Shock Poll: One in Five College Students Say U.S. Deserved 9/11, Nearly Half Want Socialism

A shock survey reveals more than one in five college students say the U.S. deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3000 people while targeting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The stunning findings do not stop there, with nearly half of the respondents saying they would rather live under socialism and a plurality reporting that Palestine would be a better ally of the U.S. than Israel.

As the New York Post put it in a report on the poll Wednesday, “Hasan Piker has lots of company,” a reference to the radical left podcaster who played a far-left part in Tuesday’s midterm elections by promoting and supporting successful socialist candidates.

Some 22% of participants surveyed by the Buckley Institute agreed that “America deserved Sept. 11,” while another 72 percent disagreed with the statement with six percent “unsure”, according to the poll, which surveyed 803 American undergraduates.

Ironically, those students were not even born in 2001 to witness the devastating attacks credited to the Islamic terror group al Quada 25 years ago.

Still, their views were in line with caustic U.S. bashers such as such as Piker, who reportedly said back 2019 that America “deserved 9/11” and more recently alleged that the U.S. forces have committed more terrorism than al Qaeda.

Hostility toward Israel has grown in the past year as well, the survey confirming the anecdotal evidence of frequent pro Palestine demonstrations seen on campuses throughout the U.S.

When asked which country is a better ally for the United States, 38% said Palestine and 25 percent said Israel, a 9-point shift away from the Jewish state compared to last year, the annual survey reported.

When it came to economic systems, those students also echoed Piker, who generated headlines campaigning with successful Michigan Democratic senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

They were asked, “If you had to choose, which economic system would you prefer to live under?” the Post reported.

“The result: 42% of students said they would rather live under a socialist system, versus just 28% preferring a capitalist one and the remaining 30% had no opinion,” according to he outlet.

That percentage in favor of socialism is the highest in the five years the survey question has been posed.

Nearly half of the students — 47 percent — said they agreed with the 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,” according to the tabloid.

Only a third favored U.S. capitalism as a better model.

The poll reflects the kind of trend being responded to by the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which is launching a multi-year nationwide initiative to counter the “growing appeal of socialism among Young Americans,” Breitbart News reported exclusively this week.

YAF’s “Freedom Not Socialism” initiative, a nationwide campaign for “2027 and beyond,” will officially launch during the organization’s November Freedom Conference at the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara, California. It will bring together “hundreds of young conservative students” and leading speakers like former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Another issue explored in the survey was transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, the poll finding a majority of undergrads opposed that idea.

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A third said transgender athletes should be able to participate in whichever gender class they feel more comfortable in, while 53 percent said doing so would be unfair because of inherent biological differences.

Racism and free speech were also surveyed.

According to the Post’s report:

Asked about progress on racial equality in the US, half or 50%, said America is inextricably linked to white supremacy and in general most minorities remain excluded from the American promise of equality. Just 39% said they believed America is moving forward and the promise of equality continues to be extended to more people, the poll found.

Free speech was not immune from the apparent left wing undergrads. Some 40 percent of students agreed that “offensive speech” should be criminally prosecuted while 52 percent disagreed.

The Buckley Institute is named after William F. Buckley Jr., the iconic mid-20th century leader in the conservative movement who founded National Review and influenced leading conservative leaders and commentators like Rush Limbaugh for decades.

The national survey was conducted Sept. 5-14 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.