Zohran Mamdani embodies a generational transition in American politics, where younger progressives challenge an ageing conservative establishment built on and sustained by fear, culture wars, and entrenched power.
Six months into his job, and New York City’s (NYC) Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces, despite a hectic agenda of providing welcome relief for working class residents, a lot of hostility from the city’s majoritarian (White) residents. Self-declared MAGA (the Make America Great Again faction that has gobbled up the Republican Party) voters have declared they will never visit NYC so long as Mamdani remains in power. “A lot of AIPAC money is in action,” according to my brother. (AIPAC = American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.) Such is the intense MAGA hostility that Mamdani’s office keeps his public events a secret till the last moment.
For instance, in a video, conservative influencer Michael Savage, who is four years older than Trump, likened Mamdani to Cambodian genocidal maniac Pol Pot. Mamdani, far from creating any “killing fields” in the city’s five boroughs, has instituted measures for universal childcare expansion: he got $1.2 billion from the state for a 1,000-seat expansion for classes K to 3; and he’s leveraged state-funding to strengthen high-quality childcare programs in the city.
If Pol Pot had faced an unlikely snowstorm in Cambodia, he would have forced citizens to shovel the snow for free before executing them. Mamdani, on the other hand, when New York was deluged with a severe snowstorm in February, mobilized 1,400 volunteers to shovel snow for $30 an hour (the official labor wage in the US is $7.50).
“Commie Bastard,” Savage snarled. Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee (a deep South state), calls Mamdani “Little Mohammed” and wants him to be “de-naturalized” and deported. Mamdani was born in Uganda and lived in the US for a decade before he became a naturalized citizen in 2018. Ogles once speculated that Mamdani came to the US as a child to turn America into an Islamic theocracy.
Of course, all of MAGA only echoes President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. On July 11, Trump repeated his Independence Day attack on Mamdani’s democratic socialists: “America will never be a communist country,” he wrote, in all caps, on his social media platform called Truth Social. Mamdani, in response, called himself “the President’s worst nightmare”. Mamdani smiles; Trump scowls.
Several billionaires have, on social media, declared their intention to leave New York City, but till now, it remains business as usual, demonstrating the city’s commercial power; they can call democratic socialists “illegal immigrants, criminals, and people who don’t want to work”, as Trump did on July 3, but they also don’t want to lose their customers.
What really scares the geriatric diapers off MAGA is the fact that young people are contesting (and winning) elections, replacing the usual suspects who are dying off. About a third of the Senate is 70 or older (the Senate has two members from each of the 50 states, regardless of population, giving MAGA outsized power).
For instance, the former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (84) of Kentucky (another deep South State), who has been ailing for years—he once froze while addressing the press and had to be gently escorted away—disappeared from sight on July 14, when he had to be taken to hospital, leading to rumors that he had died but was kept in the morgue till August 3, to avoid an immediate election for a successor. Finally, he issued a statement from the hospital claiming he was still alive.
Worse for Trump, however, was the death Senator Lindsey Graham (71) of South Carolina (another deep South state) on July 11. A ruptured artery led to his death. This led to rumors that the Russians had killed him with a missile on a drone unit in the Ukraine that Graham visited two days earlier.
The Russians no doubt made use of the confusion to jibe at the late Senator, who had, since the Ukraine war began in February 2022, openly said that the US should use the opportunity to kill as many Russians as possible. It is hard to imagine that Lindsey was once a moderate, a sidekick to Senator John McCain; but his support for Israel and dismissal of talk of genocide of Palestinians was horrific. He publicly called for a nuclear bombing of Gaza.
The gay community in Washington, DC believing that Graham’s (or Lady G’s) “non-disclosure agreements” with rent-boys and trans-women had lapsed with his death, put out a variety of lurid detail on Instagram: how Graham subsidized the education of many a male escort; and something about his “ladybugs”. (It’s too disgusting to mention here.) All were critical that despite his private life, politically he crusaded against queer rights.
No wonder, then, many cheered his death publicly—except for the professional political class, which seemed to have forgotten how Trump publicly cheered at the death of former FBI director Robert S. Mueller, who investigated Trump’s illegal possession of classified files in his bathroom. “One should not speak ill of the dead” is a homily ill-suited for our polarized world.
A new political generation
In contrast to the elderly Senators, or Trump (80) himself, the coming mid-terms promise to bring in a new generation of politicians who do not do politics the old way. They are not beholden to Israel, whose genocide in Gaza has turned away public opinion, thanks to how the internet allows small donations to compete with corporate money.
They don’t need the legacy media, tightly controlled by pro-Israel voices. For these youngsters, the real issues include stopping ICE (immigration and customs enforcement, whose unmarked officers shot and killed two innocents this past week); ceasing military aid to Israel; and cost-of-living issues that directly affect working class families.
This month, three candidates endorsed by Mamdani (34) against the establishment, won primaries. A 29-year-old democratic socialist won the primary in Colorado. Making waves in an upcoming primary is democratic socialist Abdul El-Sayed (41) of Michigan.
The litmus test will come in November, when the mid-term elections determine which party controls the legislature; the opposition can paralyse Trump for the remainder of his term. It will determine if America continues with Trump’s chaos or accommodates Mamdani’s vision.
(Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi)
(Source: Frontline)
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