Victor Davis Hanson argues that today’s Democratic Party resembles the radical Jacobins of the French Revolution, abandoning traditional American institutions and embracing disruptive, iconoclastic ideas that risk political instability and centralization of power.
Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and Hoover Institution fellow, warns that the Democratic Party has shifted away from its old identity and now operates with a revolutionary zeal. He draws a parallel to the Jacobins, who remade French life so thoroughly that it spawned chaos and eventually authoritarian rule. The comparison is aimed at the party’s cultural overhaul and an appetite for discarding long-standing norms tied to American history.
Hanson points out that the French Revolution’s radicals set out to remake everyday life, replacing calendars and institutions simply because they were associated with the old order. That kind of cultural cleansing, he says, didn’t deliver stable freedom but opened the door to a dictator. He believes a similar mindset—if left unchecked—can erode the checks and balances that protect liberty.
That destructive path, as Davis Hanson put it, is quickly becoming that of modern Democrats.
“I don’t even think it’s a democratic party. I don’t think we should even use that term anymore. It’s a Jacobin party,” Davis Hanson said. “It’s just like the French Jacobins. That was the revolutionary party that hijacked the French Revolution. It was run just like the Democratic Party by very wealthy people, the Robespierre brothers and some of the turncoat landowners, the aristocracy, and it was holistic. It was culturally 360 degrees. It wanted to rename the days of the week, the days of the month, the foundational day, year zero, just like the 1619 committee. It was an iconoclastic movement.”
“They tore down statues and they wanted open marriage and all sorts of stuff. Just same thing,” he said. “This Democratic Party, I’ve said that so many times. If you look at the 1992 and 1996 democratic platforms under Clinton, they would be called racist and fascist, you know. Teens that commit murder will be tried as an adult, secure borders, no illegal immigration, deportations, etc., etc., balanced budget. This isn’t Democrats. This is something completely different.”
From a Republican point of view, Hanson’s critique is straightforward: when a major party abandons restraint and starts treating institutions as mere obstacles, the outcome is dangerous. Policy shifts that target history, policing, and borders are not harmless experiments when carried to extremes. They change how a society functions at its core and can weaken the rule of law.
There are concrete examples that feed this fear. Some voices within the party emphasize the nation’s founding flaws in ways that suggest the entire system is illegitimate, which opens the door to radical remedies rather than reforms. Proposals to defund police, reshape immigration enforcement, or elevate fringe ideologies don’t just alter policy; they redefine civic expectations and accountability.
At the same time, elements once on the margins have moved toward the center of the party, normalizing positions that used to be fringe. Socialism and overt anti-American rhetoric find more air time and influence in primaries and activist circles. Public figures who praise or excuse violent acts or attack foundational American institutions gain followings and, at times, electoral sway.
This trend matters because radical cultural projects are rarely neutral. When the goal is to erase inconvenient history and remake social structures, power concentrates in fewer hands that can enforce the new order. That pattern repeats across history: toppling symbols can be the first step toward top-down control, not liberation.
Critics argue the needed response is to defend the country’s founding framework while fixing real problems without discarding the institutions that protect liberty. The conversation should be about restoring common-sense policies, securing borders, and ensuring law and order, while resisting tribalism that seeks to tear America’s foundational consensus apart. The future depends on whether mainstream voices can reassert those priorities before the experiment with radical change becomes permanent.
