Publications /
Opinion
The candidate could not have been more controversial—or more celebrated. Born in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, once ruled by Idi Amin, who famously declared himself “Conqueror of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland,” Zohran Kwama Mamdani, 34, is of Indian descent. His father is an academic, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, his mother, Mira Nair, is an influential filmmaker. Zohran arrived in the USA on a visa at age seven. No doubt the agents of the feared and repressive Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) will analyze the paperwork of this immigrant with the utmost care—Donald Trump already declared Mr. Mamdani “a 100 percent communist lunatic.” And “communist,” of course, implies everything: a society without God or private property, no billion-dollar bank account unless your name is Vladimir Putin, no freedom of press or speech, no opposition—or only opposition in jail.
Mr. Mamdani has just been elected mayor of New York City, the first Muslim and Africa-born leader of the 8.3–million-strong metropolis. In early January 2026 he will take office—a communist in capitalistic America? Just imagine: a disciple of Mao, Stalin, Mr. Xi, Marx, or Lenin managing the largest city in the United States, where more Jews live than in any other city on the globe—about one million, half of whom are Orthodox Jews dreaming of Eretz Israel, the promised land, which includes the Palestinian territories, parts of Southern Lebanon, Western Jordan and some regions of Syria.
Mr. Mamdani is a supporter of the Palestinian people, and as such is at odds with a large segment of his city. Mind you, the new Mayor is married to Rama Dujawi (ramaduwaji.com), a Texas-born artist of Syrian descent, a Muslim like her husband, and soon to be the youngest First Lady of New York City at just 27, her illustrative work published by leading magazine of the nation.
Older generations remember the New York serenaded by Frank Sinatra in his song “New York, New York, my kind of town,” “I wanna wake up in that city that never sleeps,” a city that included the Mafia and Harlem, the Rockefeller Center and the Hudson River, Central Park and Park Avenue—Manhattan, stolen from its Indigenous owners, a cultural icon in itself. As Sinatra suggested, “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.”
Mamdani is such a character—until a few months ago unknown outside the New York State Assembly, to which he was elected five years ago, representing the district of Astoria, Queens. He worked as a housing counselor, assisting low-income families in preventing evictions due to unpaid rent. Seven years ago, he was sworn in as an American citizen.
In November, 42 percent of the city’s electorate voted—more than two million people. It was a level of electoral participation not achieved since 1969. The progressive immigrant suddenly became the candidate, supported by thousands of younger activists for whom living in New York City means just one thing: surviving. Surviving in the shadow of the homeless…
Expropriation of Bloomingdale
For conservatives in New York City and beyond, the immigrant born in Africa—a Muslim with a passion for Palestine—is a personified provocation, comparable to the red cape, the muleta with which toreros in Spain provoke bulls before the kill. A communist, an enemy of a nation thriving under God, protected by the most powerful armed forces on the globe—threatened by an immigrant? Some conservatives in town are certainly alarmed and plagued by nightmares. A communist in power!
Could that eventually mean the expropriation of the noble Bloomingdale’s department store, cleared to house the homeless? The occupation of the Trump Tower to shelter orphans? Or the Whitney Museum transferred into a hospital for the poor? Communists, allegedly, take over private property, and since God is not part of their philosophy, the days of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue could be numbered as well—prepared, perhaps, to house abandoned military veterans suffering from drug addictions.
An illusion, such a scenario? In Mamdani’s win in New York City, political analysts believe there are larger lessons for the Democratic Party, noted Al Jazeera (June 25, 2025), which is “still grappling with its loss in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.” An alternative is needed to wrest power from the Republican Party; perhaps a progressive path is both the answer and the solution.
Mamdani did not promise a state-supported paradise, as communists and socialists often do. Instead, he proposed rent control, free bus fares, a freeze on rent increases for the city’s one million rent-regulated apartments, a pilot program for city-run grocery stores offering produce at wholesale prices, and universal child care. Funding these initiatives will be attempted by increasing taxes on wealthier residents and organizations—raising corporate taxes from 7.25 percent to 11.5 and imposing a 2 percent surcharge on individuals earning more than one million dollars a year.
“A historic win,” noted The Independent the day after the vote on November 4. “A great night for America,” said Democratic senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Rudy Giuliani (NY POST, 10 November 2025), once considered New York’s perfect mayor until he lost himself in conspiracy theories that destroyed his legal career and reputation, predicted drama: “Zohran Mamdani is a serious security threat to the United States of America. He is a communist and a sympathizer of Muslim terrorism.”
There we go again—the threatening word COMMUNISM. Just a word, yet menacing in itself, branded by the Cold War and the rivalry between two opposing political systems. Communism is hardly understood by the majority of Americans, many of whom are unable to distinguish between communism, socialism, and social democracy, or are unaware that communism involves a centrally planned economy in which the government owns the means of production and controls all prices and quantities.
More than three decades ago, Politico (June 22, 2023) recalled, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Donald Trump seemed determined to resurrect red-baiting as a political tactic—labeling his opponents as communists. A simple method, indeed: a single word could discredit their political views, a political epithet replacing precise ideological definitions. Communism is evil. Exclamation mark.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, paranoia gripped right-wing conservatives in the Senate as Joseph McCarthy, dwelling in his visions of a red scare, accused State Department and Pentagon employees of espionage for the enemy in Moscow and of subverting Washington and infiltrating U.S. institutions. A climate of fear struck the United States, accompanied by Cold War tension.
All Members of the Communist Party Assembled in a Football Stadium
Socialism and communism never truly attracted the American working class, even though the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) reached its peak in 1947 with about 75,000 members—enough to fill the football stadium of the New York Giants. The Cold War, along with heavy repression of communist political ambitions, reduced the CPUSA to only a few thousand members today. These members remain active, particularly online, advocating for workers’ rights, social change, and racial justice—political priorities also championed by the future mayor of New York City, Mamdani.
Mamdani calls for a significant redistribution of wealth and an expansion of public services. However, although he identifies as a democratic socialist, he does not advocate the full state control of the economy that defines communism. Instead, he supports a stronger government role in reducing economic inequality within a democratic framework.
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani declared that, once elected, he would not allow ICE agents to roam the streets and avenues of New York City arresting immigrants—whether documented or undocumented. Donald Trump immediately reacted, prompting the candidate to announce to his supporters: “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention center, and deported—not because I have broken any law, but because I refuse to let ICE terrorize our city (Times of India, July 2, 2025). Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Party and of the Democratic Socialists of America, responded to Trump’s threats clearly: “We will not accept this intimidation.”
