New York elects Mamdani, the capital of capitalism picks its executioner

It's time for a reckoning on a devastating election for Trump’s project for the West, for capitalism and, above all, for New York.

The Vice President asked the public not to exaggerate local election results and the President highlighted the anniversary of his election and other accomplishments to soften the blow. But it didn't work. Zohran Mamdani, the new Muslim, pro-Palestinian socialist mayor, is the star of all the news, analyses, celebrations and laments on all the social networks. The young activist, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) formation, defeated the lousy establishment candidates with a series of delusional leftist promises. In his victory speech, he declared his satisfaction at showing the nation how to defeat Donald Trump in the city of his birth. The humiliation could not be more profound.

Mamdani will take office with a program that includes government-run supermarkets, free transportation, free day care and taxpayer-funded rent freezes. Plus a series of unlikely tax increases for the rich that in Wokist math would suffice to make his promised paradise sustainable.

The impossibility of his program, the exodus of those likely to be affected and the limits on a mayor's powers will make it impossible for him to deliver what he promised. But young Zohran will always be able to say that the establishment, the rich or someone else is responsible for his failure. And he will always have Israel to blame, proving that ultimately, that scapegoating is proven to pay off. Instead, his ideological program will be a triumph.

The spoiled child of the progressive elite

It was only a matter of time before, at some point, the smug, woke university elite got their hands on real political power. It was only a matter of time before they abandoned their bubble of privilege and dragged their victimhood politics into high office.

Mamdani's victory is the fruit of the hysteria of the luxury beliefs of the Ivy League camps. After all, that mass of dissatisfied, self-perceived young victims can easily identify with the new mayor who has never had a real job and has been a darling of the progressive elite. The left is ecstatic, with this ever-smiling son of progressive privilege presenting himself as the weapon that will destroy capitalism. New Yorkers will have had their reasons for voting for him; he is, in fact, the first candidate for Mayor of New York to get more than a million votes since 1969, even if it is hard to understand.

He comes from a well-to-do family. His father and mentor is a professor of Africana Studies at Columbia, who has advocated a Third Intifada against colonialism, and who after 9/11 wrote that there was a moral equivalence between the Al Qaeda attack and U.S. retaliatory bombing in Afghanistan. His mother is a Qatari-funded filmmaker.

"Mamdani's program will transform the world's capitalist capital into a glamorous version of Havana."

Born in Uganda and educated at Bowdoin College, where he founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Imposts modesty with his rent-controlled apartment in Queens, rails against landlords, though he owns land in Uganda. Supports the right woke causes for his constituency. Says he will make New York an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary, supported the Black Lives Matter movement and defunding the NYPD. Hatred of Israel is the common factor between progressives and pro-Palestinians, which is why he refuses to condemn the "Globalize the Intifada" slogan .

He has devoted a few years of his life to the working world in a non-profit organization before launching his candidacy for the state Assembly, where his performance was practically nil. He has spent a fair amount of time on panels and aside from his brief speaking engagements, Mamdani's experience is sparse. Now, this man of the people is at the helm of a staff of 300,000.

New York follows in the footsteps of London, Rotterdam, Hanover...

The global left celebrates its victory as if it were the seizure of the Winter Palace. Seeing those who rejoice with his triumph, those who followed him throughout his campaign and those who pretend to emulate him in the world, everything looks like a delirium in which politics becomes a (bad) therapy. Even so, the symbolic and political change that will operate in New York should not be underestimated. Mamdani may be a banal media figure, but his rise has repercussions not only for the city, but also for other major Western cities and for the country at large.

New York will not have an immediate collapse but will gradually lose its essence and economic preeminence. The key example is London, where Sadiq Khan has kept the city vibrant for its cultural and political elites but hollowed it out for the rest. Dominated by fundamentalist movements, reactionary even against the country's own flag, it is home to Islamo-left elites, Russian billionaires and Chinese investors. Meanwhile, Khan has weakened the Metropolitan Police, transforming it into a key player in his own agenda that panders to anti-Semitism and ignores the actions of mafias and gangs of abusers.

Like Khan, Mamdani could postpone the scandal of a debacle: he has the support of the media, global progressives and actors and influencers who idolize him. He is likely to attract much more investment from the same regimes that fund anti-Western and anti-Israel indoctrination on New York college campuses.

His example will be an encouragement rather than an exception, the cases of Ahmed Aboutaleb in Rotterdam, Belit Onay in Hanover, Abdullah Hammoud in Dearborn, Naheed Nenshi in Calgary, Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets, Rokhsana Fiaz in Newham, and Mohamed Ridouani in Leuven, demonstrate how Muslim immigrant families have come to power by instrumentalizing social democratic parties. But Mamdani's case turns out to be the most emblematic because, as soon as he starts next year, he will be responsible for a million-dollar budget, in the most important financial and commercial center of the continent, home of the stock exchange, of the main banks and commercial companies.

A 'New' New York

Mamdani's program will transform the world's capital city into a glamorous version of Havana. The main victims will not be the much-criticized rich, but small landlords who will not survive the rent freeze. The small stores that will find it difficult to compete with municipal subsidies, the users of public transport who will see it decline and become dirty, unsafe and inefficient.

The era in which New York was the symbol of America's thriving is over. For years to come, New York will be governed by identitarian left-wing radicals and pro-Palestinians aligned with regimes that call the U.S. "The Great Satan." Perhaps at some point New Yorkers will awaken from the dream of Mamdani's socialist utopia and realize the mistake they made in allowing him to rule the world's greatest city.

But what we can be sure of today is that Mamdani's victory reveals not only a generational shift in the Democratic Party, but a psychological shift in the electorate with the rise of performative poverty amid inherited privilege. His voters craved to feel virtuous, and he delivered. His rise signals a new era in American politics, where emotional resonance and symbolic defiance can prove more powerful than politics, economics, quality of life, and even one's own security and survival as a nation.

The story of how the capital of capitalism elected a socialist, who detests everything New York stands for, has just begun.