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Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Victor Davis Hanson: That’s the first video I couldn’t finish. It was just sick.
To remind everybody what happened, we had a 19-year-old who had a confrontation with a 23-year-old immigrant, [a] Sikh from India. We don’t really know the particulars except the Sikh person was carrying a “ceremonial sword,” which is apparently allowed under DEI auspices because he has a religious exemption, but it was a pretty big blade.
He stabbed this 19-year-old white male repeatedly. Then his brother called the police and said the perpetrator was a victim of racism. The police came to the scene. The perpetrator said he had a little mark, which I couldn’t even see, and that this racist on the ground had attacked him and he had only defended himself.
That was all they needed.
So then the DEI police, and that’s what I’m going to use because that’s the thematic narrative, went to the anti-DEI person who was dying with a deep wound to the chest. His lungs were filling up with blood. I can relate to that because I had the same experience with three pulmonary arteries that were cut or broke apart, and I had two to three liters immediately in my lung cavity.
That’s not a good feeling when you can’t breathe and you’ll die with that blood in your cavity. They have to suck it all out.
So he was there alive, and the police saw that. He was lying down, and they pulled on him to prop him up. He said, “I’m dying. I can’t breathe.” They completely ignored him, kept the cuffs on, and he literally bled to death in front of them.
They were just clueless and more worried about the perpetrator. Then they went home and hid the murder weapon. His mother did.
They found out the particulars of the assault and came back. The brother, I don’t think, has been arrested, even though he was the one who called in with the fake narrative that it was a matter of white racism, which really killed the kid.
That was what prepped the police.
In their defense, they knew that if they had arrested the Sikh perpetrator, they probably would have lost their jobs.
Then the family hid it, and the Sikh leader in the community said, “Oh, this is terrible. People are blaming us. We’re victims of hate now.”
My answer to him is, “Don’t identify an individual as a collective unless you want to be a collective. There was a member of your Sikh community who killed a person and murdered him. He is a murderer. He was convicted. Then there was another member of that Sikh community, a member of that family, who lied to a police officer.
“That’s a felony. Then they hid the weapon. They were accessories after the fact. That’s a felony.
“All you have to do as a self-proclaimed Sikh leader is say the following: “This does not represent the Sikh community. We are a group of individuals, and any time we find one of the members of our community has acted antithetical to our values, we condemn it most heartedly.” condemn it most heartedly.”
That’s all he had to say.
Instead, he turned around and said, “Well, the poor Sikh community is now getting…” If you’re going to be a collective, then people are going to say, “Well, this is what you do.” If you want to be individuals, then act like individuals.
The same thing is true here in the United States. No one has been more supportive of the Sikh community than I have, both on this broadcast and in person.
Sometimes I kid my Sikh friends at one of the largest temples that’s two miles from my house. I’ve talked about them many times.
Yes, they’re all good friends. They’re wonderful people. They’re wonderful citizens. I don’t even think I should use the term “wonderful people.” They’re wonderful individuals that I know.
One of the most admirable is Simon Siyodi. He’s a good friend of mine. I like him enormously.
But my point is this. I teased him. I said, “If you’re going to have this huge Sikh temple with these flags of the Sikh nation, why don’t you at least put an American flag on your temple?” Sometimes I’ve seen it, sometimes I haven’t.
When these accidents were overwhelmingly perpetrated by illegal aliens, and here in California, overwhelmingly the Sikh drivers did not know English, did not take the regular test, and were given exemptions.
There was an attempt by federal authorities to say those licenses, which were fraudulently issued and led to some deaths of innocent people, would not be valid in other states.
The Sikh community then said, “We want a letter in support.”
That was the same idea. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you say, “These members of the Sikh community who entered the United States illegally, resided illegally, got driver’s licenses under fraudulent circumstances, acted recklessly, and killed people through their recklessness, we condemn these people. They’re not representative of our community.”
They didn’t do that.
I think that’s another sign that it’s going to hurt the community and hurt the community terribly.
Yes, I’m on a working farm, and there’s a big machine that is very important to finish.
The other thing, very quickly, Jack, is that this is the anti-George Floyd scenario.
Here we have parallel tracks. Here is a 19-year-old without a record who was minding his own business.
Here is George Floyd, a career felon who broke into a home, put a knife at a pregnant woman’s belly, and was convicted. In the process of encountering the police, he was:
A, committing a felony by passing counterfeit currency;
B, committing a felony by resisting arrest; and
C, committing a misdemeanor by being under the influence of fentanyl.
The police intervened in both cases.
In the case of George Floyd, they used an approved police maneuver to subdue him. Due to his ongoing COVID condition, his fentanyl intoxication, a jury found, Officer [Derek] Chauvin’s use of his knee, he passed out and said he couldn’t breathe.
At that point, they called an ambulance. The ambulance came, took him to the hospital, and he died.
Officer Chauvin was given a murder charge, convicted, and has since been attacked in prison, as I understand it.
The country’s reaction to that was four months of looting, arson, violence, 35 people killed, 1,500 officers injured, $2 billion in damage, courthouses burned, precincts burned, churches burned, and 14,000 people arrested.
That day almost ruined the universities because afterward they dropped the SAT and standards for admissions.
Now, of course, you see left-wing faculty saying, “Please bring back the SAT. The students are too poor to do the work. We don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Stanford said the same thing.
“We can’t water down the curriculum anymore because the graduates cannot get the type of jobs the Stanford brand would ensure them because employers caught on to us.”
It changed everything. It changed the military with DEI. It changed popular culture with critical race theory. It started the defund-the-police movement.
All from that incident.
In Britain, there will be no mass arson, riots, nothing.
The murderer was convicted.
I hope the members of the family who either hid the weapon or gave fraudulent information to the police will be charged and held accountable.
I hope the Sikh community will say these people do not represent our values and are not really members in good standing of our community.
We want to integrate and assimilate into British culture.
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