On 1 January 2026, Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in as mayor of New York. This is a notable occasion on a number of counts – his background, his age, his supporters, his voters and his policies/beliefs. Some of the best and most accurate information on Mamdani comes, not from the mainstream media, but from the Catholic League. The amount of work they have put into researching this man tells me they have genuine and serious concerns about his motives and policies as well they might.
BACKGROUND
So who is Zohran Mamdani? Bill Donohue, writing for the Catholic League, talks about Mamdani’s communist roots, saying he was groomed by his far-left parents in the communist mould. His father is a Marxist professor of African history at Columbia University. His mother is a film maker and an anti-Israeli activist. They gave Zohran the middle name “Kwame” after Kwame Nkrumah, the African dictator who was so admired by the comusariat of the USSR they gave him the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962.
His only form of employment outside of politics was as a counsellor for a nonprofit charitable organisation where he worked for about a year. Mamdani is the first New York mayor of Indian-American ethnicity and its first Muslim mayor. The nightmare that is London Mayor Sadiq Kahn immediately comes to mind.
AGE
At 34, Mamdani will be the second youngest mayor in New York history.
SUPPORTERS
The Communist Party in America love Mamdani, who, himself, has long admired black communists. In 2017 Mamdani’s housing advisor, Cea Weaver tweeted “Elect more communists”. The next year she tweeted “Seize private property”, something Mamdani supports. In fact he has explicitly called for the seizure of private property. He has the support of People’s World, a publication that succeeded the Daily Worker, America’s most prominent communist newspaper.
VOTERS
Bill Donohue provides some interesting statistics. Not surprisingly Mamdani’s voters were the young and first-time voters who, in Donohue’s words, are the most unsophisticated segments of the voting public. Mamdani won every race and ethnicity except white voters, which Cuomo got by just one point. The two most important segments to vote against him were Jews and Catholics: Jews by a margin of 63 per cent to 33 per cent and Catholics split the vote 53 per cent to 33 per cent.
He prevailed at all income levels, interestingly doing best among high-income earners, which begs the question as to whether they will in fact leave town. What is also interesting – alarming even – is that only 39 per cent of New Yorkers say he is up to the job. Only 44 per cent of voters said his policies were realistic and 60 per cent say raising taxes, which he will have to do, will hurt the economy.
As Donohue points out, New Yorkers have elected a man who they believe (a) can’t do the job (b) will pursue measures that will hurt the economy and (c) will promote policies that are unrealistic. One can only assume that the fake freebies he had on offer was the determining factor in how people cast their vote. This doesn’t say a lot for the place regarded as the financial capital of the world.
POLICIES/BELIEFS
Obviously his policies reflect his beliefs. There is little doubt Mamdani leans strongly into the tenets of communism. He has enough intelligence not to call himself that, as it is not a winning strategy, although I have a suspicion those who voted for him wouldn’t care if he said he was. He likes to call himself a democratic socialist, as are Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. These far-left ideologues are in the process of taking over the Democratic Party and turning it into some form of what they regard as a utopia. In reality it will turn out to be exactly the opposite.
As Mamdani points out, this utopia is where virtually everything is free (bar the people). They are the ones who will be forced to pay for all the free things on offer, which, as anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows, means they are not free. The far left seem to think nobody will wake up to this fact. Further, Mamdani says it’s only the wealthy who will pay. Really? My research tells me one in 24 New York City residents are millionaires: that’s now only 4.17 per cent of the population. In 2010 New York’s share of the nation’s millionaires was 12.7 per cent. In 2022 that figure stood at 8.1 per cent.
Free buses, free childcare, government run grocery stores and rent freezes for at least one million people are his most publicised policies. These no doubt have great appeal to the 18- to 29-year-olds whose votes largely won him the election. His pronouncement that, “No problem is too big for the government to solve and no problem is too small for the government to care about,” (chilling words to those of us who fully understand their meaning) was no doubt music to younger ears.
While the majority of older, responsible and independent-minded people want the government out of their lives, the younger generation are more than happy for someone like Mamdani to come along and, effectively, keep changing their nappies. This illustrates another problem; today’s young have been brought up in a different environment from the older generations. They haven’t been through what one would call ‘the school of hard knocks’. Today’s 18- to 29-year-olds need a dose of reality.
On the subject of those paying for all his ‘free’ stuff, he’s assuming those who have worked hard and created their wealth will be happy to stay, pay up and ‘suck it up’. He might be in for a shock. Florida Governor Ron De Santis is expecting so many to flee to his state he is thinking of charging an entry fee. The left love the idea of the redistribution of wealth. This is where their ‘politics of envy’ really comes to the fore.
Mamdani already has the begging bowl out to pay for his nonsense. In a recent speech he said he will tax white neighbourhoods more. He will tax to the max, borrow to the max and spend to the max. When it comes to economics, that is all the left know. New York currently receives $7.5 billion of federal funding, 6.4 per cent of its annual $115.9 billion dollar budget. Trump will remove this if he is legally allowed to.
The thought of anyone succeeding in life is a complete anathema to the likes of Mamdani. Instead successful people must be punished for their success. Mamdani’s fellow-travellers completely miss the irony that they are able to tax the hell out of the successful only because of their success. The other irony is that Kathy Hochul, the current Democratic governor of New York, who supported Mamdani, does not support the raising of taxes. Her reason is she is standing for re-election against Elise Stefanik, a popular Republican.
SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM FANTASY
History shows that the type of socialism Marxism Mamdani is proposing has never worked unless it’s implemented along the lines evidenced by North Korea, Russia, Iran and China. Not one of these four countries could remotely be called utopian. Far from it. China’s policies that allow it to compete economically are all strictly controlled by the government. It will not be a surprise if we learn that what Mamdani is proposing is just the start of a strategy to take New York down a deeper socialist path.
Of course this is the prescription he and his far-left fellow-travellers have for the rest of America. How it will be paid for they prefer not to worry about. What we can be sure of is Mamdani and his hand-picked clique of elites will ensure they are well looked after. You have only to look to the EU Commission to see this in play and certain member countries right now are becoming restive. Similarly, closer to home we have John Tamihere and his cohorts. All are expert at feathering their own nests.
THE ULTIMATE AIM
The government will look after you (control you), you will own nothing (not even your freedom or possibly your house) and you will be happy (the biggest joke of all). Good luck New York! You’re going to need every inch of it.
POSTSCRIPT
Who remembers Frank Sinatra’s classic hit “New York New York”? It was so iconic it became the unofficial anthem for the city. It is played after every New York Yankees home game win. It should be noted the lyrics of the song bear little resemblance to the New York Mamdani is promising. In all likelihood he’ll ban the playing of it.
