Zohran Mamdani winning the the Democratic Party nomination for mayor of NYC has restored hope to millions of Americans afflicted by Clinical Political Despair. Mamdani, 33, is brave, articulate, and identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He says his goal is to make New York City affordable for working people.
The landlords and financiers sense that he’s sincere, and fear him. Because Mamdani deplores US support for Israeli genocide, the Zionist lobby will spare no expense to stop him from getting elected. They know they need someone other than the former governor Andrew Cuomo (deposed after 13 women #MeTooed him) and the schwartze mayor, Eric Adams (corrupt, pardoned by Trump). They’re praying to Central Casting for a plausible celebrity and have begun holding informal auditions.
After Mamdani won the primary, the President said, “We don’t need a Communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over them very carefully on behalf of the nation.” ICE raids in Astoria must not be impeded.
By calling Mamdani “a Communist,” repeatedly and matter-of-factly, Trump is reducing the stigma attached to the C-word. In the Red-Scare years that followed World War 2, a significant distinction was made between Communists and other left-leaning citizens. Communists were or had been members of the Communist Party –the CP, whose leaders praised Stalin’s Russia and advocated the overthrow of the US government by force and violence. Millions of Americans who steered clear of the CP were in general agreement with the party line on major issues –nuclear disarmament, desegregation, public education and healthcare paid for by taxing the rich, unemployment insurance, public housing and rent control, higher wages and better working conditions in the mines, fields, and factories and a foreign policy that did not take up the White Man’s Burden from England and France. The CPers called the non-party leftists “fellow travelers.” Right-wingers sneeringly called them “comsymps” –a put-down that acknowledges a difference between Communists and supporters of the same causes.
(There have always a been a few lefties who described themselves as “small-c communists.” They dreamt of an egalitarian utopia but had no strategy for creating it.)
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