This column is for all my colleagues and friends who have been telling me how wrong I am about Mayor Zohran Mamdani because “democratic socialists” aren’t the same as “communists.”

I hope they were all listening to Mamdani’s inaugural address the other day.

If you missed it, here’s a topline quote from our new mayor: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

Spoken like a true commissar. Thanks, comrade!

The Soviets tried collectivism on an industrial scale for more than 70 years.

Here’s what the world got out of it: Mass murder. Starvation. Gulags. Forced labor. Secret police. An Iron Curtain dividing Europe. A world too often on the precipice of nuclear war.

It was an ideology of fear, suspicion........

© The Staten Island Advance