Democrats turn on Zohran Mamdani over anti-Semitism claims - "Democrats have begun to turn on the party’s New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani over antisemitism concerns. Mr Mamdandi, a 33-year-old socialist who beat Andrew Cuomo to stand in the city’s mayoral race as the Democrat candidate, has been labelled an extremist by colleagues over his political views. A self-described anti-Zionist, Mr Mamdani is a vocal supporter of Palestine who has been accused of inciting anti-Semitism by refusing to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada” Laura Gillen, a Democratic representative, distanced herself from the party’s mayoral nominee calling him “the wrong choice for New York.” “Socialist Zohran Mamdani is too extreme to lead New York City,” the Long Island congresswoman said in a statement. “His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs. “Beyond that, Mr Mamdani has called to defund the police and has demonstrated a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable anti-Semitic comments which stoke hate at a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing. He is the absolute wrong choice for New York.” Tom Suozzi, a New York representative, said he too had “serious concerns” over Mr Mamdandi. “I had serious concerns about Assemblyman Mamdani before yesterday, and that is one of the reasons I endorsed his opponent. Those concerns remain,” he wrote on X. Mr Mamdani wove his Muslim faith into his campaign, delivering speeches at mosques and speaking to voters while fasting for Ramadan. Last week, Mr Mamdani said that “globalise the intifada” was a legitimate expression that could be used by Palestinian supporters, which earned him staunch criticism from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum... Mr Mamdani will compete against Eric Adams, New York’s incumbent mayor, in November’s general election. Mr Adams pulled out of the Democratic primary after public backlash to a now-dismissed federal corruption case brought against him, and will instead run as an independent. The city has not elected a mayor Republican since 2005."
We will still be told that left wing extremists are a small, unrepresentative group who have no real world impact, and that we should ignore them
If we wins, the disaster that left wing policies lead to will be blamed on Trump, naturally. Leopards eating people's faces only applies when the left is being cruel as usual - the cruelty is the point
Zohran Mamdani's success in New York offers a terrifying glimpse into the future of Leftist politics - "If it can happen in New York, it can happen anywhere. Last night, Democrats in the second most Jewish place on Earth, home to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Woody Allen and pastrami on rye, elected a Corbynite mayoral candidate who has defended the slogan “globalise the intifada”. Zohran Mamdani, the proud 33-year-old socialist who was born in Uganda and worked as a rap music producer before turning to politics, pulled off a traumatic political upset when he beat the former state governor and moderate frontrunner Andrew Cuomo to win the nomination... In hard-Left circles... the Mamdani was fast becoming a poster boy. The photogenic son of a professor of post-colonial studies at Columbia University ran on a platform of free universal childcare, free buses, a rent freeze and – you guessed it – condemning the Middle East’s only democracy, which he has lavishly accused of “genocide”. Predictably enough, the emetic Mamdani campaign has been fuelled by umpteen vacuous TikTok videos, together with endorsements from the usual coalition of socialist dinosaurs like Bernie Sanders and airhead celebrities like model and activist Emily Ratajkowski and comedian Bowen Yang (who once put his name to a “queers for Palestine” letter). “This is not just about New York, this is about the Democratic Party,” Ratajkowski said in a video with Mamdani. “It’s about the hope that we have that there is a belief that people can win elections, and not just money.” Pass the sick bag. Here was yet another expression of the unifying power of Palestine on the Left, which has somehow become the meeting-point of narcissistic progressive posturing, eyepopping sexual experimentation, race radicalism, petulant teenage rebellion, climate fanaticism, Cold-War era anti-capitalism, and amongst some the venomous cause of global jihad and the sheer hatred of Jews. With the murder of two Israeli diplomats in Washington DC in May, the adolescent rage turned deadly. With the invasion of RAF Brize Norton this month, it crept in the direction of terror. And on both sides of the Atlantic, from Leicester South to Manhattan, it is becoming increasingly political. There is no shortage of irony here. As one Jewish-American writer put it: “I hope this puts to rest the notion that Jews control politics. We couldn’t even elect a non-antisemite in the most Jewish city in America.” Clearly, if you thought the Democrats had begun to learn the lessons of their drubbing by Donald Trump last year, you were wrong. There could have been no louder howl of American rage at the ultra-progressive agenda than the 2024 presidential election. New York, that most liberal of cities, has turned itself into a battleground for the soul of the Democrats. Partly, of course, this is generational: many of Mamdani’s voters were young zealots who took on the old guard and crucified them. But in the bigger picture, it is a battle between the ideologues and the pragmatists. And the ideologues are winning. Wherever you look in the West, the same pattern is playing out. A small number of hardened Islamists and their fellow travellers are reaching for the levers of power over the heads of the bovine silent majority. With the moderates on their own side unable to muster anything other than appeasement, the tide is turning by increments. History is not always written by the masses. It can be written by the fanatics. With our democratic traditions unable to compensate for the rampant radicalism and apathy muting our immune systems, we are watching our societies slip away"
Zohran Mamdani is the disastrous far-Left future progressive New Yorkers deserve - "Mamdani’s victory seemed almost unimaginable when both he and Cuomo first entered the race. With Cuomo’s iconic last name – his father, Mario, was also governor of New York – and his billionaire backers, he appeared truly too big to fail. None other than Bill Clinton endorsed him as the race entered its final loop... there were plenty of reasons to not want Mandani to win. His ultra-socialist agenda promotes policies – rent freezes, state-run grocery stores – so outlandish that even the New York Times declared them “uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges”. In a stark warning a few days back, The Chicago Tribune cautioned New Yorkers that choosing a socialist mayor would turn that city into theirs: going broke thanks to far-Left mayor Brandon Johnson’s reckless policies. And Mamdani is even further to the Left of his potential Chicago counterpart. So how did a city so sensitive to taxes, crime and political poseurs rally behind a kid whose only real job – besides Queens assemblyman – was a brief stint as a rapper? In a sense, how could they have not? Handsome, charming, Muslim, Mamdani is the inevitable outcome of the decades of identity politics that have seeped so deeply into every element of American society. His appeal – intersectional, anti-Israel, youthful and anti-authoritarian – is the political manifestation of everything from DEI to the nearly two years of violent pro-Palestinian protests that have convulsed the nation. And nowhere have those protests been more violent – or youthful or intersectional – than in New York City. With his slick social media posts and elite education, Mamdani cannily understood the most potent weapon of wokeness and identity politics – its ability to trick folks into acting (or, in this case, voting) against their own best interests. And New York voters have made the far-Left proud. Very proud... this remains Mamdani’s race to lose, a chilling thought for fans of civic basics such as a functioning housing system and law and order. Much like the White House last summer, New York City is politically rudderless – overseen by a nominal leader, Adams, desperate to retain power as he campaigns on dubious legitimacy."
Proof that we need to stop big money in politics, as it determines who wins and who loses and ensures oligarchy
Who is Zohran Mamdani? New York braces for ‘anti-Zionist’ Leftist mayor - "he called for free bus rides, universal childcare for New Yorkers with children aged six weeks to five years, and rent controls. He wants to plough $70 billion (£51 billion) into housing and almost double the minimum wage from $16 to $30 an hour. One of Mr Mamdani’s most controversial policies is city-controlled supermarkets, where local authorities would get to decide how much food costs. Business leaders have already threatened to leave the city over the proposal. John Catsimatidis, the chief executive of grocery chain Gristedes, said he would consider selling or moving his stores if Mr Mamdani is elected. “If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move or franchise the Gristedes locations,” he told Fox News. During the campaign, tweets by Mr Mamdani resurfaced, which called for the New York Police Department to be defunded. “Queer liberation means defund the police,” he said in one post in 2020. His high-profile supporters include Emily Ratajkowski, the actress and model, Rachel Zegler, the Snow White actress who regularly posts pro-Palestinian comments on social media, and singer Lorde, who in 2017 cancelled a concert in Tel Aviv after pressure from activists. As well as being New York’s most Left-leaning mayor, he would also become the city’s first Muslim leader in a city that is home to about one million Muslims."
US Holocaust Museum on X - "Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize “globalize the intifada” is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors. Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history."
Left wingers cheered the museum when it trashed Trump. But as always, left wing "solidarity" is highly contingent. Once a bigger "victim" comes along...
Zohran Mamdani is about to get a punishing lesson in basic economics - "Most of the major Left-wing thinkers of the last couple of hundred years have staked out very similar positions. And yet there is a catch. While he wants the billionaire class to be abolished, he also effectively wants them to pay for all his expensive campaign pledges... Mamdani wants to have his billionaire cake and eat it. The plutocrats should be wiped out, but at the same time they should cheerfully pay extra taxes to fund extravagant social programmes. It is a view that is increasingly common across the Western world. In Britain, the governing Labour Party both wants to get rid of non-doms (as wealthy foreigners with a special tax exempt deal are known), while also raising billions in extra taxes from the rich. In France the radical Left wants greater equality, but it also wants wealth taxes to pay for some of the world’s most generous social benefits. The message is always the same. The rich are to be destroyed, but also pay for everything. We all know what will happen. Mamdani will get half of what he is arguing for. The rich will indeed be driven out of New York. After all, it is hard to see that many billionaires, or even mere millionaires, will want to stick around in a city that plans to tax them to extinction. They can easily move to low tax Miami or Dallas, or if that is too far then Boston is only a short flight away. They will all leave very quickly. But the other half of what Mamdani wants – all that extra tax revenue he is relying on to pay for his spending – will flee New York along with the private jets. His agenda will have been exposed as crude populism. And it is the New Yorkers with only a couple of zeros on their bank statements who will suffer the most as the experiment collapses in failure."
NYC's new frontrunner for mayor slammed for 'radical' left-wing policy ideas - "Chief among his campaign promises has been his vow to redirect tax funds away from subsidies to private grocery chains to create a network of city-owned grocery stores, which he says will be "focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit." In a TikTok video, Mamdani said that his city-run grocery stores will "operate without a profit motive," instead of focusing on "price gouging" as he alleged some private stores do. He claimed that without having to pay rent or property taxes, these city-run stores will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and be able to offer New York residents lower prices than privately owned stores in the city. "Grocery prices are out of control," he said in the video. "The job of city government isn’t to tinker around the edges while 1 in 4 children across our city go hungry." Another central tenet of Mamdani’s campaign has been his vow to crack down on "bad landlords" by having the city take control of properties when a landlord refuses to make repairs or "demonstrates consistent neglect" of their tenants. He also believes he can fix New York City’s affordable housing crisis by immediately freezing the rents of the over two million New York residents who live in rent-stabilized apartments. To address the city’s safety crisis, Mamdani has said he will create a new government agency called the Department of Community Safety (DCS) that he says will utilize "evidence-based strategies that prevent violence and crime before they occur." Among the new agency’s top priorities, as stated by Mamdani in a campaign video, will be to expand gun violence programs, address hate and tackle homelessness. The agency would also deploy mental health workers to subways and trouble spots, which he said "will make all of us safer." He has also pledged to institute universal free childcare for children aged 6 weeks to 5 years as well as to raise wages for childcare workers to be on par with public school teachers. Other priorities include his pledge to champion a law to raise the minimum wage in New York City to $30 an hour by 2030 and expanding funding for hate violence prevention programs by 800%. Another major tenet of Mamdani’s platform is "Trump-proofing" New York City. He made headlines in March when authorities had to hold him back while he yelled and verbally berated Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, who was visiting the New York state Capitol building... Mamdani’s website states that he will strengthen the city’s sanctuary city apparatus by kicking ICE out of all city facilities and ending any cooperation with the agency, as well as increasing legal support for immigrants and shielding their personal data. His website further states that, as mayor, Mamdani will make New York City an LGBTQ+ sanctuary city and protect "reproductive rights."... He has previously called to defund the New York Police Department, though he has since stated that "police have a critical role to play." Following the death of George Floyd, Mamdani tweeted on June 8, 2020, that he did not want to reform the police but asserted, "We want to defund the police." In another tweet later that month, Mamdani wrote, "We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD … NO to fake cuts – defund the police." In November 2020, Mamdani again tweeted, "queer liberation means defund the police." In 2020, Mamdani also called for the prison system to be dismantled, saying that it is a system that cages and kills those just trying to "survive." "As socialists, we believe people should not have to endure violence & coercion of a criminal-legal system that props up the exploitation of the market by surveilling, caging & killing those fighting to survive under capitalism," he said, adding, "We can abolish that system." He called on the New York state assembly to fight the construction of any new prisons and instead invest those funds in communities "that have been impacted by mass incarceration." Again in 2021, he said, "Our prison system relies on dehumanization and brutality, so the goal must be to abolish this exploitative system entirely. We must #DecarcerateNow." Mamdani also called to abolish private health insurance and medical bills, saying, "This is no time to put the ideology of capitalism above helping those who are in the greatest need." In addition to calling for less policing and less incarceration, Mamdani also tweeted in 2022 that "we need to ban all guns." He has further called for legislation to decriminalize sex work, permit "safe injection sites" for drug use, re-enfranchise convicts and end all cooperation with ICE... Meanwhile, Mamdani received praise and congratulations from several big-name, national politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., both of whom have endorsed his candidacy."
Left wingers will be happy with state run grocery stores, since the losses will be hidden in government spending and they can just "tax the 'rich'" to pay for their disastrous policies
Left wingers will still claim that right wingers are smearing him as socialist, when he is not just a self-described socialist but pushes socialist policies
Zohran Mamdani: ‘Working-Class’ Mayor for Upper Class Voters - "The Democratic nominee for mayor attributed his campaign’s success to the efforts of NYC’s working class. “We won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford,” Mr. Mamdani said during his victory speech... Yes, the mayoral hopeful’s campaign has masterfully mobilized an energetic base. But the “unprecedented coalition” in question are not made up of the paycheck-to-paycheck New Yorkers that he wants us to believe. The electoral map doesn’t just fail to reflect his working-class coalition – it flips it. It shows a victory carried by the very neighborhoods his story skips over. New Yorkers in areas where the median income is above $117,600 backed Mr. Mamdani by 13 points. Middle-income precincts followed right behind. Lower-income New Yorkers? They broke just as hard for Cuomo instead. Whiter, wealthier, more ideologically driven New Yorkers are certainly overrepresented in this primary. Take Flatbush and East Flatbush – two neighborhoods situated together with comparable populations. Gentrified Flatbush opted for Mamdani by 16 points, versus the Caribbean-dominated East Flatbush, which preferred Cuomo by 37 points. The difference? About 5,000 more Flatbush voters participated in the primary. Mr. Mamdani’s win simply reflects a truism about primaries: Affluent ideologues appear in droves until the general election resets the balance. Even so, Mr. Mamdani loves to refer to his small donations as an endorsement from NYC’s working class. He even urged the city’s Campaign Finance Board to raise the $8 million spending cap – a nod to his grassroots support. But here’s another stubborn truth about political campaigns: Americans higher up on the socio-economic ladder are the ones who show up on donor lists – despite the donation size. When I broke down Mamdani’s donor base by ZIP code using NYC Campaign Finance Board data, I found his campaign is no exception... I find the campaign’s everyday New Yorker branding – the multilingual videos and the affordability rhetoric – laughable, considering it’s bankrolled by the same elite political class that working-class New Yorkers stopped from voting progressive candidate Maya Wiley into City Hall in 2021. But concerned New Yorkers surveying social media for election updates don’t need the data to see Mr. Mamdani’s affluent voting base. I couldn’t help but notice the social media posts of young women holding their “I voted” stickers, sporting “Hot Girls for Zohran” T-shirts with captions endorsing the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist. Most telling to me, however, was Mamdani’s social media post after canvassing in the historically black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant – the photographed residents were a far cry from the Bed-Stuy neighbors I grew up with. Chances are, many Mr. Mamdani supporters are newly settled New Yorkers, oblivious to progressive Mayor de Blasio’s disastrous city ruin. After all, New York City has been experiencing a net influx of college-educated Americans aged 20-29 for decades. Mr. Mamdani’s foot soldiers will accuse me of being regressive – even xenophobic – for pointing out their relatively short-lived tenure in the city. I’m not against non-natives participating in political discourse and elections. But it’s hard to stomach Mr. Mamdani’s claim to represent displaced families when his campaign is powered by the very people replacing them – young, childless, college-educated New Yorkers chasing a Sex and the City lifestyle in gentrified enclaves. Mr. Mamdani’s impressive support drives home what’s been clear since Barack Obama’s 2008 run: the Democratic Party has perfected the modern political campaign. Democratic campaigns have successfully conquered Down’s Paradox – when the costs of voting outweighs the personal benefits. Supporters proudly wear merchandise, flaunt stickers for social credit, volunteer, donate, and thus turn out at the polls. A generation of Americans is radicalized by our universities – Gen Z’s perceived oppression compels them to vote. The Democratic campaign playbook has secured Zohran Mamdani’s nomination for City Hall. But here’s the disconnect: Mr. Mamdani may claim to run a grassroots, working-class oriented campaign, but college-educated urbanites birthed it. Socialist organizations like the Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America fueled it. Progressive celebrities like Lorde, Spike Lee, and Stavros Halkias endorsed it. A campaign’s heart is its most core constituency – and Mr. Mamdani’s supporters are anything but the working-class New Yorkers the mayoral hopeful claims to represent."
Comment (elsewhere): "When the Democratic Party talks about "the working class" they mean welfare queens and sex workers or they imagine their Guatamalan gardener."
Left wingers have disdain for the poorly educated after all, which is why they think Trump loving them reflects badly on him
Zohran Mamdani Spoke to Working-Class Immigrants’ Needs (Jacobin)
So much delusion and/or gaslighting. But of course the hoi polloi are stupid and vote against their interests, after all. Which is why left wingers need to install politicians who will fight for working people and ignore the working class's votes
CNN panelist calls Mamdani a ‘Muslim AOC’ and says Democrats have ‘death wish’ for tapping him as NYC mayor - "“Mandami put out a statement condemning Israel for its attack on Gaza, with no mention of the attack on Israel. That's the kind of guy is,” he said."
Zohran Mamdani ID'd himself as Asian and African American on Columbia application: report - "Democratic socialist New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim immigrant, identified as both Asian and African American on his Columbia University application, a report claims. The 33-year-old checked both “Asian” and “Black or African American” on his application to the Ivy League university — which was ultimately rejected — when he was a high school senior in 2009... Mamdani, born in Uganda, told the outlet he doesn’t identify as either race but rather “an American who was born in Africa.”... Mamdani, who clinched the Democratic mayoral nomination last week, told the outlet he selected the two races because of the limited options available on the college application — not to gain an edge in the admissions process. Columbia, like many top schools, factored race into admissions back then — a practice the Supreme Court has since struck down. The outlet obtained the controversial application after a seasoned “hacktivist” reportedly stole sensitive data from more than two million Columbia University students, applicants and employees in a targeted cyberattack last week. The lone hacker behind the massive breach later claimed responsibility in an anonymous message to Bloomberg News, admitting to stealing 2.5 million applications spanning decades to investigate whether the Manhattan university was still using affirmative action in admissions... Community members came out in force to slam Mamdani, who highlighted his Muslim and South Asian ancestry throughout his campaign, as a fraud. “It’s disgraceful to exploit this country’s legacy of slavery that oppressed African slaves,” Matthew Schweber, a Columbia University Jewish Alumni Association member, told The Post. “Zohran Mamdani’s exploitation of this category further exemplifies the fraudulence of his candidacy and the canard and pretense to speak on behalf of the oppressed. He is a child of privilege and two extraordinarily wealthy parents.”... “His focus was to get admitted to Columbia on affirmative action. It just didn’t work out. He was trying to get into a school by lying about his racial background. Race is a scientific specification, not the country you’re from,” Kassar said, adding that Mamdani, whose father was a Columbia professor, knew exactly what he was doing. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor of anthropology, political science and African Studies at the Ivy League, while his mother, Mira Nair, is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. “Being from Uganda doesn’t make you black. You can’t assume it makes you black,” Kassar charged."
So Elon Musk can be Black or African American too?
Experts warn Mamdani rent freeze may worsen NYC housing crisis - ""Economists — whether they are on the right or on the left — essentially are in universal agreement, that when the government implements price controls in the rental market, you end up with housing shortages," said E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation think tank. Emily Hamilton, the director of the Urbanity Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, echoed similar concerns with Mamdani’s housing policy platform. "It's going to exacerbate the city's housing quality problems that the current rent stabilization law is already exacerbating. A rent freeze would just make that worse, and ultimately will contribute to the reduction in the supply of rent-stabilized units," she said... According to a 2023 government report, rent-stabilized units accounted for about 27% of the overall housing stock in New York City and 41% of rental apartments. The report also finds that among rent-stabilized units, the median monthly rent was approximately $500 cheaper than market-rate rentals. Mamdani has previously blamed the board, which he describes as hand-picked by current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, of "jacking up rents on stabilized apartments by 9% (and counting)... The three-term assemblymember, who has made lowering costs for New Yorkers a cornerstone of his campaign, has also proposed building 200,000 affordable housing units. Hamilton said this element of Mamdani’s platform shows real potential for success. She explained that the passage of the 1961 Zoning Resolution made it difficult to add real estate in New York City, which contributed to an affordability problem and a push to regulate rents... "If we look at the ways in which New York City is more expensive than other places around the country, it is chiefly due to bad public policy that has imposed those costs," he said, adding that "doubling down on those government failures will only make it worse." Mamdani has also vowed to hold landlords to account. His campaign website outlines a revamped 311 service where tenants can schedule and track maintenance requests. "If a landlord refuses to make a repair, the city will do it and send them the bill. And in the most extreme cases, when an owner demonstrates consistent neglect for their tenants, the city will decisively step in and take control of their properties," the campaign site states."
Left wing logic: have regulations that create a problem, then proclaim that only government intervention can solve the problem
