Zohran Mamdani, the radical socialist who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, is very likely a full-blown communist.
The evidence surfaced in Mamdani’s speech, now going viral, to the Young Democrat Socialists of America in 2021. Mamdani said he and his Red gang would seize the means of production once they took power.
Law Professor Jonathan Turley zinged Mamdani as one of the hip youngsters who know nothing about the failures of 20th-century communism.
Meanwhile, Mamdani has answered Trump’s threat to arrest him if he interferes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in New York to arrest and deport illegal aliens.
To his credit, Mamdani is nothing if not honest. He doesn’t disguise his goals, even if he dresses them up in his smiling face.
“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he told the young lefties:
But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS [the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.
Soft socialists don’t advocate “seizing the means of production.”
Continued Mamdani:
It’s critical, the way that we organize, the way that we set up our — you know, set up our work and our priorities, that we do not leave any one issue for the other, that we do not meet a moment and only look at what people are ready for, but that we are doing both of these things in tandem. Because it is critical for us to both meet people where they’re at and to also organize for what is correct and for what is right, and to ensure that, over time, we can bring people to that issue.
When he was running for New York assemblyman, an office to which voters imprudently elected him, Mamdani offered a one-minute explanation of socialism on YouTube. “Socialism! Terrifying word,” the Uganda-born Indian immigrant began:
A lot of people are afraid of the word “socialism,” and a lot of people have misconceptions about what it means. I’m a Democratic Socialist and what socialism means to me is a commitment to dignity. A state that provides whatever is necessary for its people to live a dignified life. [Emphasis added.]
Such matters as housing and healthcare “are not things that should be up for debate,” he said, “because we see what happens when we let the market be the sole determinant of the distribution of dignity.”
Mamdani didn’t say who will define “dignity” and “whatever is necessary.”
Add to this the list of priorities at Mamdani’s campaign website. As The New American reported last week, his site contains the craziest ideas ever to ooze out of the brainpan of a political candidate: freezing rent, “free” child care, “free” public transportation, and a minimum wage of $30 per hour.
Mamdani also wants to raise taxes on “white neighborhoods.”
His primary triumph, which has moderate Democrats terrified, invited Trump to call him a “a 100 percent communist lunatic.”
Turley noted that he doesn’t call Mamdani a communist because he hasn’t seen Mamdani advocate one-party control of the political system or “complete centralization of the economy under government control.”
But Mamdani’s clear warning about “seizing the means of production” shows that he is a “serious Marxist,” Turley wrote. The prescription
does not sound like soft socialism, but fairly hardcore Marxism. It also contradicts PolitiFact’s statement that “Mamdani’s platform is not akin to communism, a system of government which calls for government takeover of private property and control of industry.”
Noting that Mamdani is the “perfect product of the extreme American left” and the “prototype” graduate of the far-left university system, Turley explained that such youngsters don’t know history.
“Polls show increasing support among young people for socialism and even communism. Notably, Mamdani received significant support in the primary from wealthy and young college-educated voters,” Turley wrote:
To put it simply, it is cool to be socialist among generations who did not experience the economic failures of socialist systems in the 20th Century in countries like Great Britain and France. They did not witness former communist countries turning to capitalism to rescue their failing economies.
Nor did they witness communism’s mass murders, the hundreds of millions who died under the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin or Red China’s Mao Tse-tung.
Nor do the youngsters refrain from using communist propaganda terms to describe opponents, which raises Mamdani’s answer to Trump’s threat to arrest him. Speaking at the Alligator Alcatraz news conference yesterday, Trump warned Mamdani not to obstruct ICE in enforcing federal immigration laws.
During his post-primary victory speech, Mamdani said that New York City will be a place
where public safety keeps us truly safe. And it’s where the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism; to stop mass ICE agents from deporting our neighbors; and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party.
Asked what he would do if Mamdani interferes with ICE, Trump said:
Well then, we’ll have to arrest him. Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.
Mamdani’s reply meandered everywhere but straight to the point of his threat to obstruct ICE. Nor did he elaborate about why he feels entitled to break federal obstruction and harboring statutes.
“Donald Trump said that I should be arrested,” Mamdani said:
He said that I should be deported. He said that I should be denaturalized. And he said those things about me. Someone who stands to be the first immigrant mayor of this city in generations, someone who would also be the first Muslim and the first South Asian mayor in this city’s history. Less so because of who I am, because of where I come from, because of how I look or how I speak, and more so because he wants to distract from what I fight for.
Mamdani claims he is fighting for the same Americans for whom Trump said he was fighting.
Maybe, but Trump has never mentioned “seizing the means of production,” one of the first illegal actions of communists when they take power.