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As the New York City mayoral race enters its final stage, one would expect front runner Zohran Mamdani to being doing what front runners usually do: mouth platitudes about unity and assure the city and the world that he intends to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, not just the ones who vote for him. Instead, Mamdani’s campaign appearances lately have become even angrier and more defiant than they already were. Either Mamdani is feeling the heat after outgoing Mayor Eric Adams’ endorsement of his opponent Andrew Cuomo, or is signaling that his mayoral tenure is going to be just as unpleasant as his campaign has been. Or both.
Whatever the case may be, he apparently now thinks that charges of “Islamophobia” will get him elected. And in New York City today, he may well be right.
On Friday, Mamdani came out swinging against what he claimed were attacks upon him solely because he is Muslim. “I have sought,” he complained, “to be the candidate fighting for every single New Yorker, not simply the Muslim candidate. I thought that if I could build a campaign of universality, I could define myself as the leader I aspire to be, one representing every New Yorker, no matter their skin color or religion, no matter where they were born.”
Alas, in the face of all this open-hearted good will from the Marxist Muslim candidate, the “Islamophobes” have been relentless. Mamdani initially thought he could just ignore them: “And I thought that if I behaved well enough or bit my tongue enough in the face of racist, baseless attacks, all while returning back to my central message, it would allow me to be more than just my faith.” He started to tear up, or to appear to tear up, anyway, and whined: “I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.”
NBC News reported that Mamdani’s emotional display came after Cuomo “appeared to agree with a conservative radio host who said that Mamdani would cheer if a terror attack happened while he was mayor.” The exchange took place on WABC’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning,” a radio show with Sid Rosenberg. Cuomo said: “That job is a scary job. You wake up as mayor, you wake up as governor, any morning there’s a prison uprising, there was just a mass shooting, there’s Legionnaires’ disease, there’s gonna be a fiscal collapse, Wall Street’s moving to doubt, any given morning there’s a crisis. And people’s lives are at stake — God forbid another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?”
Rosenberg laughed and said: “I could. He’d be cheering.” To that, Cuomo responded: “That’s another problem. But can you imagine that? If Mamdani was in the seat on 9/11, what would have happened in this city?”
Now Cuomo says: “I didn’t take the remark serious at the time, of course I think it’s an offensive comment, period. But it did not come out of my mouth, that’s the point.” Right. But really, how offensive is it? Mamdani has repeatedly refused to condemn the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” which is a more or less open call for the murder of Jewish civilians. He praised the Holy Land Five, a group of Muslims who served prison time for funneling charitable contributions to Hamas, during his brief career as a rapper. Yet in spite of all that and more, we’re supposed to close our eyes and assume that he would be heartsick and enraged if people who hold the same beliefs that he does act upon them and carry out an act of violence against infidels.
Cuomo went on to say that Mamdani was playing the “victim”when “in reality, he is the offender,” and he was absolutely right. Cuomo explained: “Zohran himself is the person who has created the tension with the Jewish community and the LGBT community and the Italian community and the Black community, etc. He is not the victim, he is the offender, and it’s a political tactic.”
Yes, it is, and it might just work. Mamdani grew up in a world in which politicians and other public figures recoiled in horror at any hint of “Islamophobia,” and hastened to assure the Muslim community of their good will, even at the expense of sensible and necessary counterterror measures. He no doubt expects far-left New York voters to react the same way now, and they probably will.
Cuomo, however, maintains that “New Yorkers are not Islamophobic,” and added: “New Yorkers are all from different places, that’s who we are. And New Yorkers accept one another, and New Yorkers have no tolerance whosoever for discrimination of anyone.” Of course. Yet this statement in itself reflects the confusion that always surrounds this issue.
Leftists intentionally create that confusion by using the word “Islamophobia” both to refer to discrimination and violence against innocent Muslims, and for honest discussion of the motives and goals that animate jihad violence worldwide. Mamdani is hoping to ride that confusion into Gracie Mansion. It wouldn’t be the first time that rage swept a candidate into office, and is likely to end about as well as it did the other times this happened.
