Popular podcaster Joe Rogan ripped into know-nothing democratic socialists on Wednesday for being so ignorant about the realities of Marxism.
Speaking with California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a Republican, Rogan started by mocking democratic socialists for being know-nothings who’ve had their perception of their world twisted by social media.
“People are really [arguing], ‘Oh maybe being socialist is cool.’ Like, this is all coming out of social media. 100 percent,” he started. “It’s not natural that people are sitting around reading Marx and going, ‘What a great idea, let’s implement this.’ They’re not doing that.”
“Very few of these quote-unquote Marxists that you find on social media are even aware of the consequences, the historical consequences of these strategies and what it ultimately leads to,” he added.
Rogan continued by summing up how so-called democratic socialism actually works.
“It’s like checkers,” he said. “It’s, like, real simple: You’re going to have a military that controls everything you do! As soon as you give up everything to the state, well, the state has the guns, and you have nothing, and they tell you what to do.”
Hilton responded by pointing to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s publicly run grocery stores as a perfect example.
“We had that when I was a kid,” he explained. “I literally went to them in Hungary. It was a communist state. There was only state-run grocery stores. I saw them. There’s one, like, at the end of the block where my grandma lived, and I would go there in the morning to get the whatever it was, and it’s just terrible.”
Rogan continued the discussion by admitting that capitalism can be “brutal” — an admission many stubborn capitalists refuse to make — but stressing that socialism certainly isn’t the answer. What is then? Better “social safety nets” that help people without incentivizing laziness.
As an example of a valid social safety net recipient, he mentioned “a woman who has children and her husband dies and she doesn’t have an income — and now, oh my god, I have to feed these children.”
“Yeah, we should have social safety nets” for people like her, he said.
The problem, he added, is that sometimes “social safety nets encourage people to rely on them and have zero ambition.”
These remarks from Rogan follow remarks he made a couple of weeks earlier when he slammed democratic socialists as people with good intentions but who don’t have a single clue:
“The idea comes from a good place,” he began. “I know in their heart of hearts they think that they’re being kind and they think they’re doing the right thing. They really do. They think they’re being inclusive, they think they’re righting the wrongs of colonialism, and they think that this idea of democratic socialism is a really good idea, because there are some examples of socialist policies that do work, like the fire department.”
“The problem with enforcing any of this stuff that they don’t understand is it always comes down to power. You have to have massive authority, and usually guns, because you can’t just steal people’s money. They’re not going to let you. They’re not going to let you just come in and decide, ‘Hey, we devised a new tax where everybody who makes more than $500,000 a year, everything over that, you have to give 100% to the state,'” he correctly added.
He continued by insisting that making an already awful government even more powerful wouldn’t be such a swell idea.
“The f-cking program that you have in place that takes the taxes and disseminates it is massively flawed and corrupt. It’s corrupt! It’s filled with waste. FILLLLED with waste,” he exclaimed.
“There’s scammers all over the place. You’ve got $24 billion missing in just the homeless [programs] in California, and then they veto the audits when everybody’s trying to find out [what happened]. So just saying, ‘More taxes is what we need’ is f-cking nuts!”
These socialism-centered discussions from Rogan come amid an upsurge of democratic socialists winning primary elections in the Democrat Party.
Democrat socialists are winning in blue cities like New York, DC, Seattle and Los Angeles. Now they’re also winning in purple and swing states. House races in Pennsylvania and Colorado and US Senate races in Michigan and Minnesota. Watch. Get involved. Help us save America. pic.twitter.com/dHBvqIGshg
— VotersDeserveBetter (@VotersDeserveUs) August 14, 2026
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.