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The Pikers: One in Five College Students Believe the U.S. “Deserved” 9-11 and Roughly Half Favor Socialism
Jonathan Turley ^ | November 14, 2026 | Jonathan Turley

Posted on 11/14/2026 7:06:04 PM PST by george76

Hasan Piker is not alone in saying that the United States deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. As the New York Post reported, a new poll shows that one in five college students say the U.S. deserved the attack that killed nearly 3000 fellow Americans. Forty-two percent said they would prefer to live under socialism, while only 28 percent favor capitalism.

The Buckley Institute poll also found that 38% of students favored Palestine as an ally to 25 percent for Israel. Roughly half of the students — 47 percent — agreed with this extraordinary statement, “While socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union have not been perfect, they offer a better economic model than capitalist countries like the United States.”

These students have been educated in an ideological echo chamber of higher education where conservative and libertarian professors have been gradually eliminated from faculties. They have been taught by faculty who run from the left to the far left. This is the entirety of what they know of socialism. They have no memory or experience with the collapse of such systems in the last century. They hear figures such as Zohran Mamdani offering the “warmth of collectivism” and believe that socialism offers free stuff that the wealthy will have to pay for.

They see Piker prancing around in his Mao suit and have no association with a Cultural Revolution that killed millions.

In “Rage and the Republic, I discuss how this year we are celebrating not just our 250th anniversary as a Republic but the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. The book was not a great success in Great Britain. In addition to its foundational support for capitalism, it challenged the mercantilist policies of the British Empire and supported the claims of the colonies in seeking greater economic freedoms.

Smith, however, was immediately embraced by the founders, who saw his work as the perfect economic theory to advance their political theory. Ours was the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.

Yet, the founders knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” offered a model of individual economic freedom in which the individual tastes and choices of citizens drove whole economies.

The combination would prove transformative, as the U.S. became not only the world’s oldest large-scale democracy but also history’s greatest economy. We will need that combination in the years to come to maintain what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”

These students have little exposure to the economic concepts that made this Republic the most prosperous in history. More people have been raised out of poverty by capitalism than socialism.

However, socialists like Mamdani can promise free stuff, and these students believe that they are entitled to it.

When socialist François Mitterrand came to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism,” he quickly destroyed the country’s economy. However, he continued to dazzle French citizens with promises of free money, even appointing Andre Henry as the Minister of Free Time to assist citizens in their new socialist leisure.

Notably, this poll shows lower support than the Democratic Party as a whole. Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism. An even greater percentage of young Britons want to live under socialism, and 72 percent favor nationalization of industries.

The poll again shows that we must first address the ideological echo chamber of higher education if we want to protect this unique Republic.

As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities that hold the line on free speech, orthodoxy at private universities remains a barrier for many conservative and independent thinkers.

Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates. However, even those universities show the same hiring bias. The difference is that they are more sensitive to public pressure to restore balance.

Legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to treat citizens like a captive audience. They expect to continue funding their departments while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.

If faculty members want to maintain echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.

Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining an intellectually diverse faculty in determining the level of continued support from citizens.

When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in The Indispensable Right.

The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring, but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.

This poll is disturbing, but not surprising. The greatest trick ever played by the activists in academia was to indoctrinate, rather than educate, young people while getting their parents to pay for it.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; Israel; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York; War; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911; hasan; hasanpiker; piker; september11; socialism

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1 posted on 11/14/2026 7:06:04 PM PST by george76
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To: george76

Gosh, those young people are soooooo smart. I’m tellin’ ya’.

Still not worth giving up our 250 year old free republic over.


2 posted on 11/14/2026 7:08:55 PM PST by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: george76

Jedi mind tricks are working on the weak minded just as advertised.


3 posted on 11/14/2026 7:11:10 PM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all. )
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To: george76

What exactly does their “ally” Palestine do for the US?

So they oppose intervention and aid to Israel but then will they do that for Palestine and get boots on the ground in a forever war for their “ally”?


4 posted on 11/14/2026 7:11:22 PM PST by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: george76

For such a fan of socialism, Piker sure seems to love money. That is to say, capital.


5 posted on 11/14/2026 7:13:31 PM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all. )
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To: george76

The real story of 9/11 is that it was pretty much done by Saudis-Emiratis led by the Saudi national Osama bin Laden.

Yet out of it we ended up attacking Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran anybody but Saudis and Emiratis.

The views of the Left with which we are all very familiar don’t cut to the chase of the real story of 9/11 just distracting chaff.


6 posted on 11/14/2026 7:14:03 PM PST by Nextrush ( "FREEDOM IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS" REMEMBER PASTOR NIEMOLLER)
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To: george76

People just going to work in the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the people on the planes including crashing in Pennsylvania “deserved” to die? Common people who had no power over the decisions through the years that the zealot Islamists hated the US for?

I am not ashamed to oppose the young people who believe this way. And the many older ones in the DSA and Dem Party.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
—Barry Goldwater.


7 posted on 11/14/2026 7:15:09 PM PST by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: george76

College education is not doing a thing for the students. Something is seriously wrong with the colleges & universities. Abolish 1/2 of these colleges & universities and see what happens to the minds of these students that aren’t exposed to the nonsense being taught at this levels.


8 posted on 11/14/2026 7:19:24 PM PST by gildafarrell (To Strive, To Seek, To Find and Not To Yield!)
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To: Texas Eagle

RE: Piker sure seems to love money.

Yes. He likes to collect those pictures of Benjamin Franklin and the others on those pieces of paper although he would hang all of the founders if he had been around in the 1700s.💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵


9 posted on 11/14/2026 7:19:31 PM PST by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: george76

They will turn this country into a living hell if this isn’t stopped.

And what will the rest of the world be like if that happens?


10 posted on 11/14/2026 7:24:03 PM PST by TigersEye (The Marxist Media works hand in glove with the Democrat terrorists.)
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To: george76
We can criticize Comrade Piker and Comrade el-Sayed and Comrade Sanders all we want but who is our voice of Capitalism? President Trump can do it all on his own. But even he doesn't promote the value of Capitalism that often.

What have you done to explain Capitalism to young people in your sphere of influence? I aks that question of myself.

It seems like the easiest explanation would be to point out that Capitalism can exist without Socialism but Socialism cannot exist without Capitalism. Where does the money come from for Socialists to pay for all their free stuff?

11 posted on 11/14/2026 7:30:05 PM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all. )
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To: george76

Me is Mine
You is yours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxnBSb4OKeU


12 posted on 11/14/2026 7:31:13 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: george76

Little snits.


13 posted on 11/14/2026 7:34:23 PM PST by If You Want It Fixed - Fix It
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To: gildafarrell

“Something is seriously wrong with the colleges & universities.”

Start by taking away any federal dollars, federal employees, federal grants, federal property...the list is long.


14 posted on 11/14/2026 7:36:02 PM PST by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute.)
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To: Nextrush

Bushes were pals with the Saudis = $$$$


15 posted on 11/14/2026 7:39:11 PM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

These particular islamocommie young are mindless, brainwashed pawns brought up in a cult educational system who are simply slaves to their atheistic masters.


16 posted on 11/14/2026 8:05:44 PM PST by doc maverick
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To: Texas Eagle; frank ballenger

Just like Civics, Basic Economics classes have nearly been eradicated from junior and high schools. Apparently Health and Science classes aren’t what they used to be, either.

This insures empty little heads are ripe for filling with lies and indoctrination when sent to colleges - which has devolved into ridiculous taking on of ever-increasing debt for a product of continuously decreasing value.


17 posted on 11/14/2026 8:19:24 PM PST by MikelTackNailer (Our ignorance fills an ocean; our knowledge a thimble. The trick is knowing their bounderies.)
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