there is no examples of people mass shooting Muslims in the case that we have seen.’” (0:00) Introduction (1:31) Champs-Élysées Christmas Cancellation (2:01) Brown University Shooting (3:11) Broader Issues in the West (3:21) Open Borders and Lack of Assimilation (5:42) Western Decline and Its Consequences (7:23) Final Thoughts We need your help to ensure The Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth.Support The Daily Signal’s work today by becoming a Signal Elite Supporter. Your tax-deductible monthly gift will help: 👉Help us provide free access to Victor Davis Hanson’s video commentary 👉Fund investigative reporting on the stories the liberal media will not cover 👉Counter the liberal media's lies 👉Keep The Daily Signal free to the public http://dailysignal.com/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for The Daily Signal.
We've had a lot of incidents worldwide of Islamic terrorism or threats of Islamic terrorism.
And the most egregious is in Bondi Beach, Australia, where two gunmen, a father and son,
killed 16 people and wounded 40.
How that happens in front of police who reacted very quickly, I don't know.
They were only stopped by a heroic Syrian immigrant who tackled one of the shooters and disarmed him.
The problem with all of this is that there was no needed reaction from the Prime Minister of
Australia. We didn't hear, we have to be very careful about radical Islam. These two people got
two guns legally that they should not have had since they were on a watch list with terrorist
activity. There was no reason that this one shooter, the father, had six guns, among them
semi-automatic weapons, in one of the most gun-controlled societies in the world. We didn't hear
that. Instead, we heard that they condone all extremism. This is not who we are. And the
most, you know the whole boilerplate, and then they said, we oppose all extremism,
and it was a nanosecond before they said white extremism.
They had nothing to do with this.
The second incident was in the Chande Le Se in Paris.
They cancel the annual Christmas celebration because they were afraid of radical Islamic protests.
This is a French predominantly at one time Catholic country, and they're afraid of 10 to 12 percent
of their population can cancel.
the entire celebration?
Would they ever do that for an Islamic celebration?
Would the majority say, we're the majority, and you can't have?
No, they wouldn't.
And then we come to the United States.
We lost two soldiers overseas stationed in Syria
that were executed ambushed by a supposedly ISIS murderer.
Details are still out.
Back home, Brown University had a shooter
who went into a classroom yelled something,
people are disagreeing whether it was Allah Akbar
or what it was, but he executed two students
and may have wounded nine others.
And again, the same mystery,
how can a university with thousands of feet
taken a video every hour not have him on their video records?
How did he know where the classroom was?
How did he know his way around?
Providence Road to Island. Why did they get another suspect who was a white male
former army recruit blasted his name everywhere as a likely suspect? He had
nothing to do with it and now we're told to be very very careful about this
suspect. He may may, may allegedly allegedly be a Palestinian student. What am I
getting out with all of these situations? I could multiply them tenfold. They are
indicative of three or four pathologies in the West right now. Number one, the borders of,
it's hard to say Australia, because it's an island continent, but they are open, Europe's are open,
ours had been open until Trump. By open, I mean thousands of people are coming from the poorest
and sometimes the most antithetical of societies into Western countries. And they are not
assimilating, not acculturating, and not integrating. In fact, they're creating enclaves of
resistance, mostly in the case of those from the Middle East. The October 7th slaughter of Jews and the
reaction against the perpetrators in Gaza set off a whole new round where our Western University
campuses were literally taken over by foreign nationals on student visas that were rooting for
Hamas, a terrorist designated organization, or chanting rivers to the sea, the erasure of Israel and the Jews entirely in the Middle East, etc., etc. So there are no borders. Second problem was there was a diversity, equity, inclusion, ideology in the West that said that society is binary and 30% of the non-white population is a perpetual victim of these victimizers. There's no proof,
needed that the 70% victimizers have done anything. It's just that their heritage was oppressive.
And therefore, the 30% deserve repertory action. That can be affirmative action. It can be
DEI admittance, preference and hiring. It can mean awards are given disproportionately. It can
mean that merit will not be a criteria. It can be a lot of stuff. But in the case of these
incidents, it means if the perpetrator is from the Middle East, there's a feeling, a general
feeling that you cannot identify him, or if you do identify him, or you say it's a radical
Muslim, you have to then say, we deplore all of violence, we deplore anti-Semitism, which
is the case in point in Australia, but we also deplore Islamophobia, of which there is no
examples of people mass shooting Muslims in the cases we have seen.
The third catalyst for all this is, let's be honest, it's Western decline.
The West is in spiritual, emotional, psychological, psychological, economic decline.
The fertility rate is 1.4 in Europe, 1.7 something in the United States.
Green energy ideology and zealotry has made energy almost unaffordable in Western Europe and to a degree in the United States.
partly on the prompt of the Chinese who sell cheap solar, wind, and green advocacy so they can build
nuclear plants, coal plants, import, embargoed oil, and have an edge competitively in economic rivalry.
In addition to that, the West is not defended.
The military budget in Europe until recently was anemic, and I think Germany had one time recently
had only eight operable tanks. As we see in Ukraine, the world doesn't stop because Europe says
it's going to disarm. And we, to a greater extent, under the Obama and Biden administration, were
disarmed. We were short almost 50,000 recruits. I could go on, but the combination of a lack of
confidence in the West in their culture, their tradition, their values, their heritage, their ancestors,
coupled with this utopian idea, you're going to change the demographic by bringing in poor people
from antithetical societies with the false multiplier that you're going to be racially and sexually
and gender fixated and oppressed and dull out special beneficia to people based on their
superficial appearance. It was a perfect storm. And if we didn't have these catastrophes, we'd have to
invent them. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal.
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