On June 24, New York City voters in the Democratic mayoral primary decisively chose Democratic socialist state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani to be their candidate in the November mayoral election. Mamdani’s campaign galvanized a generation of voters that had been slipping away from the Democratic Party’s grasp. This time, voters aged 18 to 24 comprised the largest voting bloc, whereas, in 2021, that was voters aged 60 to 64. 

Mamdani appears to be building a broad coalition that the rest of his party seems incapable of courting—and no wonder, when he’s running on common-sense economic solutions, which include a rent freeze, universal child care, free buses, a $30 minimum wage, and affordable grocery stores. Furthermore, unlike his chief opponent, Andrew Cuomo—the serially accused sexual predator and current legal counsel to war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu—Mamdani wasn’t backed by billionaires or towering figures of the Democratic establishment like former President Bill Clinton (also a serially accused sexual predator) and 84-year-old Rep. Jim Clyburn. 

If Democratic leaders didn’t loathe their own base, they would see before them a golden opportunity, as the party presently struggles to appeal to anyone beyond Liz Cheney and a handful of geriatric MSNBC viewers who love the status quo but think President Donald Trump is a little mean. Too bad Democratic leaders very much do loathe their base. And, as we’re seeing, they would rather smear that base as a mob of “terrorist” sympathizers than reflect on why someone like Mamdani—a bold critic of both capitalism and the wildly unpopular occupation and apartheid state committing genocide—excites people while Democratic Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t. 

I should preface all of this by stating that many aspects of June’s election give cause for hope: Mamdani’s victory issues a stark rebuke to the primary strategies that his Zionist, Islamophobic opponents wielded against him, endlessly smearing him as antisemitic for his record of activism against Israel’s genocidal war and illegal occupation of Palestine. But clearly, this didn’t work: After years of weaponizing and consequently hollowing out bad-faith accusations of antisemitism—all while voters have spent two years watching Israel perpetrate an extermination campaign in Gaza—these accusations no longer hold weight. 

Mamdani’s historic win serves as, at the very least, a significant challenge to, if not a referendum on, the political and cultural hegemony of Zionism and the rot of Islamophobia in U.S. politics. Still, rather than reflect on the spectacular failure of their offensive and insulting approach, Mamdani’s Zionist opponents—including leaders of his own party—are wielding his victory to further validate their worldview: one that frames Zionism as a marginalized, endangered ideology, and critics of Israel as towering, abusive oppressors. In the immediate aftermath of Mamdani’s victory, prominent Zionist voices like the militant organization Betar began issuing warnings for Jewish residents to flee New York City, insisting that no Jewish residents could be safe under a Muslim neighbor. All of this is pure racism—ironically invigorating mass hate campaigns against Muslim communities—while being grossly couched in the language of victimhood, in the typical playbook of abusers.

In recent days, Jeffries—whose most recent top campaign donors include the genocide-fueling American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Blackrock, and Lockheed Martin—has said he isn’t ready to endorse Mamdani, alluding to imagined, offensive comments and behaviors from Mamdani toward Jewish communities, which Jeffries didn’t bother to specify. In fact,  months into Trump’s term, the Democratic leader doesn’t appear to be “ready” to do anything except siphon away more money for Israel’s war crimes. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said he disagreed with Mamdani’s “comments” about Jewish people, without specifying what those comments were; to be clear, Mamdani’s only on-record comments on Jewish communities advocate for equality, peace, and safety, so it’s fairly concerning for Swalwell to disagree. Rep. Dan Goldman similarly said he couldn’t endorse Mamdani until he’s able to soothe and heal every Jewish New Yorker’s worst fears about him, even if those fears are racist and untethered to reality. Meanwhile, through a continuous torrent of libel, Mayor Eric Adams, launching an independent bid for reelection, has sweepingly, baselessly called Mamdani an antisemite and supporter of Hamas.

At issue seems to be Mamdani’s very reasonable comments last month, declining to condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada,” which celebrates global resistance to Israel’s decades-long colonization and genocide of Palestine. And while “globalize the Intifada” is a perfectly reasonable thing to say, Mamdani did not say it. Nevertheless, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, whose top campaign contributors also include AIPAC and who represents Mamdani and New York in the U.S. Senate, takes the cake for deranged takes on Mamdani. In a minutes-long rant on a radio station last week, Gillibrand baselessly accused Mamdani of supporting terrorism and a global “jihad” against Jewish people. At one point, you could hear in her voice that she was on the verge of crying. Where have we seen white women’s tears wielded to demonize a supposedly bestial, dangerous man of color before? 

While Gillibrand’s comments, for which she finally apologized in a phone call to Mamdani on June 30, were perhaps the most distinctly appalling, the throughline is the same: Mamdani is falsely presented as an Islamophobic caricature of hatefulness and violent fantasies against Jewish people, and, by proxy, pro-genocide politicians are smearing his voters as antisemitic, “terrorist” supporters. Together, Mamdani and his base are the oppressors. That framing then distracts from who the real oppressors are in this dynamic—one, the foreign apartheid regime that is committing genocide with U.S. funding and weapons, and two, the U.S. politicians, many of whom are Democrats, who would rather sponsor Israel’s genocide than fund resources for those in need across the U.S.

Islamophobia and racism embedded within U.S. policy defame Mamdani as an innate antisemite who must prove he isn’t, just as Palestinians must while their people are slaughtered by the same Zionists who weaponize antisemitism accusations to further their settler-colonial goals.

The Democratic Party’s reaction to Mamdani’s victory also demonstrates its shameless willingness to shift goalposts when a candidate is a Muslim man, a socialist, or critical of Israel. “Vote blue no matter who” applies only to candidates who back Israel’s genocide to the hilt and choose austerity and TikTok dances over redistributive policies—leftists must vote for those candidates or shoulder the blame for Republican authoritarianism, while centrists have no obligation to do the same for leftists.

Speaking of moving goalposts, consider the absurd and frankly outlandish standards Mamdani is held to, such as the repeated, bad-faith questions about different oppressors’ right to exist, like Israel and billionaires. Mamdani has thus far issued solid answers, stating that Israel does not have a right to exist as an ethnostate, but rather as one where everyone has equal rights, and that billionaires do not have this inalienable right either, as their existence relies on massive wealth inequality. Mamdani, it must be noted, is alone in receiving these questions. Islamophobia and racism embedded within U.S. policy defame Mamdani as an innate antisemite who must prove he isn’t, just as Palestinians must while their people are slaughtered by the same Zionists who weaponize antisemitism accusations to further their settler-colonial goals. Mamdani holds the same position on Israel as any person of conscience, as well as the United Nations, Amnesty International, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and every reputable humanitarian agency in the world. Meanwhile, note that Cuomo has a history of bizarre, overtly antisemitic comments, and Adams very recently partied with the proudly antisemitic streamer Sneako—but because both unconditionally support Israel, neither will ever be questioned on their antisemitism; Cuomo, certainly, has never been questioned on his status as counsel defending a foreign regime’s war crimes. 

I remain struck by the viral, wildly racist imagery of a pro-Mamdani flyer in New York City that was covered in a sticker that read “Believe Israeli women.” We know that sexual violence is an indelible feature of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, yet, with stomach-churning success, Israel has pushed the baseless narrative that Palestinians are systematically sexually abusing Israelis, relying on racist stereotypes about Arab men to achieve this. The sticker in question was meant to smear Mamdani as a rape apologist at best and rapist at worst. But it speaks volumes about the sincerity of Zionists’ concerns with sexual violence that this is how they treat a man with no allegations of sexual misconduct, all while embracing Cuomo, a man with at least 13.

Ignoring Cuomo and Adams’ demonstrated hostilities to Jewish people, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Zionist propaganda arm, continues to push public credulity to new extremes, broadening what Mamdani must condemn: from popular, worldwide slogans to random Twitter users who are mean to Israel online. It should speak volumes that while Palestinians’ oppressors are nuclear superpowers who have locked them in a concentration camp and dropped tens of thousands of tons of bombs on that camp in the last two years alone, Israel and Zionists’ oppressors, per the ADL, are social media accounts. At its core, this exposes the fundamental disparities between what Zionists present as Jewish feelings of unsafety and the material reality: Mamdani has faced credible death threats on the campaign trail and calls for his deportation from sitting Congress members—the natural consequence of racist smears that align him with terrorism and frame him as an existential threat to certain populations’ lives. Yet, in the Zionist imagination, physical, structural threats that people like Mamdani face due to Zionism and white supremacy are immaterial in the face of what a select group of people supposedly feel and imagine about him. I am stuck on the widely shared social media posts of a Zionist influencer from this past weekend, claiming to feel safer in Israel than in Vermont. Since instigating war with Iran, Israel has been a warzone—if one “feels” safer in a warzone than in the state of Vermont, that speaks volumes about the realness of those feelings.

Yet, at the end of the day, whatever racist delusions top Democrats may peddle about Mamdani’s nonexistent “antisemitic” and “terrorist” proclivities, the decisiveness of his victory is such that Democratic strategists and influencers are looking to his campaign for what winning strategies they can selectively glean from it, such as his excellent communication skills and well-received, organic social media presence. But these strategists and influencers continuously act as if Mamdani’s oratory and online prowess would resonate without his socialist policies. Good branding certainly helps, but branding can’t save neoliberal policies that neither help nor excite anyone but the narrow sliver of economic elites who benefit from the current state of affairs. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from trying: Take Jeffries, for instance, co-opting Mamdani’s campaign slogan of “a city we can afford” and advocating for “a country we can afford” the weekend after Mamdani’s victory—all while publicly, backhandedly smearing Mamdani as antisemitic.

All of this from the Democratic establishment is infuriating, but fundamentally, it is not a winning approach. Mamdani’s victory itself, through all the vile Zionist propaganda efforts against him, proves this. Alongside the more shamelessly Islamophobic attacks on Mamdani and Muslim communities from Republicans and online neo-Nazis, Democrats and Zionists have thrown their obscene smears at Mamdani and his base for months now—and it didn’t work. They can keep going and spend the rest of their lives trapped in their hideous, increasingly bygone world of bigotry and delusion, and alienate entire generations of voters if they’d like—but, as New York City’s mayoral primary election suggests, the rest of us have moved on. 

Editorial Team:

Lara Witt, Lead Editor

Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor

Rikki Li, Copy Editor