Fake Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins the NYC Mayoral Democratic Primary

Tommy Johnson

Read our previous editorial on the election boycott here.

On Tuesday (06/24), “Democratic Socialist” Zohran Mamdani was able to outpace former state Governor Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, placing him as the next face of the Democratic Mafia in the city. As the economic crisis deepens, the ruling class factions go to their extremes to gain popular support. This is not unprecedented historically and correlates to flirtations with social democracy (social fascism) and fascism, a trend displayed over the past decade by both major political mafias of the ruling class.

Underlying the celebrations of revisionist parties in spreading electoral illusions around Zohran, they hide their fundamental failures and the true nature of bourgeois democracy—only 6.5% of the voting-age population of NYC voted for Zohran.

Cuomo, who was endorsed by the likes of former imperialist-in-chief Bill Clinton, is very unpopular, shamelessly corporate, and embroiled in massive scandals, the exact embodiment of what the Democratic mafia is known for and the same business-as-usual which cost them the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections. It only stands to reason that factions within this mafia, mainly the Democratic Socialists of America, would gain traction in throwing a new coat of paint on the decomposing mansion of the Democrats. Such conditions require a new face, one more effective at regaining the Mafia’s lost voter base, and this is Mamdani, whose popularity is based on “left”-sounding promises mainly on questions of housing, poverty, and Palestine.

Mamdani, like social democrats are known for, rode on the mass movements to gain popularity, then panders to the demands of the ruling class to get into office, and skillfully combines these techniques. Social democracy promotes the false notion that the exploited and exploiters can cooperate within the same state apparatus to the benefit of all people; this, along with the corporativization of society are identical to fascism and what earned it the epithet of “fascism’s twin”.

Not everyone is enamored with the scam. A Palestinian journalist from Gaza, Abubaker Abed, posted on social media in response to Mamdani’s win that: “Someone told me this once, ‘You won’t get a political position in the West until you bootlick and compromise,’” concluding that “Muslims celebrating this are shameless. Shame on you!”

The post included a video of Mamdani on the monopoly talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Mamdani enthusiastically equated the just attacks on Zionism in Washington DC and Boulder, Colorado with “antisemitism”, exactly like the rest of the representatives of the US imperialist ruling class. He repeated the oldest trick in the playbook of Zionism, associating all opposition to Israel with antisemitism despite no evidence being provided that either of the accused held anti-Jewish motives for conducting their actions. He also referred to the heroic and victorious Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as “the horrific war crime of October 7th,” conflating the fascist colonial occupation of Palestine with resistance to it.

This follows from previous comments from Mamdani stating that Israel has the “right to exist” and posing for pictures with a leader of a Zionist lobbying group.

Mamdani, true to form for agents of the Democratic mafia, called for defunding the police during the May Uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In a now-deleted post on X he referred to the NYPD as “a major threat to public safety” and wrote, “What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.” When such views are no longer necessary to generate interest and instead become a threat to his election, the post was not only deleted but the positions reversed. In a recent campaign video, Mamdani stated that, “No matter how many pieces of literature you get sent, I’m not defunding the police. I’m actually working with the police to create public safety.”

The falsely-named rag of social democracy, Jacobin, lauded this capitulation as a victory, writing that “on policing and public safety, Mamdani rejected the language of ‘defund’ and ‘abolition’ arguing that police had ‘a crucial role to play’ in public safety but that police are currently expected to do the work of social workers and mental health professionals, work that they are not trained or well-suited to do.” It is not simply the language that has been rejected, but the valid demands of the masses raised in the biggest uprising in recent decades.

Mamdani’s proposed “Department of Community Safety” includes a city-run apparatus for “mental health” and surveillance to complement policing and it contains nothing that would decrease either the bloated police budgets nor curtail their process of extreme militarization. The police for their part exist to maintain the unequal relations of capitalist society and are heavily armed to enforce the will of the owners upon the exploited and oppressed; augmentation with social work will not change that.

Housing is one of Mamdani’s biggest campaign gimmicks. Enlarging the city bureaucracy—a process which puts more power in the hands of city executives and makes the city itself one of the biggest landlords—is Mamdani’s plan for “affordable housing.” As Katya Yindra pointed out in a recent opinion, the cost-of-living crisis pertaining to housing in the city is not due to natural “shortage” but due to private ownership over valuable land, something Mamdani is completely unwilling to take on. City- and state-owned housing, much like public schools, are pushed by the government into states of severe disrepair and this is used to privatize them, a process developing from the general economic crisis. While rosy promises have put wind in Mamdani’s campaign, he promises nothing that will break with the process of reactionization and decomposition.

As The Worker pointed out in the last presidential election, such false promises of “change” only help the desperate ruling class in combating the declining voter rate, a maneuver they have to make in order to gain the false legitimacy they need to continue their reign. Mamdani has been “successful” in this regard—with the voter turnout about 3% higher than the last mayoral Democratic primary, he has swindled a number of working people back into the circus of elections. But simultaneously and to no credit of his own, he revealed the charade to the increasing number of people who want real socialism and are coming to consciousness about how to get it.

Photo: Zohran Mamdani shakes hands with Andrew Cuomo following the first New York City Democratic primary mayoral debate.

---

The Worker is an entirely volunteer-run revolutionary newspaper free from and radically antagonistic to corporate influence. We rely on the support of our readers to sustain our editorial line in service of the working class and the reconstitution of its party, the Communist Party. Make a one-time or recurring donation to our newspaper today: