Mr. and Mrs. Mamdani: The dangerous deception ruling New York

Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York by selling himself as something he is not. That, in essence, is the story of his political rise: a socialist with a friendly, hip, reasonable facade, promising free subways and affordable housing and speaking with the restraint of one who doesn't want to scare. This by itself would be just another case of a politician exaggerating his promises (to be expected), but Mamdani's lies are not the ordinary lies of electoral opportunism. They are the lies of someone who came to power repudiating the founding values and the system that embraces him, and whose wife, whom he calls "the love of his life," celebrated one of the most brutal terrorist attacks of this century.

It also came to light that on October 7, 2023, while the Hamas attack on Israel was still unfolding (while the butchered bodies of entire families were still warm, and while hostages were being dragged into Gaza), the wife of New York's mayor, Rama Duwaji, gave "likes" on social media to dozens of posts celebrating the massacre as "collective liberation."

These were not one or two clicks in a moment of confusion or misinformation. There were no mistakes, let alone signs of regret. Ms. Mamdani supported more than seventy documented interactions, The Free Press and Jewish Insider reported, which included claims of an alleged "mass rape hoax" on Oct. 7, and accusations of "genocide" against Israel made two weeks before the Israeli Defense Forces launched its counteroffensive. Ms. Mamdani bought into the "genocide" libel before there was a single Israeli soldier in Gaza and, of course, endorsed violent protests on university campuses.

Duwaji does not mince words. For a full understanding of her profile, it should be noted that she follows accounts glorifying Palestinian "martyrs" and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization designated as a terrorist organization by the United States government.

When this information came to light, the meandering Mamdani chose his words carefully. "My wife is the love of my life," he said, "and she is also a private person who has held no formal position in my campaign or in my city council." A response designed to sound human, caring, private. But one that clearly condemns nothing, nor distances itself from anything substantive. Conjugal love is a lousy shield to the question of whether the mayor of New York is married to a monstrous person. Americans deserve to know whether the head of the nation's largest city, with the largest Jewish community in the United States, shares or tolerates his wife's view of the second largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

This is not a matter of demanding that spouses of public officials be political extensions of their husbands or wives, or even persons without the right to opinion or privacy. But from the moment a person, "politically compromised" by being a relative of such a high-ranking public servant, decides to speak out on a public account and no less than to celebrate a massacre, something in the most basic morality is at stake. It is not a difference of criteria or a domestic dispute. It is not even a political difference, it is a fundamental moral stance.

Is it about ideological consistency? Because Duwaji does not come to these positions from an ideology alien to that of her husband: they both share the "decolonial" framework with which Mamdani approaches the conflict in Gaza and, indeed, almost everything else. Decolonial thought, in its activist woke version, divides the world into two permanent and irreconcilable categories: colonizers and colonized, oppressors and oppressed. In that grid, for the Mamdani couple, Israel is always the oppressor. Now we know that for the mayor's wife, Hamas represents resistance. So, if violence belongs to the "oppressed" group, is it legitimate for Mrs. Mamdani? Her husband has said otherwise about Hamas...have they discussed this contradiction within the couple? What conclusion did they come to?

This decolonial logic does not stop in the Middle East. Applied to the United States it turns the country into a colonial structure that deserves not defense but deconstruction. The police, military alliances, the very concept of law and order: everything is, in this worldview, a scaffolding of the oppressor. It is a doctrine with concrete political consequences, is that the plan of Mr. and Mrs. Mamdani?

It is worth thinking about. Let us imagine that the wife of a newly elected mayor had given "likes", seventy times, to publications celebrating the lynchings of black people, denying the atrocities of slavery, describing human trafficking as "collective liberation." Imagine if that same lady followed accounts glorifying killers of civil rights activists. That mayor's political career would not last 48 hours. There would be no press conference, no "love of my life," no New York Times article about the complexity of her closet.

Fairly and rightly, there would be a unanimous demand for explanations and an immediate repudiation for the spouse in question. That thought experiment serves to show the double standard in its most naked form: the Jews, in the decolonial worldview, are "colonizers" and their martyrdom is not tragedy.

Mamdani's tragic rise to power will be studied in history books. His absurd economic promises are crumbling with the same speed with which he settled in Gracie Mansion. During the campaign, he promised a city where essential things would be free or nearly free, a clear election lie. Just days after his inauguration, transportation fares went up and the new mayor explained that he has no power over them, which is true and precisely what made it irresponsible to have promised them in the first place. He now faces a budget deficit of millions and is considering eliminating free parking. New Yorkers are paying, in the most literal sense, the cost of believing in a dangerous fantasy.

But Mamdani's most revealing lies are not about fees, they are ideological and constructed in real time, in front of the cameras. This same distorted narrative carries over to the city's security.

This weekend, two ISIS-inspired Islamic terrorists hurled a lethal explosive device at police guarding a crowd of anti-Muslim protesters in New York City. If we are not mourning casualties it is not because the bomb, loaded with powerful explosives and projectiles such as nails and screws, was not designed to kill, but rather because it did not detonate.

The two individuals were identified in the media as Ibraham Kayumi, 19, and Emir Balat, 18. According to the New York Post, both had traveled to Turkey and other destinations linked to terrorist networks. Both consumed ISIS propaganda and shouted "Allahu akbar!" According to early journalistic accounts, both came from Muslim immigrant families who had come to the U.S. and achieved their American dream, including a good economic background.

Despite the fact that his government officials provided all these facts, Mamdani issued a statement blaming "white supremacism" for the events as well as bigotry and racism. He made no mention of the attackers, their bombs or ISIS. Even when the evidence was incontestable and videos were circulating virally showing the reality of what happened.

It was not political clumsiness, it is the same pattern that prevents him from condemning his wife. The enemy, in Mamdani's worldview, is ideological, and he sticks to his twisted narrative even though the facts indicate otherwise. New York City deserves to know what kind of lies it is buying. Zohran Mamdani may be one of the most elaborate political hoaxes in recent U.S. history.

But the problem with that diagnosis is that it still understates it. Whoever is governing New York is not a naive socialist with unrealistic promises. He is someone who shares a life with someone who applauded in real time the murder of 1,200 people, and who is unable to distinguish between a terrorist and a protester. These are not the lies of someone who promises too much to win votes. They are the lies of someone who came to power with a worldview in which the United States and its allies are the problem, and its declared enemies are, at heart, "those who have motive and reason." This explains why Mamdani cannot condemn the jihadist terrorism that planted bombs in front of his house: to do so would require abandoning the mental map with which he and his wife have read the world for years.