OPINION:
Like an act at a carnival freak show, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, is both fascinating and nauseating.
The devastation he would unleash if he’s elected to run the largest city in America and the nation’s financial hub is almost unimaginable.
Mr. Mamdani is a symptom of a contagion that’s afflicted the West for more than two centuries. The paradox of socialism is that it keeps winning followers in each generation as its failures become more manifest. It’s snake oil in a glitzy bottle that never loses its appeal for the credulous.
True believers include the gullible, lazy and envious. It has special appeal for students, intellectuals, the guilt-ridden rich and bureaucrats with a passion for ordering the lives of others.
Socialism isn’t a mass movement, but is elitist to the core.
The Democratic primary for mayor of New York was a contest between Mr. Mamdani — a cross between The Socialist International and Hamas — and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was looking for a comeback.
A majority of Blacks and Hispanics voted for Mr. Cuomo, as did those earning less than $50,00 a year (by 19 points) and 61% of voters without a 4-year college degree. Those making over $100,000 a year went for Mr. Mamdani by better than 13 percentage points.
A 2019 Gallup poll showed 49% of 18-to-39-year-olds had a favorable view of socialism.
The young are notoriously obtuse, particularly when they’re indoctrinated by Marxist professors. The rich, especially trust-fund babies, are often plagued by feelings of guilt.
Over the past century, socialism has ruined more countries and regions than the Black Plague: Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Eastern Europe, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, China under Mao, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and the People’s Republic of Newsom, which is poised to slide into the Pacific Ocean.
Socialism’s high points include Mao’s Great Leap Forward (30 million dead) and Cultural Revolution (10 million dead), the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s (3.9 million dead) and the Cambodian killing fields ( death toll 2 million), all the horrifying result of procrustean attempts to reshape human nature.
Yes, but that’s communism, protest Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders. We want democratic socialism.
Even Lenin didn’t envision firing squads, torture chambers and reeducation camps at the outset.
Democratic socialism eventually becomes undemocratic when the masses refuse to behave as expected. That’s when the guns come out.
A communist is a socialist with a gun. A socialist is a communist before he gets a gun.
Socialism results in stagnation, starvation, confiscation and mass emigration. Before the rise of Marxism, Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in South America. Now its economy is in ruins, its people are impoverished, 7.7 million have fled and a nation with the world’s largest proven oil reserves has rolling blackouts.
Cuba took the same four-lane highway to hell in the late 1950s. The transformation was so popular on the left that by the late 1960s, college kids were decorating their dorm rooms with Che Guevara posters.
Socialism requires a strenuous effort to avoid reality.
The guiding light of modern socialism, Karl Marx, never set foot in a factory or knew any workers. His days were spent in the library of the British Museum studying statistical tables. This helped him come up with the most unworkable economic system ever devised.
Marx got everything wrong. Revolution didn’t happen first in the most developed countries, but in the most backward (Russia and China). Under capitalism, workers didn’t sink further and further into poverty, but rose to the middle class. The state didn’t wither away, but became all-powerful.
As the world moves toward free markets, things are getting progressively better. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson explains that between 2000 and 2012, “the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by 50%” — a remarkable fact you didn’t learn from the legacy media.
Under a president who epitomizes capitalism, incomes are up, inflation is down and prosperity isn’t just around the corner. It’s here.
But not to worry, Mr. Globalize the Intifada — jihad meets bread lines — is riding to the rescue with city-owned grocery stores, free bus service and child care, a rent freeze and a $36-an-hour minimum wage. Mr. Mamdani will finance his Great Leap Backward by “seizing the means of production.”
It’s all too easy to dismiss Comrade Mamdani as crazy. Craziness like his fills mass graves.
Given the role New York City played in the development of capitalism, somewhere in hell, Karl Marx is laughing.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Correction: A previous version of this column misspelled Zohran Mamdani’s first name.