His win challenges identity politics, revives socialism in American discourse, and energises progressives abroad, from India to Europe and beyond
Hyperbole aside, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City is a significant development that will reverberate in US national politics, and find resonance abroad.
Socialists and leftists in Europe have declared validation of their ideology by American voters, and hope to do better in their own countries, states and cities as a result.
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In India, the young Muslim’s victory has produced anger among those who view this son of filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia academic of Gujarati-Ugandan origin, as a progeny of 'love jihad.' And, in contrast, it has won applause from liberals, who are particularly chuffed that Mamdani quoted, in his victory speech, excerpts from Nehru’s tryst-with-destiny address to Parliament on the eve of Independence.
Bread-and-butter issues
It would be useful to separate the signal from the cacophony surrounding Mamdani’s victory and defeat of the candidate endorsed by US President Donald Trump.
If he succeeds in fulfilling his electoral promises and makes peace with the city’s billionaire class, it will probably serve to rid socialism of stigma in the American political discourse.
It signals that people attach primacy to bread-and-butter issues, rather than to identity and ideology. Mamdani’s election plank was affordability. He promised to start city-run grocery stores where food would be more affordable than in traditional stores because, one, there would be no unreasonable margins, and two, the stores would be able to pass on to consumers the property tax and rent avoided on account of city ownership.
He promised to make city bus rides free. He intends to make childcare universal and free, with the help of the state government. He plans to make housing — a major consideration in New York — more affordable by implementing rent control and energetic building of new housing units, a portion of which would have to be rent-stabilised.
The cost of living, which Americans call pocketbook issues, was the primary driver of Trump’s own electoral popularity, it may be recalled.
Identity concerns
The appeal of a promise to make the city more affordable compensated for corrosive effects, in the American political discourse, of the identities attributed to or claimed by the candidate.
Ever since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre and identification of Osama bin Laden as the man behind the attack, many New Yorkers and, more broadly, Americans, have entertained the prejudice that to be Muslim is to be violent and dangerous. That Mamdani is a Muslim was a campaign point against him.
Mamdani vocally opposed the genocide in Gaza and supports political independence for Palestinians. This was enough to label him a terrorist and a Jew-hater. Only in the areas where professional and educated Jews are predominant did Mamdani win support among Jewish majority localities.
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Trump called him a Communist. In the US, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and Democratic Socialism are all synonyms for vehemently anti-capitalist and un-American values and programmes. This is the lasting legacy of the witch hunt against Communists instituted by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s highly publicised and prolific accusations against assorted artistes and intellectuals in the early 1950s. Many leading lights of Hollywood had been hounded out of work and the country as a result, including Charlie Chaplin.
Socialist influences
In most parts of the world, spanning 80 countries, May 1 is celebrated as International Workers’ Day. The significance of the date is that it was on that day in 1886 that workers agitating for an eight-hour working day clashed with police at Haymarket Square in Chicago, killing many.
He owns up his Muslim and South Asian identity, and melds it into the many others that have immigrated to the US to create the composite American identity.
In 1889, the global body that existed then of socialist and workers’ parties, the Second International, decided to commemorate that martyrdom of workers pursuing their right to a decent life, by observing every May Day as a day of workers. (The Second International had been formed as the successor to the International Working Men’s Association that split in 1872 between Marxists and Anarchists, and disintegrated in a few years’ time).
In the US, the government decided to separate the country’s Labour Day from global socialist influences and fixed it as a holiday that falls on the first Monday of every September.
Senator Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist, and he has mustered considerable support for his campaigns in Democratic primaries to become the party’s presidential nominee. This shows that large sections of Americans are not all that allergic to the term Socialist. Yet, Sanders has never won the nomination and is unlikely to.
A chance to reclaim socialism
Mamdani is the first Socialist in the US to hold a major office after the 1960s. In the 1920s and up to 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Socialist Party of America had had some city hall victories. It focused on issues like public sanitation, inviting the label Sewer Socialists.
With the rise to influence of fundamentalist Christians in American politics, and later, the Tea Party movement and Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) frenzy, socialism has become a term of abuse in US politics. That stands to change with Mamdani’s election.
If he succeeds in fulfilling his electoral promises and makes peace with the city’s billionaire class, instead of making more of them flee to lower-tax Texas and Florida, it would probably serve to rid socialism of stigma in the American political discourse. This is less complex than might seem. The American Constitution does not allow a city government to levy, on its own, new wealth or income taxes on its rich. But the city can raise property taxes.
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All governments of all shades of political ideology now intervene in the economy with industrial policy, selective state funding and state ownership. This makes it difficult to separate democratic socialism from other ideologies — except for a more steadfast and transparent commitment to the welfare of the less well-off.
Setback to Trump's politics
It was not just his platform that made Mamdani popular. He exudes charm, he is a forceful speaker, he is young, and he remains authentic. He is good at using social media, particularly TikTok.
His success in America’s most successful city is a setback to the nativist politics of Trump and JD Vance, which seeks to reclaim the traditional dominance of White Americans.
He owns up his Muslim and South Asian identity, and melds it into the many others that have immigrated to the US to create the composite American identity. His success in America’s most successful city is a setback to the nativist politics of Trump and JD Vance, which seeks to reclaim the traditional dominance of White Americans.
Democrats have won governor races in two states, Virginia and New Jersey, and a proposition in California that would allow them to create new electoral districts favouring them, to offset the gerrymandering already accomplished in Texas to create six new electoral districts favouring Republicans.
Democrats get a shot in the arm from all these elections. Given the unique demography of diversity of New York, and greater homogeneity and conservatism of other parts, Democrats are more likely to be enthused in general about their ability to counter Trump than to adopt Socialism as their guiding light. Those outside America taking inspiration from Mamdani’s victory would do well to appreciate the point.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the article are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
