“There are some ideas so absurd,” George Orwell is alleged to have said, “that only an intellectual could believe them.” Intellectuals, the British writer noted, were key to the ascent of some of the most destructive ideologies known to man. But there’s another truth, often overlooked, that helps explain their ascent: privilege. More often than not, the wealthy have played their own role in perpetuating the evils of communism upon the masses.

Discredited long ago, a new breed of politician has reemerged in America championing the idea that real communism just hasn’t been tried. Their very beliefs, outmoded and disproven, are a sign of how removed they are from the concerns of average, everyday working people. And Zohran Mamdani is their embodiment. 

Mamdani was elected mayor of New York on Nov. 4. At 34, he will be the youngest mayor to rule Gotham in more than a century. Following a failed career as a rap artist, Mamdani served a mere two terms in New York’s state legislature. He will now preside over not only the largest city in the United States, but what has long been the financial capital of the world.

But Mamdani’s youth and inexperience aren’t the real story. His beliefs are.

Mamdani comes from the Democratic Socialists of America, a formerly fringe, but growing, part of the Democratic Party. Among other things, the DSA seeks the “abolition of capitalism,” the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, and defunding the police. The DSA’s radicalism is undeniable. The organization condemned the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by the Trump administration and has called for lifting travel restrictions placed on the dystopian dictatorship that rules North Korea.

Mamdani himself has a history of extreme statements, refusing to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” and meeting with men involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His coalition is explicitly anti-Western. This is the “blame America first” version of the New Left that emerged during the Vietnam War, reincarnated for the TikTok age. As the writer Heather Mac Donald correctly put it, Mamdani “brings the student-activist mindset to City Hall.” One doesn’t need to be Nostradamus to forecast the results.

Mamdani and his ilk have portrayed themselves as fighting for working people. His ally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), claimed that Mamdani “put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers.” His victory, the DSA asserted, was “a rejection of the … establishment.”

But neither Mamdani’s backers nor his beliefs are “working-class.” Nor is Mamdani the polar opposite of the establishment. Indeed, he is the wealthy elite that he claims to despise.

Mamdani was born into privilege. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor at Columbia University with a long history of critiquing colonialism and the West. His mother is a renowned filmmaker who has directed Reese Witherspoon and other Hollywood actors and was even in a position to turn down directing one of the Harry Potter movies. The mayor-elect’s recent wedding was held at his family’s massive Ugandan compound, one of multiple properties they own throughout the world, and took place over three days, complete with armed guards, cellphone jamming equipment, and rows of Mercedes, Range Rovers, and other luxury vehicles. Mamdani’s 2024 rooftop engagement party was held in Dubai and was similarly lavish. These are champagne socialists.

In 2019, the writer Rob Henderson coined the........

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