New York confirms the image of the most left-wing ‘communist’ city in the United States

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Young socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated the establishment in the primaries, putting the Democratic Party before the choice of capitulating to radicals or losing the city. His victory, backed by migrant communities, threatens a tax shock, a business exodus and a new round of crisis in a metropolis that Republicans are already calling a ‘proving ground for failure’.

How Democrats lost their city

New York City has been one of the strongholds of the US Democratic Party. The mayoral election of this city, which was to be held exactly one year after the ‘disaster’ with the triumph of Donald Trump should have been the moment of truth for the Democrats. But the shadow of New Yorker Trump seemed to hover over these elections, and he with his intrigues, apparently, sought to create maximum difficulties for his political opponents in an election campaign that was obviously winning for them.

In the end, the New York City mayoral election turned into total chaos. The incumbent mayor Eric Adams, mired in scandals with Turkish and Qatari lobbyists, unexpectedly withdrew from the Democratic Party primaries and decided to run as an independent candidate. Although his approval rating is less than 10%, the move seriously weakened the Democrats. Adams became close to Donald Trump, who effectively shielded him from criminal prosecution. Trump did a clever move to ensure that the most radical leftist candidate would win the primary. Such an outcome would alienate moderate voters and set the stage for the future ‘reddening’ of traditionally blue New York.

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo was considered the main favourite until recently. However, his campaign collapsed when the Department of Justice (DOJ) reopened an investigation into nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuomo then refused federal aid, with disastrous consequences.

*Photo by Jesse Williams / Unsplash.com*

Hitting back at Cuomo for his old sins, Trump’s team has been biding its time to destabilise the Democratic Party primaries, with local congressman and left-wing representative Zohran Mamdani getting a chance to come out on top. He is an associate of Bernie Sanders and a fierce critic of Israel. His victory would mean a split in the Democratic Party and disaster for New York, which is mired in crime, corruption and homelessness. The Trump administration has proceeded on the logic of ‘the worse the better’. Therefore, it is hardly possible to pull New York out of the current crisis, and it is necessary to let it fall even lower in order to discredit its enemies definitively.

That plan came to fruition, with ‘leftist triumph’ candidate outsider Zohran Mamdani winning the dramatic Democratic Party primary, and Cuomo’s 55-60% rating quickly melting away. Born in Uganda to Indian parents who moved to the US in the late 90s, Mamdani has been involved in politics since 2020 and quickly became a local legislator, now running for mayor with extremely high odds of success. What’s more, Mamdani is much more left-leaning in his views than old-school Democrats. He represents the Democratic Socialists of America party, which supports the creation of free pre-school education in the city, the transition to free public transport and even the opening of state-run shops where the price of food is subsidised by the authorities.

On foreign policy, Mamdani has called for sanctions against the Jewish state, and in debates has refused to recognise Israel’s right to exist. The current escalation in the Middle East is therefore very much in his and the US left’s favour. The process of changing the elite in the Democratic camp in favour of Trump was officially launched. After all, Mamdani is 33 years old and is the future of the Democratic Party, which will be very different from the old centrists like Biden or Cuomo. In addition, for the first time, an Indian and a Muslim could become mayor of New York City. Of course, the primary election is not until November, and the current mayor, Eric Adams, who is mired in corruption scandals, is running, as well as Republican challengers. But Mamdani is highly likely to win and get the opportunity to build his socialism in one single metropolis in America.

*Photo by Diogo Fagundes / Unsplash.com*

Wall Street was startled by the young socialist’s victory. He defeated Andrew Cuomo, a protégé of the establishment, in the Democratic Party primaries, despite the latter’s support by the financial elites of New York. Mamdani relied on young activists and ran an effective campaign, while Cuomo, who was leading in the polls and spent $25 million in sponsorship money, lost.

Now Wall Street donors are wary of radical change. Mamdani has a high chance of becoming mayor and has already promised to sharply raise taxes on the rich and increase New York City’s national debt (over $100 billion) by another $70 billion. His programme includes free kindergarten, public transport and government-run shops with reduced prices – costly initiatives that could undermine the city’s budget. Republicans in Florida are already urging New Yorkers to move, predicting more crime due to police cuts and more homelessness. If Mamdani wins, New York City will become a proving ground for leftist experiments that change metropolitan life.

New York as a leftist laboratory

The American left, now allowed to experiment in this way, celebrated Mamdani’s victory wildly. He became the highest-ranking elected politician from the Democratic Socialists of America party. Still, Mamdani may soon lead America’s largest metropolis of nine million people, and now the left wants to extrapolate his experience to the rest of the country. Bernie Sanders is proposing a similar presidential campaign in 2028 with a focus on mobilising young people, who will be promised expanded social guarantees and various other progressive initiatives.

It is true that in the last election, a record share of the young electorate supported Trump specifically. Many Zoomers, especially young residents of ‘red’ states, now hold right-wing views, and it will be very difficult for Democrats to lure them to their side. Trump calls Mamdani a ‘communist lunatic’, and the White House explains his victory by the demographic replacement of Americans by migrants from all over the world, because the same New York one-third of the population was born outside the United States. At the same time, two-thirds of children in the metropolis live in migrant families. The share of white New Yorkers is only about 30%.

Mamdani himself was also born in Africa, not in the States, but more than Trump, the Democratic Party establishment is very concerned about his victory. After all, the young leftists can defeat the centrists in the presidential primaries, and there will be an analogue of the MAGA-revolution in the Republicans. And then in 2028 we will see the collision of two radically opposed visions of America’s future, one on the far right and one on the far left. And then the country’s divisiveness will manifest itself in all its glory, and there will simply be no centrists left as such.

Mamdani has openly declared war on the middle class, promising to sharply raise taxes and hit ‘rich white neighbourhoods’. His victory was secured by the votes of the migrant diasporas, which have already become a majority in the metropolis. White liberals are panicking: some are comparing his victory to 9/11 in terms of possible economic consequences. The property market is frozen – developers are afraid of freezing rental prices, and financiers are preparing to transfer assets to Texas and Florida, where a new ‘South Wall Street’ is forming. The middle class will follow business, exacerbating the exodus (the city has already lost 500,000 people since the pandemic).

Mamdani also plans to reduce the police force, replacing them with social workers. A similar experiment was conducted in Minneapolis after the BLM manifestations, but failed. In New York, where crime is already breaking records (people are being burned alive on the underground), this will accelerate the city’s transformation into a ghetto conglomerate. Republicans are only gloating, using the chaos in the Democrat Party for propaganda. New York City, which will be a ‘communist’ experiment, is now their main argument.

Indeed, the American right is appalled by the views of the young socialist Zohran Mamdani. He was even found to have a speech from 2021 in which he called for seizing the means of production to fight capitalism. He also then supported a global intifada campaign against Israel, as well as a total ban on gun ownership in the US. Mamdani could become mayor of a major American metropolis in January 2026, and this is no longer just talk of the left taking power conventionally, but a clear indicator of the strengthening of its practical and tangible powers and tools. After the primaries, Mamdani no longer speaks such harsh words about the complete breakdown of capitalism, seeking not to clash with the Democratic establishment, but as before, promises social reforms, which many criticise.

Some Republicans are calling on Trump to strip Mamdani of his citizenship and deport him to Uganda, where he was born into an Indian family. Trump is now setting up new alligator deportation centres for migrants in Florida and is already joking about deporting political opponents from the country. Now this is still hard to imagine, but with America becoming more divided, it cannot be ruled out that after a short time and such a scenario of Republicans fighting left-wing diaspora Democrats will become a reality. Since hatred between right and left is a matter of principle, not a momentary political calculation.