For me, a native New Yorker, watching the Democratic Party nominate a socialist jihadi apologist for mayor less than 25 years after 9/11 is infuriating. Not because Zohran Mamdani is a Muslim, but because he embraces “globalizing the intifada,” a violent, terroristic slogan aimed at his Jewish neighbors — in a city where they have increasingly been targeted. 

There’s no need to soft-pedal what’s happening. Even as national media worked to moderate the candidate’s image, Mamdani was campaigning with popular leftist Twitcher and Jew-baiter Hasan Piker, who once said, “America deserved 9/11.” In 1984, it was a scandal that Jesse Jackson called New York “Hymietown.” By today’s standards, it seems frivolous. 

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Then, of course, Mamdani supports rent controls, price controls, government-run stores, new regulatory burdens, and redistribution. In the past, he backed dismantling the police, even though public safety is allegedly the top issue on the minds of New Yorkers. But Mamdani isn’t a product of the old-fashioned class-based socialistic tradition that’s been, to some extent, embedded in our politics for over a century. He is an adherent of a reinvigorated red-green alliance, in which Marxists, Islamists, Third World revolutionaries, and, now, champions of quack and identitarian causes align. 

I get a kick out of people who struggle to wrap their minds around “Trans for Palestine” or other seemingly illogical alliances. It makes complete sense. They share the same enemy. It’s why Mamdani promises to spend $65 million on “gender-affirming” mutilation surgeries for children while siding with Hamas. 

Why would New Yorkers vote for him?

Political pundits love to psychoanalyze voters and imbue them with all kinds of imaginary motivations. One of the trendy theories I see floating around is that Mamdani’s win was due to a restive populist revolt, much like “working class” upheaval against the Republican Party establishment. Mamdani, like President Donald Trump, we are told, is merely a reaction to years of failed promises by the forgotten people of the Bronx and Queens. 

First off, Mamdani’s most loyal supporters are educated white voters who are immigrants from around the country. Mamdani’s strongest support came from younger renters from gentrified areas in Western Queens and North Brooklyn. These people are about as “working class” as Mamdani. Then again, one of the biggest myths of Marxism has always been that it is led by the proletariat. From Marx onward, most notable socialist leaders hail from the middle and upper classes, propped up by the wealthy benefactors. 

Many conservatives, on the other hand, blamed Islamic immigration for Mamdani’s rise. It’s true that stressing “diversity” over integration has degraded our shared social mores and values. It’s a problem. But Mamdani is an all-too-familiar product of American institutions. His father is a professor of anti-Western pseudohistorical “postcolonial studies” at Columbia University. His mother is a film director. Mamdani attended the elite Bronx High School of Science and went to Bowdoin, where he earned a degree in Africana studies. The 33-year-old assemblyman took the predictable and coddled journey of the modern-day American revolutionary. 

Others tell me Mamdani won because he was charismatic and spoke passionately about the lack of affordability in the city. I’ll have to take their word. If charisma is leading young people toward socialism, someone is going to have to explain to me why the octogenarian red-diaper baby Bernie Sanders is perhaps the most popular Democrat in the country. 

What if Mamdani, like socialists everywhere, simply appealed to the envy of economic illiterates who want others to pay for their lives? What if 70% of young people are fine with socialism because they’ve spent their lives being bombarded with anticapitalistic messaging in culture, politics, and schools? People tell me the young are susceptible to collectivism because capitalism has failed them. I disagree. But it’s certainly not the market’s fault you chose to borrow over $100,000 for unusable degrees and then moved to the most expensive real estate market in the world.

Even if it was, Mamdani is just reanimating a host of failed ideas. Of course, I’m sure you can show Mamdani supporters charts and numbers and give them a bevy of historical examples of socialism’s extensive history of catastrophe, and they wouldn’t care. When Mamdani fails, progressive Democrats will blame corporations and the wealthy, and maybe AIPAC. Progressivism is an emotion and vibe-driven movement. Everyone is looking for a religion. Many New Yorkers just happened to pick the most destructive one ever created. 

In years past, Democrats would feign offense at being labeled socialists. Today, not a single notable elected Democrat, outside of Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), decried the direction of their party. Indeed, many big-name Democrats have endorsed Mamdani, including, despicably, numerous Jewish Democrats. 

That might point to a bigger problem than Mamdani. The Democratic Party establishment is terrified of the contemporary progressive Democrats, who have adopted the most authoritarian ideology mainstreamed in modern American political history. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made her name proposing we nationalize the entire economy in the name of the environment. Simply because socialist ideas are not yet feasible does not negate the insanity of their champions. 

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That said, we shouldn’t overstate Mamdani’s victory, either. In total, about 9% of New Yorkers voted for him in an off-year election in a left-wing city. A corrupt former governor, Andrew Cuomo, was his leading opponent in the primary. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams (also corrupt!) still has a shot to win in the general. Michael Bloomberg won reelection as an independent in 2009, so it can happen. 

But that doesn’t mean Mamdani’s win doesn’t signify an ugly reality about American politics.