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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Politics
Published on
Jun 24, 2025
Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Photo by Howie Mapson on Unsplash

New York’s Surging New Leftist Tide Is a Chilling Warning to the West

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary
The rise in support for Zohran Mamdani illustrates how an alliance of immigrants and the young urban precariat is taking on capitalism.
Summary
The rise in support for Zohran Mamdani illustrates how an alliance of immigrants and the young urban precariat is taking on capitalism.
Listen to this article

A red anti-Israel activist as next mayor of New York? In the cradle of capitalism and the largest diaspora city in the world? It may still be unlikely but the meteoric rise of New York assemblyman, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, tells us much about the potential of the redistributionist Left not only in America but across the West.

Many pundits, both Right and Left, express dismay about the surge of Right-wing populists, not only in America but across much of Europe and, now, under Nigel Farage, in the UK as well. Yet rather than a powerful, inexorable shift to the Right, we could just as likely be at the beginning of a new surging red tide.

To be sure, as long as the Left clings to issues like transgender sports, slavery reparations, racial quotas and the defunding of police support, the Right seems likely to prevail. But in a host of key economic and demographic areas, we could see a shift not to the mild Clinton or Blair centre-Left, but to something far more radical, and openly anti-capitalist.

Continue reading at The Telegraph (UK).

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