During a conversation with California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, Rogan and his guest discussed the dangers of government-controlled grocery stores and the lessons countries such as Hungary, Venezuela, and Cuba offer to anyone tempted by the idea.
Hilton, unlike many modern political activists promoting socialism from behind a podium or social media account, said he experienced the reality of a communist system firsthand.
“I literally went to them in Hungary,” Hilton said. “It was a communist state. There were 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 whatever it was – and it’s just terrible.”
For Rogan, the larger issue was simple: Concentrating too much economic power in the hands of the government can ultimately leave ordinary citizens with fewer choices and less control over their own lives.
Rogan argued that the modern socialist movement is not necessarily the result of Americans independently studying Marxist theory and deciding they want to recreate it.
“It’s not natural that people are sitting around reading Marx and going, ‘What a great idea, let’s implement this,'” Rogan said. “This is all coming out of social media. One hundred percent.”
That observation cuts directly into one of the biggest political trends emerging on the Left.
Democratic Socialist-backed candidates have gained increasing influence in Democratic primaries, with activists and candidates challenging establishment figures and pushing the party further toward government intervention in housing, health care, food, and other major sectors of the economy.
Mamdani has become one of the most recognizable faces of that movement in New York. Supporters argue that government-run programs could help struggling families deal with rising costs. Critics, however, see a familiar pattern: politicians promising affordability while proposing to give the state greater control over the marketplace.
That is where Hilton’s personal story—and the historical record—becomes difficult for socialist advocates to dismiss.
Under communist governments, state control was frequently accompanied by shortages, rationing, limited consumer choice, and economic stagnation. The Soviet bloc became notorious for long lines and sparsely stocked stores, while governments attempted to manage production and distribution from the top down.
Venezuela has become one of the most frequently cited modern examples in this debate.
The country possesses enormous oil reserves, yet years of economic mismanagement, government intervention, price controls, and broader institutional failures contributed to a devastating economic collapse and widespread poverty. Millions of Venezuelans have fled the country in search of better opportunities.
The lesson, critics argue, is not that every proposal involving public services automatically leads to communism. The concern is what happens when government control expands while competition, private ownership, and market signals are pushed aside.
That distinction matters.
A government grocery store may sound like a straightforward answer to high food prices. But the harder questions are who controls supply, how products are priced, what happens when the program loses money, and whether taxpayers ultimately end up financing another massive bureaucracy.
Those are the questions Rogan and Hilton brought into focus.
Hilton’s experience in communist Hungary was not an academic exercise. He described the reality of a system where state-run stores were simply part of everyday life—and where the results, according to his firsthand account, were far from the utopian vision often presented by modern socialists.
Meanwhile, the socialist movement continues to gain ground among younger voters and online political communities.
Rogan suggested that social media is playing a major role in that transformation, helping turn outrage, economic frustration, and dissatisfaction with the political establishment into support for increasingly radical solutions.
The danger, according to critics, is that frustration can make simple slogans sound more convincing than complicated history.
Government control can be marketed as compassion. Nationalization can be presented as fairness. More bureaucracy can be sold as protection for working families.
But history demands a harder question: What happens when those promises fail?
Supporters of democratic socialism may insist that their version will be different from the failed systems of the past. Rogan and Hilton’s discussion, however, highlighted why millions of people who have actually lived under communist or heavily state-controlled economies remain deeply skeptical.
The debate over Mamdani’s vision is therefore about more than grocery stores.
It is about power.
Who controls the economy? Who makes the decisions? And what happens when the people running the system get it wrong?
For Rogan, the warning appeared clear. Before Americans embrace another experiment in government control, they may want to listen to the people who have already lived through one.
Because political theories can sound great on social media.
Empty shelves are much harder to explain away.
