#WTH New York forgets its past

The Green-Red alliance comes to America

An entire generation of Americans is not old enough to remember September 11, 2001. I remember every moment as if it was yesterday: The clear sunny sky, the start of a new school year. In those days, I still listened to NPR. As I turned a corner on my commute to the Senate, the newsreader mentioned a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Doubtless a private pilot I thought.

I got to work, and as the minutes passed and the nature of the attack became clear, my colleagues and I were riveted, unable to move from our screens. We were calling our families in New York, our friends, our colleagues at the Pentagon. When the Capitol Police turfed us out of the building in the expectation that Flight 93 might have been headed our way, we streamed out of the building in shock.

Of course, the rest is history. But like many of my fellow Americans, I suspect, I can replay every moment in my mind. The blurry faces hanging from windows. The fear, the horror, and for days, the silence.

That assault on the country had been preceded by one eight years before, also on the World Trade Center. A model for the later attack, Islamist extremists behind it were prosecuted and imprisoned. But in the circle of one of the terror leaders, the so-called Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, were a group of unindicted co-conspirators …including one Siraj Wahhaj, a convert to Islam.

Among his later gems, Wahhaj has said that “Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a way of life, complete submission], Islam to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen.” And opined that, “If Allah says 100 strikes, 100 strikes it is. If Allah says cut off their hand, you cut off their hand. If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it’s the obedience of Allah and his messenger—nothing personal.”

And so it is that 24 years after 9/11, the likely winner of today’s New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, stood with Wahhaj: “Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders,” Mamdani wrote on X.

Mamdani X account

I won’t reiterate Mamdani’s evident Jew hatred, his “globalize the intifada” fetish, his lifelong devotion to “Justice in Palestine,” nor his opposition to Holocaust commemoration as a Councilman. Nor his lying description of a non-existent aunt, a post 9/11 victim he said, an “Islamophobia” fabrication in service to refute his persistent and deeply felt antisemitism. All of these facts are on display. Mamdani, to his credit, does not pretend to be a good person.

Let us instead dive into the political swamp that Mamdani inhabits — the Democratic Socialists of America. Marc and I talked to Jamie Kirchick, a columnist, best-selling author, and author of a fantastic deep dive into the DSA. Listen to the pod here. And here’s his WSJ piece, Has Mamdani Really Left His ‘Political Home’?

Mamdani is running as a Democrat, which is a critical element in what appears to be a plan — a clever plan — to simply morph the ideology of the DSA into the Democratic Party. Like the cuckoo (innuendo intended, I suppose), Mamdani and his cohort seek to oust normie Democrats from their nest. DSA contempt for the Ds is no secret. Here’s the DSA manifesto:

The center-right Democratic Party is controlled by its elite donor class, and cannot act as an effective political counter to the nationalist far right. Only a party that fights for working people can win the battle against fascism.

Under Joe Biden, the United States has prioritized funding a massive military budget and expanding oil drilling. Democratic elites are embracing Trump’s racist immigration policies and — most abhorrently — are supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, all while brutally cracking down on student protests. This undermines the trust that many placed in Biden and the Democrats.

Without a working-class alternative to the Democratic Party, capitalists, Democrats, and the far right will continue to perpetuate violence and injustice at home and abroad.

And here’s “Democrat” Mamdani addressing the DSA in 2023.

Yep, it seems clear that this Halloween, DSA apparatchik Mamdani trick or treated New York as a Dem. But just what is the DSA?

As Jamie recounts beautifully, the DSA was founded by an anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, socialist, and until recently, barred Stalinists, Communists, and other fellow travelers from their ranks. Until recently. It was also a pro-Zionist organization until a break in 2017.

Now, there is little to distinguish the DSA from the Soviet Communist Party it once sought to banish. Hamas/Palestine? You bet. NATO? No way. Iran? Yessir! Troops abroad? Never! And direct from the DSA webpage: “End economic sanctions that impact the sovereignty of countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.”

If a man is known by the company he keeps (a dictum sourced, appropriately, to Aesop’s fable The Ass and His Purchaser), then consider Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran the DSA’s chosen company. Nor will Mamdani repudiate either the leaders of these countries — “I haven’t thought much about [Cuban dictator] Miguel Díaz.” Maduro? “I think he has done many a horrible thing. […] I haven’t thought about them that often.”

And you thought it was just the “means of production” that Mamdani wanted to seize? Forsooth. Until recently, he opposed Barack Obama as a foul conservative, wanted to ban the police (yawn), and wanted to nationalize (statize? cityize?) industry.

Here’s Jamie again:

In 2023, a coalition of Marxist revolutionary splinter groups won a majority of seats on the DSA’s National Political Committee. The website of one faction, the Red Star Caucus—to which a DSA co-chairman belongs—features articles titled “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You” and “Communists Belong in DSA.” The party also repealed its decades long ban on members of organizations operating under the Leninist principle of “democratic centralism,” effectively opening the group up to communists.

A chunk of Mamdani’s advisers are affiliated with the DSA, as is his fellow traveler Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. But hey, don’t look at the man behind the curtain.

The real question that we go back and forth on is whether the Democratic Party is the DSA’s for the taking? Jamie is persuaded that what happens in New York must stay in New York. He argues that America remains a center-right country, and beyond the fever swamps of Columbia University, normal liberals aren’t down with Mamdani/DSA/Stalinism-redux. Maybe.

One of the most troubling things about the excesses of the Trump administration, however, is how they provide a roadmap to the other side. Enemies lists? Obama had them, and now Trump has bigger ones. Lawfare? Letitia James can tell you a little about it. So can James Comey. Corruption? Pardon me, please.

In other words, it seems unlikely that post-Donald Trump, the flailing and rudderless DNC is going to look to Bill Clinton and Sister Souljah for inspo. Rather they will look to MAGA, or worse, to Joe Rogan, Tucker, and co. Desperate for a secret sauce that can restore the working class to its erstwhile home on the Left, there are many who will opt for the conspiracy-mongering, rabble-rousing, neo-socialist twaddle that is the hallmark of the DSA.

Let’s hope I’m wrong.

TRANSCRIPT

Q: Tell us about the Democratic Socialists of America?

JK: If you look at the party’s platform, they had a platform drafted in 2021, which really is essentially a communist platform. I mean, it calls for the nationalization of all industries. It calls for the abolition of private property. It calls for the abolition of prisons. It calls for the abolition of police. It calls for giving the vote to non-citizens. It’s this really far left utopian platform. In terms of foreign policy it’s even crazier. They want to normalize relations with Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.

It’s important to note the party, at its last convention, the party withdrew a clause that had been in their charter since Michael Harrington founded the party that prevented authoritarian leftists from joining, right? So any Stalinist or Maoist or Communist, if you were a member of any sort of organization that fell under those ideologies, you were not allowed in the party until August. So they really are, I think it’s fair to say, a fellow traveling Communist party. I think the most reprehensible thing that they’ve done in recent years was immediately after October 7th, the New York City chapter endorsed a rally in Times Square where the events of October 7th were lauded and cheered on. And multiple chapters of the DSA around the country released statements supporting October 7th, okay?

Q: But Mamdani is running as a Democrat?

JK: My contention in the piece is Zohran Mamdani has done really next to nothing to distance himself from this organization. And if this was a right-wing politician, let’s say it was a far-right politician who was a member of a quasi-fascist political party who won the primary, the Republican primary for say DA of Staten Island, okay? Something like that. And let’s say this far-right party supported Victor Orban and putting women who have abortions in prison and outlawing homosexuality, all these crazy far-right equivalents of what the DSA stands for. I think that that candidate and that party that he is a member of would be receiving a hell of a lot more scrutiny than Zohran Mamdani and the DSA are.

Q: It seems the Democrats are embracing these left-wing figures. Have they moved from fringe figures to the mainstream?

JK: Well, this is something that I’m frankly astonished more Democrats aren’t concerned about, because the DSA is very explicit. In their manifesto, in their party platform they call for the creation of a new political party, of the DSA becoming an official political party. This is important to clarify. They’re not a political party in the strict legal sense of the term, right? They’re not subject to FEC laws. They’re a nonprofit activist organization right now. But the goal, they are very explicit, the goal is to basically use the Democratic Party as a means of increasing their prominence, their visibility, using the Democratic Party line to get their candidates elected. Which they’ve done, there’s about 250 elected DSA members across the country. Zohran Mamdani will obviously be the most high-profile should he win.

So what they’re doing, what the DSA is doing is a practice called entryism, and it’s sort of an obscure term, which I’ll explain. It’s basically the process by which far-left, often Communist, individuals will infiltrate a more mainstream organization with the long-term intent of taking it over. And this happened a lot in America, or there were lots of attempts to do this in America in the early years of the Cold War, even earlier during the 1930s with the labor movement. Ronald Reagan had to fight the Communists and the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940s and 1950s.

And that’s what the DSA is trying to do right now with the Democratic Party. They’re using this technique of entryism to infiltrate the party. But not to really take it over, it’s basically ... They know that they can’t win seats as a third party. They know that the structures of the American political system make third-party candidates ... It’s a very difficult prospect, right? So they’re very open about using and exploiting the Democratic Party. They have a parasitic relationship on the Democratic Party. They want to suck it dry. And then when they’ve done that, create their own party. Which they see, and I think it’s kind of a cockamamie idea, they see the DSA one day becoming the party of the left of center in America, to basically challenge the Republicans.

Q: And all of this is okay with the Democratic party?

JK: They’re very open about this. And I don’t understand why more Democrats can’t look at this and say, “The DSA are not our friends.” They’re very open. They hate the Democratic Party. They call the Democratic Party this corporate-owned, neo-liberal imperialist ... They use all these kinds of Marxist terms to describe the Democratic Party. And the Democrats, I think, for a variety of reasons that we can speculate, have just decided to basically lay supine and allow this to happen. And maybe they see the DSA as being allies, and it’s this kind of popular front, no enemies to the left kind of political strategy that they’re waging against Donald Trump.

And I think that’s another reason to not like Donald Trump, is that he’s encouraging a lot of this behavior on the left. I don’t think he’s intentionally doing it. But the way he acts, the way he talks, I think it puts in the mind of liberals that we have to ally with anyone on the left to defeat this greater evil on the right. And so I’m very worried. I see a kind of Weimar dynamic happening now in American politics, where each side is sort of encouraging and radicalizing the other. And I think that is the impact that Zohran Mamdani is going to have.

Q: Why kill the host? Isn’t takeover the better strategy?

JK: Yeah, it’s a good question. And I think that they’re frankly deliberately vague in their intentions. But all I know is that if you look at their manifesto, I don’t have it in front of me, but you can look it up, they’re very clear that the Democratic Party is a sellout party of corporate-owned shills and that we want to start a new party, but not yet, right? The political timing isn’t ... The contradictions haven’t been inflated enough. They haven’t been heightened enough for us to launch our moment. So it’s kind of a deliberately vague strategy. But certainly in the short-term, their short-term goal is to make inroads into the Democratic Party and to use the Democratic Party line and state and local offices to get their people elected.

Q: So what is the impact if Mamdani wins? How does this play out after a Mamdani win locally then nationally?

JK: Yeah. I mean, locally I think you’ll see a spike in crime, a large spike in crime, and not just a temporary one, because the police are going to know that they don’t have the mayor at their back. They know that if they get involved in situations with violent criminals that the mayor might come after them. I think you will see an increase in anti-Semitic hate crime because Mamdani, in my opinion, is an anti-Semite. And certainly all the anti-Semites in New York are voting for this guy.

The guys up at Columbia who shut down Columbia, the people who are protesting the Nova Music Festival exhibition, if you can imagine people protesting that in New York. That whole kind of riff-raff, the kind of riff-raff, like the professional activist riff-raff that shuts down bridges and streets and whatnot, that is basically his paramilitary. Those people are all voting for him. They’re going to feel emboldened. So I think you will see life for Jews, people who are visibly Jewish being difficult. I think Jewish organizations and institutions are going to have difficulty because he’s going to use the powers of the city against any institution that identifies as a Zionist institution.

I think you’ll see economic decline to the extent that he can implement any of his kind of far-fetched ideas. Raising taxes is very difficult because apparently he needs to get approval from Albany to do that. And it’s unclear whether or not the Democrats up there will go along with those ideas. But opening up these government-run grocery stores is going to put a lot of mom-and-pop bodegas out of business. If you have government-funded, if they’re undercutting the market price because the government’s supporting them, that’s going to happen.

Q: Does this happen across the country?

JK: Nationally I’m of two minds. It could either be that what happens in New York stays in New York, and that it really doesn’t have any kind of effect nationwide. That Democrats throughout the country are going to want to distance themselves from him and say, “Look, that’s New York City. I’m here in Kentucky, or whatever, and we don’t like those kinds of ideas anyway.” Or people could look at the excitement that he’s generating, the support that he’s generating and want a piece of it. And I think the fact that you have someone like Hakeem Jeffries after months of dilly-dallying and refusing to endorse Mamdani did so, he caved last Friday and did so. That’s an important sign I think.

Q: Can you just do a deeper dive into where Mamdani comes from, and who he is, and what he’s about… and why he hates the Jews?

JK: Well, he’s very much of a type, kind of global cosmopolitan type. So he comes from upper middle-class upbringing. Born in Uganda, as there was a large Indian expatriate population there that goes back to the British Empire. Interestingly, his father, Mahmood Mamdani, the Columbia professor, was expelled from the country along with tens of thousands of other Indians by Idi Amin in the early 1970s. And Mamdani senior has just written a book that I would recommend everyone read the review of it in the journal by Tunku Varadarajan, in which apparently Mamdani senior defends Idi Amin, and he defends the expulsion of the Indians, of which he was one, on the grounds that this was an anti-imperialist action because the Indians were themselves British colonial subjects. So that’s kind of heinous.

And Mahmood Mamdani also was one of the very few people I ever came across in the West who was a defender of Robert Mugabe’s violent seizure of white-owned farmland in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, which cast that country into real famine for years. So that’s the father. And he really is a leading light of post-colonial studies, a major disciple of Edward Said. And so Mamdani junior was born into this, again, very leftist, kind of cosmopolitan citizen of nowhere type background milieu in Uganda. The family moves to South Africa when he’s a young boy, and then they move to America, I believe when he’s seven. His father gets a teaching post at Columbia. And one of the reasons I think you can tell that Mamdani is really not textbook smart, at least, is that he applied to Columbia as the son of a very well-known Columbia professor and did not get in. Okay. That is extremely rare, to be the progeny of a very well regarded Ivy League professor and apply to attend that school and not get in.

Q: Why?

JK: A low IQ individual. That when he was applying to Columbia, he marks off on the application that he was African-American, which is smart in a way. It’s devious and clever in a way, in that he obviously was trying to play the game of American racial politics. He could argue that technically he is an African-American having been born in Africa and then becoming a citizen. Obviously that’s hokum. Everyone knows what African-American means in the college admissions process. So he’s a very savvy kind of player within these sort of elite spaces. He’s doing that a lot now in the campaign. He’s had multiple incidents where he’ll cry Islamophobia, someone will attack him for not condemning Hamas or supporting this, or not condemning globalizing the Intifada or campaigning with an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and he’ll have this tearful press conference where he talks about how terrible Islamophobia is.

And most recently he said how awful it was that his aunt, she was so scared after 9/11 that she couldn’t ride the subway in her hijab. I just find it sad and disturbing that less than 25 years after 9/11, the very city that was attacked that day would be electing someone who we can say is at the very least sympathetic to the men who drove those planes into those towers. I mean, everything he says in terms of the sins of American foreign policy, how America is a colonialist exploiter, all that sort of rhetoric from Osama bin Laden, which is echoed by the post-colonial left in the West. He’s very much on board with that. And I think it’s very troubling that a man like this could become the mayor of America’s greatest city.

Q: Mamdani seems to be a product of the so-called Red Green Alliance, Islamism and the far Left. Which one is he more loyal toislam as in the far left?

JK: Well, basically during the Cold War, you’re right, communism, the Left, which was secular, atheist, was at odds with religious conservatism and with Islam in particular. I mean, look at who our allies were in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets, right? It was Islamic rebels. And certainly in Central Asia, which were part of the Soviet Union, you had a lot of opposition to the communist rule because it was atheistic and because it was very suppressive of religious elements. But once the Cold War ends, the left is kind of casting about for a new group to replace the proletariat. And some of them, mostly in Europe, settle on the ummah, the global community of Muslims, that that’s going to be the new proletariat. And this is the development of the red-green alliance.

And you see it most acutely in France and particularly in Britain, where the Labour Party now has a huge Muslim extremist base. And I think that is the reason why France and Britain came out in support of the Palestinian state. I don’t think it had anything to do with the interests, the diplomatic interests. I don’t think they were giving that any consideration.

It was a sop to their base, to kind of get these people off their backs. Now, the American left had been largely resistant to this. Not anymore. I mean, Mamdani is basically the apotheosis of this. He is really the kind of apex of these two ideas merging together. I believe that he at base is a leftist, but I don’t think he’s secular. And I think basically he sees Muslims as bodies, right? This is where the vote’s going to come from. Because we leftist intellectual DSA types, there’s not that many of us, we’re the vanguard, to use another Leninist term, we are the intellectual vanguard of this movement, but we need the masses behind us. And the white working class, forget that, they’re gone. We can’t do that. We can’t get that. And you saw that in Europe, right? The white working class now, it votes for Marine Le Pen, it votes for the AFD in Germany. It votes for Nigel Farage and the Reform party in the UK.

So where’s the left going to get its base of voters? It’s going to come from Muslims. Now look, that doesn’t work nationwide because there aren’t that many Muslims nationwide. But there are a lot in New York. There’s apparently a million in New York. And so I think that’s what he’s up to. I think is that he’s ultimately a far-left progressive communist fellow traveler with a deep sympathy for Islam. And it’s why these leftist intellectuals have always been fascinated by Islam. And you can go back to Foucault during the Iranian Revolution, is that they see Islam as a revolutionary force against the West. They see it as the force that can destroy the West. And I think similarly, Mamdani and his comrades in the DSA, they see these terrorist groups, these resistance groups in the Middle East as basically being anti-Western and as the spear that can kind of attack America and Israel.

Q: With European leaders pandering to their growing Muslim base and diminishing Jewish base, are we headed in the same direction in the US with declining Jewish populations?

JK: Yes, I do think we’re headed in that direction, unfortunately. And I think we need to have ... I mean, look, that’s something for the Jewish community to grapple with, obviously. That’s not something that the US government can do. It’s not something that immigration policy is going to be able to fix. That’s up to the Jewish community to address that. But I do think that we can advocate for more restrictive immigration policies. I wrote a piece a couple of months ago when all these student activists were being arrested. Foreign-born student activists were being arrested for engaging in political activism. Whether it was speech or not was debatable. But for instance, Mahmoud Khalil, the guy up in Columbia, this was before the news of his immigration form seat became public. And I wrote a piece saying, look, I as a free speech absolutist, I don’t think that anyone in this country should be criminally penalized for their constitutionally protected speech.

And that applies to non-citizens, by the way. They have constitutional rights here as well. But that doesn’t mean we have to let these people into the country in the first place. And getting to come to the United States, whether as a tourist or on a visa or becoming a citizen, is a privilege. And there are lots of people around the world, deserving people I would say, who are in line for that privilege. Why do we allow so many of the rotten ones into our country? Why is Mehdi Hasan a citizen of the United States? How did he get citizenship?

Q: So why does the DSA and left wing extremism not become the Democratic Party? Isn’t this the takeover?

JK:It could happen, but I don’t think it’s going to be successful for them, because as we’ve seen- well, look, this is a center-right country. And Americans are, I would say, significantly more accepting of right-wing wackadoodle politics than they are left-wing wackadoodle politics. And we have evidence for that in the fact that Donald Trump is our president and has been our president earlier for four years. So that’s just the reality, I think. I can understand why Kathy Hochul’s doing this. She’s facing a left-wing ... I think her lieutenant governor is running against her for governor from the left. So she’s trying to solidify some left-wing support by endorsing Mamdani. Whether or not he’ll reciprocate in the governor’s race, who knows?

But I really just, maybe I’m wrong ... But I hope I’m right. I hope I’m right that this doesn’t, what’s happening in New York in Mamdani does not play well outside of New York City. And I think the polls show that. I mean, the Justice Democrats, it’s like the Bernie-type left, squad-left pack, right? And they support left-wing primary candidates often to take out more moderate ones. They have never flipped a Republican seat, never. The moderate Democrats, like the third way people, they have their own path, in just the past four or five cycles they’ve flipped 50 Republican seats. Okay? So if you’re a Democrat, and I just believe this, I believe that you win from the center. You win from the center, center-left. Mamdani can win in New York, okay?

Q: With a Mamdani win likely, do you think Democrats will double down in this direction, producing more Mamdani-like candidates? Will they win?

JK: So maybe it’ll go through a couple cycles of this, like the Democrats did in the 1980s. Although this is going to be a lot worse than the Democrats in the 1980s. Like Michael Dukakis was a saint. He was Reagan compared to these people. No, but it might go through a couple cycles where they just are totally cast out of power. Even worse, because the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress until 1994. If they do go down this direction, I think you really could see total Republican dominance, the White House, both houses of Congress, states, governorships, all that stuff.

Full transcript here

SHOWNOTES:

Bombshell NYC mayoral poll shows trouble for Zohran Mamdani in one-on-one race with Andrew Cuomo (New York Post, Craig McCarthy and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, October 20, 2025)

Mamdani appears smiling, arm-in-arm with unindicted ‘93 WTC bombing co-conspirator and terrorist apologist (New York Post, Rich Calder, et.al., October 18, 2025)

Knicks send cease-and-desist to Mamdani over logo use, say they ‘want to make it clear’ they don’t endorse him (Fox News, Ryan Morik and Alexis McAdams, October 24, 2025)

Zohran Mamdani’s terror suspect imam ally once called America ‘filthy’ and ‘sick’ (New York Post, Emily Crane, October 20, 2025)

After a lengthy wait, Jeffries to endorse Mamdani (Politico, Sally Goldenberg, Emily Ngo, and Joe Anuta, October 24, 2025)

Mamdani delivers tearful speech on Muslim faith, slams Cuomo (ABC News, October 24, 2025)

Inside the Mamdani Machine: Soros cash, socialists and radical imams engineered Zohran Mamdani’s path to power (Fox News Exclusive, Asra Nomani, October 27, 2025)

7 Takeaways From the Final N.Y.C. Mayoral Debatev (New York Times, Emma G. Fitzsimmon and Micheal Gold, October 22, 2025)

Has Mamdani Really Left His ‘Political Home’? (Wall Street Journal, Jamie Kirchick, October 17, 2025)

Anyone But Mamdani: These Billionaires Are Spending Big To Stop Him From Becoming NYC’s Mayor (Forbes, Kyle Khan-Mullins, October 24, 2025)

Hold your noses, New Yorkers. Here’s the best choice for mayor. (Marc Thiessen, Washington Post, October 24, 2025)

From scapegoats to city hall: how New York Muslims built power and shaped Zohran Mamdani (The Guardian, Moustafa Bayoumi, October 24, 2025)