A Post-Liberal Takes New York

Zohran Mamdani is set to take over the mayoralty of New York City, against a backdrop of a globalized intifada. Especially after the carnage at Bondi Beach in Australia, where Islamists gunned down Jews at a Chanukah celebration in an eerie echo of October 7, 2023, Mamdani’s history of vitriol against “Zionists” has some Jewish New Yorkers fearing that it will soon be open season in the largest diaspora Jewish community. Mamdani has not helped his cause by surrounding himself with extremists and lowlifes, and with his nauseating response to an illegal mob intimidating Jews outside a synagogue in early December. Touting “the warmth of collectivism” surely sends an additional shiver down the spines of New York’s sizable population of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union.

Those who wish New York’s Jews harm may try to cleanse their violence with the redemptive label of anti-Zionism. Among certain factions within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), that ploy has purchase; the Liberation Caucus, a self-described “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” sub-group within DSA, explicitly supports murdering Zionists around the world. The Liberation Caucus remains in good standing with the national organization. Megan Romer, co-chair of DSA’s governing body, has added that “we do not, in fact, condemn Hamas and… no socialist should.” If Mamdani equivocates when Jews are attacked for supporting Israel or even if they turn out to be Zionists, no one ought to be surprised.

With all that said, it’s still not the most likely course for New York’s near future. The same agitators will continue to chant about globalizing the intifada, but Mayor-elect Mamdani isn’t going to let people get away with blowing up buses and cafes, even if his father argued that suicide bombing should be “understood” rather than “stigmatized.” If, God forbid, there is a Bondi Beach-scale attack on New York’s Jews, Mamdani is savvy enough to condemn all violence against Jews. Even illegal demonstrations (of the kind Mamdani used to participate in) drew half a condemnation. The groups that organize intimidation campaigns against supporters of Israel do not consider it strategically viable to engage in outright violence, for the most part and for now; that doesn’t mean the threat of a handful of Islamists or leftists taking up arms is nonexistent, but it does mean that a literal intifada is effectively deterred for the time being.

That doesn’t mean Jewish New Yorkers’ worries about a Mamdani mayoralty are overblown. To the contrary, the most concerning aspect of Mamdani’s rise has barely been discussed.

It is what scholar Ruth Wisse calls “organizing politics against the Jews.” Wisse points out that socialist vilification of the Jews for “exploiting the working class” is a powerful form of politics against the Jews. It lives on with the rise of the Israel-obsessed DSA, which mainstream Democrats are completely unable, or unwilling, to reject.  

Mamdani was laying the groundwork for the organization of politics against the Jews when he entered the arena, by his own admission, to destroy Israel. On October 7, 2023, with Hamas terrorists still burning Jewish families alive, the DSA’s New York Chapter name-checked Mamdani in a statement blaming the Jewish state for its own misfortune. Mamdani called for a ceasefire before Israel began its counter-offensive against Hamas – in other words, calling for a Hamas victory – leading demonstrations pre-accusing Israel of “genocide” and calling for its destruction.

Securing the Democratic Party’s nomination was a hostile takeover of a historically pro-Israel party. Interestingly, it occurred not by beating the anti-Israel drum, but by promising working-class New Yorkers endless free goods and services. Like all socialists, Mamdani doesn’t believe that poverty and scarcity are natural. His entire program insists that everyone having everything they want is just a matter of displacing greedy capitalists.

Prominent Democrats fail to see the danger in this utopianism. Governor Hochul endorsed Mamdani. President Obama called to offer his support. And President Biden congratulated the Mayor-elect, describing his victory as an example of democracy at its finest. They don’t need a weatherman to know that this is where left-wing political winds are blowing.

All this is especially stark considering the news story Mamdani’s win displaced, back in early November. The conservative Heritage Foundation remains in hot water for failing to distance itself from neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and his smirking megaphone Tucker Carlson. An immune response kicked in from certain Heritage staff and other prominent right-wingers. In mid-December, Heritage even hosted Ben Shapiro, who delivered what amounted to a writ of excommunication against Carlson and his defenders. Whether the promises and early indications of course-correction will be enough to right the ship remains to be seen – but at least there was some recognition that the right was headed down a dangerous path.

Not so on the left. The Democratic establishment has welcomed the DSA takeover as though it were a natural fit. If Jews are sounding the alarm, nobody is listening.

That is a massive mistake. The biggest conspiracy of all is at the heart of the DSA program: With the right people in charge, regular folks can have it all – for free. Indeed, we would have it already if not for those standing in your way.

When the socialist project inevitably fails, when the resources aren’t there or are destroyed by state action, human nature proves recalcitrant, and reality refuses to bend to ideology – that is when the search for scapegoats begins. It never takes long for disappointed populists to identify the culprits: those famously greedy people who look after their own at the expense of the regular folk among whom they dwell: the Jews.

It barely registered when, a few years ago, a New York City Council candidate ran explicitly on disempowering “greedy Jewish landlords.” Mamdani has already laid the groundwork for a redux by promoting conspiracy theories about connections between the NYPD and the Israel Defense Forces. His DSA, which promotes the idea that nebulous systems of oppression exploit common people, has already located Jews at the center of the capitalist-imperialist exploitation machine. It justified the massacre of civilians as “not unprovoked.”

When the next provocation occurs – perhaps between a New Yorker and the police – you can be sure Mamdani will insist that the buck stops elsewhere. “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck,” he said in 2023, “it’s been laced by the IDF.” The Jewish state, and the millions of New Yorkers who support it, will absorb the blame. So too when the groceries aren’t free and plentiful, when the buses become mobile homeless shelters, and when the tax base migrates south.

Utopianism, populism, and grievance are inseparable. Socialist leaders cannot admit that their program failed; someone must be sabotaging the people. Someone rigged the game. Millennia of experience warn us whom the frustrated masses will hold responsible.

Mayor-elect Mamdani insists that antisemitism has no place in his city, and that he will do everything in his power to ensure it does not rear its ugly head. Yet that would require moderating the utopian vision upon which his political career is premised. Without that, the idea that antisemitism will decline is just another pie-in-the-sky promise.  

Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.