by Giulio Meotti
The new mayor of New York seems straight out of the pen of the famous Daily Telegraph humorist, Peter Simple.
Like Mrs. Dutt-Pauker, who symbolized the “Hampstead Liberal,” the typical representative of the United Kingdom’s progressive elites. Mrs. Dutt-Pauker is a very wealthy heiress living in Hampstead, in a mansion called “Marxmount House,” where she collects a pair of Bukharin’s teeth, Ming vases, constructivist art, and Stalin’s writings. Mrs. Dutt-Pauker is in love with Walter Ulbricht, the communist leader of East Germany, and has a son named “Brecht Mao Rudy Che” – in honor of the communist playwright, the Great Chinese Helmsman, the ’68 leader, and Che Guevara.
Thus begins the “Mamdani experiment,” as Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum calls it: a mix of socialism and Islam (even in Virginia, Democrats have elected a Muslim woman, because demographics do not explain everything – but almost – including the retirement of the very elderly Nancy Pelosi).
There is nothing funny about it: Mamdani’s victory is a tragedy for America and for the West. That is why the Islamic Republic of Iran celebrates, Hamas celebrates, the taqiya mayor of London celebrates, the jihadists celebrate.
Mamdani will not wage a holy war or a class war, but a cultural war.
It will be ruthless, dirty, and ruinous.
How did an Islamist socialist get elected to lead a city of terrorism survivors, “America’s most Jewish city”, and defeat an Italo-American political dynasty (the Cuomos) in what was once an Italo-American city?
Because that New York City no longer exists. There will no longer be Jewish, Italian, or Irish mayors in New York.
In 1989, during Jewish mayor Ed Koch’s last year in office, Jews outnumbered Muslims 4 to 1. When Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo, there were more Muslims than Italian Americans in New York. Once “America’s most Jewish city” and an “Italian city,” it has been redefined by waves of mass Islamic immigration, as many European cities have.
Like all socialists, Mamdani has lived a comfortable, privileged life. His father is a professor of African Studies at Columbia University, his mother a film director who tried to have Gal Gadot’s Oscar invitation withdrawn because the actress is Israeli. His father is the true ideologue: John Aziz in Quillette describes Mahmood Mamdani’s hatred for America and the West – and his writings on the need to “destigmatize suicide bombings.”
Mamdani attended a $60,000-a-year private school, then went to Bowdoin College in leafy Brunswick, Maine, where he founded a “Students for Justice in Palestine” chapter.
To understand who New York’s new mayor is, one must read a Wall Street Journal profile. Mamdani’s old tweets show that, at 20, he seemed more concerned about the civil rights of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and U.S.-born al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki than about their victims’ suffering. More recently, Mamdani appeared alongside Turkish-American podcaster Hasan Piker, who once said that America “deserved 9/11.”
Mamdani also has a long record of anti-Israel activism.
Robert Tucker, New York City’s Jewish fire commissioner, was the first to resign just hours after Mamdani’s election victory.
Within ten years, New York will need another Rudy Giuliani to clean house – and the toppled statue of Christopher Columbus will be found wrapped in a keffiyeh or a chador.
But what I fear most is that under the reign of the socialist Islamist comrade, the city of 9/11 will again be struck at its heart.
And here I truly hope I am wrong – and that I never have to republish these words.
