Mamdani Represents A New Era Of Political Conflict

The left-wing offer is always vulnerable on pragmatic grounds.

I am hopeful on the Mayor Mamdani news. It seems Mamdani has the charisma of the center-right Faker Sellout 0bama, with a true belief & willingness to fight hard for center-left social democratic policies like Bernie Sanders.

My dream scenario is that Mamdani gets 3 of his big 5 policies implemented as Mayor, maintains high popularity, & is a “king maker” on endorsing a similar social democratic 2028 Pres candidate.

“People hate, hate, hate the elites in America. Attacking landlords, health insurance executives and politicians who cover for them and want them to get even richer is popular.”

Medieval peasants hated their nobles, slaves hated their masters and overseers. However, the rulers had the weapons, the police, the army, the law and the church to back them up.

Isn’t America as a failed state the best thing for the RoW?

And TBH, a Trump is better than an Obama, because while the hegemonic neocon policies are essentially the same, a Trump is just more crass and open about it, such that the curtain is pulled aside from the evil machinery of empire. And that leaves the PMC exposed, with no cover, for the machine that they serve.

Well that’s nice I suppose, but everything about Mamdani just screams ShitLib to me, the only difference is the whole package has some nice socialist decor for added flavour. If he isn’t just some Indian grifter I will be amazed. As you say Ian, Americans (and Westerner’s in general) are absolutely desperate for change of any kind, so that’s the current winning ticket to ride for every grifting pol out there.

America’s only hope is in digging up some thug who can’t be paid off by America’s (Israeli-backed) elite because his one joy in life is watching the rich and powerful crawling over broken glass and licking his feet. If the country cannot tame its oligarchs, it’s curtains, because every single problem they have is linked to their parasitical elites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up9yLFL9tVs

dose of hard headed skepticism from Laith Marouf

(. . . little typo correction . . . ” he is definitely NOT aware of the Groyper Fuentesians ” etc. etc. )

Hi Ian,

Mamdani actually refers to himself as a “democratic-socialist”, which is further to the left than a “social-democrat”. I was reading this article yesterday which explains the differences.

[quotes]
Social democracy is a political belief that supports capitalism but with guardrails. Social democrats believe people should be able to own businesses and make profits, but they also think the government should step in to make sure things are fair for everyone. That means creating laws and programs that protect workers, support families, and reduce poverty.

In a social democracy, the government doesn’t control the whole economy. Instead, it makes rules to keep powerful corporations in check and provides essential services like healthcare, education, and housing.

Democratic socialism is a political belief that goes further than social democracy. Democratic socialists think the entire economic system needs to change to give ordinary people real power and shift control away from wealthy elites, big money, and major corporations.

Democratic socialists still believe in democracy, voting, and civil rights. But they also believe that the economy should work for everyone, not just the richest few.
[end quote]

https://goodparty.org/blog/article/social-democracy-vs-democratic-socialism

Well Hell. – You have got to start somewhere!!
The Democratic Party needs to revamp its policies. Don’t know if the “party” will.
But someone is going to come forward with policies focused on labor, the middle class, and a balanced approach to economics / health care / social equity.

Everything we think we know is false, a lie, chimera and illusions. Wealth fame and power are fleeting and unsubstantial, leaves blown by karmic winds.
The players of today will be the losers of tomorrow, and meanwhile the game plays on.
Mamdani is a force, an agent of hope and change. Wait, where have we heard that before?
All that aside, his victory is a hope for change in general.
Let’s pray he doesn’t fall out of a window or get electrocuted when a fan drops into a bathtub or some such shit. Let’s hope the CIA script writers are more creative in 2025 than they were back in the day.
Not holding out much hope one way or the other.
Any way you look at it we lose.

Here is a fascinating little speech by Speaker of the House Grindr Mike fearmongering to his base about what the Democrats will do if they get House and Senate majorities in 2026.

Actually, as long as all the Top and Middle Tier DemParty electeds and operatives are the same bipartisan cuck subhumans we have beheld up to now, the DemParty won’t do a single thing that Grindr Mike tried threatening his base with.

But its so sweet of Grindr Mike to say that they would . . . . bless his heart.

” Johnson: “If we lose the majority… They will try to end the Trump administration. He won’t have 4 years. He’ll have only 2, because they will move to impeach him, probably on the first day of the new Congress in January 2027 and try to systematically unwind all the important reforms that we’ve done” ”

https://www.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1op7zuf/johnson_if_we_lose_the_majority_they_will_try_to/

Zohran Mamdani keeps getting attacked in the media and by his opponents as a “socialist” or even a “communist.” Instead of letting them frame the narrative, Mamdani could easily turn it around and say he is an “FDR Democrat” or “New Deal Democrat” — which immediately evokes the image of America’s Golden Age, when the economy worked for ordinary people. Within the Democratic Party, he can still identify as a Democratic Socialist. If anyone challenges him on that, he can simply say: “They’re basically the same thing.” Because the truth is, democratic socialism today is just the New Deal updated for the 21st century — economic fairness, labor rights, and a strong safety net.

FDR remains one of the most popular presidents in American history, even among conservatives. His policies lifted America out of the Great Depression, built the middle class, and created the Golden Age that most people remember when they talk about America being “great.” When people want to “make America great again,” what they are really yearning for — whether they realize it or not — is that post-FDR prosperity and growth for the majority of Americans.

The irony is, Trump has never once clearly said when he thinks America was “great.” The media and Democrats never press him on that, which is a huge mistake. Because if they did, they would expose the disconnect: Trump’s idea of “great” looks a lot like the Gilded Age — a time of extreme inequality, corporate monopolies, and power concentrated in the hands of the rich. When he says he wants to make America “great again,” he’s really talking about bringing back the Gilded Age — which was the Golden Age only for the richest people at the top, like him. Meanwhile, most Americans — including many of his own followers — are actually thinking of the Golden Age built by FDR’s New Deal. IMO, if the media were to ask Trump directly and press him for clarification — “In your opinion, what specific era or time period was America great?” — the revelation would weaken his support among his own base.

Sorry, but, I think he will be a modern day Bernie Sanders/Bill Clinton.

Mamdani placates billionaires with plan to retain NYPD chief
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/10/24/mmvu-o24.html

At election rally, DSA candidate Mamdani embraces right-wing Democratic Party establishment
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/10/29/ikjg-o29.html

In most respects, I share the skepticism toward Mamdani that others express here. As well as the concerns for his safety, I think they will kill or disable him pretty quickly. He may not be the “threat” to the Billionaire/ Zionist factions that currently dominate both parties, but they clearly perceive that he is, and cannot allow even one or two small reforms (gov’t. discount groceries, cheaper and better public transportation) that would point the way back toward New Deal generosity toward any but the 0.1% that the political class are all ensconced in. As to his safety, the deranged, moronic actor Michael Rapaport called for him to be stopped “by any means necessary” before the election. Later the same week, Russell Dobular of Due Dissidence covered an anti-Mamdami protest of about 30 unhinged, rabid Zionists at 9/11 “Ground Zero” which Rapaport was at, and Rapaport assaulted him, grabbing the cell phone he was filming with and flinging it to the ground, also kicking a camera tripod he had.

Here’s the important thing though, like Donald Trump winning in 2016 was a symptom of some inchoate need of the public, Mamdami is the same thing, and represents a more legitimate set of material and even psychic needs. Tuesday’s election results show that Emperor Donald (he imagines himself as far greater than a King) has utterly destroyed the Rethuglican party’s brand, at least for the next several years. Now, as others point out, put in power, The DimmieCraps won’t do any but small, symbolic (actually performative) fake “hopey-changey” distractions. The people who won are pretty awful, the New Jersey wife of an Oligarch whose been caught up in corruption (Pelosi-style insider trading, $7M in quick profits), Spanberger, a NatSec ghoul involved in torture and regime change as part of the Great War of Terror, the guy who was caught on tape musing about how he wanted to murder the children of his R opponent . . .

NR’s point about “Socialism” being the big 800 ton gorilla feared by the 0.1%, the shadow projection of the end of their looting and carnage is correct. (He’s mostly wrong about Glenn Greenwald being a “complete right-wing hack” though.)

Someone brought up the Russian Revolution. With the acceleration of the utter destruction of ALL the minor government palliatives that protect people from homelessness, severe illness, and an early death that the R’s are pushing, and the D Elites tacitly support and do nothing to put a brake on, we are headed that direction, it is only a matter of time. But as diffclue notes, Trump has taken the gilt off of the painted turd that is the Repug party, so the Dimmies will have their moment of ascendance. They won’t do anything positive, however, they are all AOC ilk. Grinder Mikey is right to worry about a Trump impeachment, nobody’s buying the fiction that the government shutdown in order to forever enshrine Project 2025 is the Dimmies’ fault, it is clearly a Rethug, Grover Norquist “Drown the public in a bathtub” moment.

Trump continues to run the shell of Governance as would any Somoza-style Banana Republic crook: He grabs pieces of commerce that can be weaponized for himself and his family (not that Biden didn’t do this, but at a much smaller scale) to profit off of, is already a bigger billionaire from Bitcoin and Crypto crap than he ever was from Real Estate, or his real talent in Entertainment. This shit is totally destructive to the environment in the immediate term, not even in the long term and is unsustainable.

Trump easily shellacked Kamala (and as content-free as Mamdami may turn out to be, he is still leagues above her in potential; though it will likely be crushed) because his campaign at least seemed to be about “Greatness”, Power, bullying, stupid American symps brainwashed to fear “socialism” could see something aspirational. In ten months Trump has torn the Hero face off of that and shown what it actually is: the Taibbi (back before his being blackmailed, or lobotimized) Vampire-Squid endlessly sucking the World Dry, there is Socialism for the Masters and privatization and starvation and death for the hoi-polloi.

Were Mamdami sincere (we shall see) and were hundreds of more Mamdamis to emerge, an actual Movement could arise. I don’t think it’s likely, Obama taught us all the meaninglessness of “Hope” for Elite kindness, however as things become more miserable and hopeless at some point there will be a counter-movement. It almost certainly will not succeed through electoral shadow-play, but more on the Streets or in local communities through protective actions by small groups of people. Otherwise, it’s just a giant Darwin Award for the American Nightmare, and a fall as thorough as the Roman Empire’s.

I will doubtless regret opening my yap, and forgive me for going OT, but why are we referring to Mike Johnson as “Grindr Mike”?

My last comment was a bit flippant, so I’ll expand. There are socialists who want Mamdani to come in and upend every single institution that serves the capitalist state, the police being just one of these, albeit an extremely important one. What they don’t seem to understand is that Mamdani didn’t run on doing that. Mamdani’s campaign for office can basically be boiled down to “I’m going to raise taxes on rich people and corporations and use the money to improve the quality of life for the people of New York City.”

And he is going to have a massive fight on his hands to even do that much. Remember that his victory was actually relatively narrow. If he came in and started trying to do a bunch of stuff he didn’t run on, and trying to radically transform every institution in the city overnight, his tenure in office would probably be measured in weeks. As Ian correctly pointed out, there are a lot limits on what a mayor can do; the state and the federal governments can stop a lot of what a mayor tries to do.

Now of course it’s possible that Mamdani will sell out or be co-opted. But if he can implement the agenda he ran on, that would be a huge step forward for real left-wing politics in America. Which is why it’s so disappointing to see socialists already trying to kneecap him. When the Tea Party movement (which would become MAGA) began to take hold, did you see right-wingers attacking politicians that were right of the political mainstream? No. They worked with those politicians, built a movement, and shifted things much further to the right.

The left looks for apostates, while the right looks for allies. That’s one of the main reasons that the right is ascendant right now and the left is in such a sorry state.

I think it’s irrelevant whether I’m skeptical of Mamdani or not. Things are going to happen. If people get the chance to follow FDR’s advice “Now make me do it”, they should. Public pressure might thwart a budgetary attack from Hochul or Trump.

NR wrote: “Now of course it’s possible that Mamdani will sell out or be co-opted. But if he can implement the agenda he ran on, that would be a huge step forward for real left-wing politics in America. Which is why it’s so disappointing to see socialists already trying to kneecap him.”

That is *why* many liberals and democrats are so intent on kneecapping Mamdani.

We are talking people’s vacation homes at stake, here, Vacation homes, do you hear me?

NR:

One would be forgiven for being skeptical that those left-wingers actually want change (or are left-wingers at all)…

At some very-soon future point, I will offer some more American Black American content creator material way back at the appropriate thread. But in the meantime, here is a very short reply from Thomas ” The Villain” Bishop to a White woman’s complaint about Mamdani getting elected Mayor of New York. I like Mr. Bishop’s style.

The back-to-back woman’s comment and Mr. Bishop’s reply go from timepoint 1: 24 to timepoint 3: 25 . That is a timestretch of 2 minutes and 11 seconds. That would be 2 minutes and 11 seconds very well spent. I haven’t watched the rest of the video.
It is called: ” W🤍Woman Is About To Go Back To PRISON Over 👉🏾 She’s PISSED At B🖤 Pe0ple & Got Humbled ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wStIafB3wcs

Purple Library Guy: Good one. I’m with you.

What bothers me here is the lack of any diagnosis of how he succeeds.
Ian, I’d love to read a separate post that does so (in the 9 things a socialist needs to do to succeed vein).

Here’s my map for success.
1. Immediately begin grooming your successor and immediately shift to campaigning for Governor.
2. Vilify Hochul for standing in the way of the people’s agenda — simultaneously vilifying the shitlib Democrats.

The momentum can’t stop. It has to continue attacking the higher echelons of power to be successful.

If he tries to stay where he is, he’s done.

Well, I watched the rest of the video that I offered a link to for the very short simple little sample of Mr. Thomas Bishop.

And deeper into the video is a longer stretch of Mr. Bishop. He talks about what this Mamdani victory ( and a couple of other Democratic victories in a couple of states) could mean, and could be made to mean; if the Democrats were to toughen up and embrace doing what is necessary to win victories and then use the victories for real actions. He then goes on to discuss Identity and Identity Politics and it seems to me his observations are worthwhile and deserving of careful thought. And he maintains his usual standards of listenability and non-boringness.

This longer segment of his goes from timepoint 10:14 to timepoint 20:15. If those ( however few) who choose to watch this timepoint-bounded segment decide that he is correct in what he says, then those same people will need to think about what this means to the actual conduct of Combat Politics designed to win VICtories for ourselves and inflict deFEATS upon our targets.

It is at the same link as before . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wStIafB3wcs
and the timespan is from 10:14 to 20:15 .

The anti New Deal coalition had to spend 60 years plotting, planning and working to tear the New Deal down. That’s how well the New Deal in fact worked. A New Deal Restoration Party by whatever name might do well over time if it is devoted to “exterminating” its enemies as well as advancing its supporters.

I would like to see “physics” re-thought-of as “biophysical ecological limits” as being the only limit on spending, but maybe that’s just me.

I think that technically speaking that state bank is in North Dakota. But I realize it can be hard to tell the Tennesota from the Minnebraska without a scorecard.

Here’s a thought . . . what explains Stephen Miller? Stephen Miller thinks that if he nazifies hard enough, that Nick Fuentes will give him an Honorary Nazi Aryan membership card.

Conflict comes from many directions. The Republican Party and its several bases and Power Organs want to drive citizens to riot so as to create the pretext for Martial Law.
How can non-Conservatives for freedom degrade and attrit the Conservative enemy without running amok after enough ” one provocation too many” are staged to produce an amokification result?

Here is a little video of a Los Angeles area Border Patrol leader-of-agents instructing his agents how to conquer “their” city of Los Angeles, and then some video of this man sitting in a Chicago courtroom answering some questions about the video he starred in.

” LA Border patrol tells his agents “it’s our fking city arrest as many people as posible even if they touch you.” ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1or6nef/la_border_patrol_tells_his_agents_its_our_fking/

Was he trying to get run-amok riots started on purpose? Or was it his superiors on up to Miller and Trump who wanted him to do ” what comes natural” to set off the riots THEY want set off for THEIR martial law plans?

Is the Mamdani Administration and the Mamdani supporter/voter base ready for that sort of thing in New York City?

”[T]he rich used [immigrants] to force wages lower: the classic strategy of “pit one half of the working class against the other half.”
Its true In the case of Cuba and the “coolie trade,” and they were cheaper than slaves:
“[T]he largest single wave of Chinese migration to Cuba took place during the quarter century between 1847 and 1874. It became notorious the world over as the “coolie trade.” Shipping records here in China indicate that more than 140,000 Chinese set sail for Cuba during those years, the large majority from Guangdong province, with a much smaller number from Fujian. They belonged to the first of the great waves of global labor migration that have marked the entire capitalist era.

Cuba was then the world’s largest sugar producer. The decision by landowners and the Spanish colonial regime to bring tens of thousands of Chinese indentured laborers to the island was driven by three factors.

1) The eagerness of the landlords and mill owners to mechanize the refining process and expand production to take advantage of the growing consumption of sugar in Europe and America. Between 1850 and 1868, Cuban sugar production tripled.

2) Fear of what property owners saw as a dangerously large number and concentration of African slaves on sugar plantations across the island. The specter of “another Haiti” haunted them.

3) The opportunity to drive down labor costs.

Between 1830 and 1855 the price of an adult male slave in Cuba roughly tripled, from 300-400 pesos to 1,000 or more. This was largely due to the increasing costs—from payoffs to faster sailing ships—of circumventing international treaties banning the slave trade.

The contract for an indentured worker from China, on the other hand, cost the owner less than 400 pesos on average, with another 384 pesos in wages spread out over eight years.

https://www.themilitant.com/2011/7530/753050.html