Ken Griffin: France’s Riots Are a Warning to Young Americans Flirting With Socialism

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Citadel CEO Ken Griffin says the riots that have erupted in Paris and other French cities should show young Americans that socialist policies are not the utopia some make them out to be.

Speaking on a panel at Citadel Securities’ recent Future of Global Markets Conference, the billionaire hedge fund manager argued that the chaos in France’s streets shows exactly where the road to socialism ends up. “If you want to look at where socialism leads you to, look at France this last weekend. It’s the socialist dream,” Griffin said, noting that the country spends 60% of its GDP at the government level. “And yet their streets are awash in turmoil.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” he added. “Paris looked pretty damn similar to Chicago in 2021 and 2022.”

Griffin said young Americans who may be drawn to socialist ideas should treat the unrest as a wake-up call about socialism’s failures. “I think Paris should be a real wake-up call to every single young American,” he said, describing France as the liberal, safety net-rich, socialist Europe that the left holds up as its dream.

“That dream, that dream is the nightmare I left from Chicago,” Griffin said, adding that it “doesn’t belong in our country.” He described it as a society built on how much you can take from others, warning that “they’ll first take your property, and then they’ll take your personal rights.”

Asked whether he sees U.S. political candidates who want to steer the country down that path, Griffin named Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “Yes, 100%,” he said.

Griffin moved Citadel’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022, after the firm had operated in the Windy City for nearly three decades, citing high taxes and crime.

Last November, Griffin told Fox News’ Bret Baier at the America Business Forum that Chicago is a “failed city-state,” noting that two of his colleagues had bullets fly through their cars. “I had 25 bullet holes in the front of my building where I lived,” he said at the time.