In case you have been living under a rock for the past fortnight, Zohran Mamdani is the 33-year-old democratic-socialist Muslim who has just become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for mayor of New York City.
Just six months ago this young, energetic, and extraordinarily telegenic New York assemblyperson (member of the state legislature) was given a 6% chance of winning. By the evening of 24 June had amassed 43% of the popular vote in the primary election — 7 points ahead of the Democratic Party’s favoured candidate, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
Described by President Donald Trump as "a 100% communist lunatic", Mamdani, by his success, has set the entire American political class back on its heels. New York City, with a population of 10 million, is America’s largest city. It is also the place where cultural trends and political movements get started. What happens in New York will, almost invariably, end up happening in your neighbourhood.
That is what is generating so much vitriol and bile on the Right. That is the reason the airwaves are carrying red-baiting messages last heard at such volume 70 years ago during the hearings of Senator Joe McCarthy’s House un-American activities committee.
"Are you now, or have you ever been, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party?" That was the question McCarthy’s witch-hunters put to terrified American citizens subpoenaed to testify before Congress.
There was no right answer. If you said "Yes" then your career was over. If you answered "No" — and you were, or had been, a party member — then you would face perjury charges. And if, as many chose to do, you opted to "plead the Fifth" (the constitutional amendment protecting citizens against self-incrimination) then the committee members just smirked and exchanged knowing glances.
But, that was then, and this is now.
Joe Stalin is long dead, and so is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For those born after 1991, the Cold War might as well be the Peloponnesian War.
In the early-1950s, however, the USSR loomed like a fearsome giant over Western Europe. The discovery, in 1949, that Stalin’s "Reds" — ably assisted by their elaborate spy networks in the US and the United Kingdom — had acquired atomic weapons, infuriated the American population. (In much the same way a discovery that Iran had amassed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons would infuriate Americans today.)
1949 was also the year in which Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, drove the US-aligned government of Chiang Kai-shek into exile on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) and proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China.
Less than a year after that, in June 1950, the Cold War turned very hot indeed as the Moscow and Beijing-backed communist government of North Korea attacked the US-backed capitalist government of South Korea.
In the early 1950s communists were very scary people. Indeed, in the eyes of many Americans (some of them in very high places) communism was (gulp!) winning.
But that was then, and this is now.
We (that is to say, the capitalists) won, you (that is to say the communists) lost. But, if that is true, then why are the Reds not eating it? Have they not received the memo about "The End of History"?
It would seem not.
Which is why Mamdani’s victory has come as such a shock.
A self-proclaimed "democratic-socialist" should have about the same chance of becoming the mayor of New York City as — what? — a convicted felon becoming president of the United States.
Ummm ...
Bob Dylan gets it:
People are crazy and times are strange.
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range.
You see, I used to care, but
Things have changed.
You could call Mamdani a communist and all he would do is deliver a witty little lecture about the difference between democratic-socialism and authoritarian communism.
Then he would release a cut-down version on TikTok and watch it go viral.
Pretty soon "Hot Girls for Zohran" (yes, they’re a thing!) would start wearing T-shirts saying "I only date Reds".
Things really have changed.
And who in our neighbourhood gets it?
Labour? "Hot Girls for Chippie"? Unlikely.
Te Pati Māori? Possibly.
The Greens? Definitely! Why else would Chloe Swarbrick be folding away her keffiyeh and raising the Red Flag?
■Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
