There’s No Need To Fear Zohran Mamdani

I know a little something about fear.

Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for New York mayor last week, and this has frightened some people, even more than Donald Trump’s ongoing tyrannical reign. Apparently, free buses transporting poor people around the city is a bigger threat to democracy than masked ICE agents transporting random brown people to overseas torture prisons.

The extremely wealthy are worried that Mamdani’s policies might make them infinitesimally less wealthy. There are others who fear that Mamdani — who is both Muslim and pro-Palestinian — is hostile to Jews. Mamdani’s an out-and-proud socialist so he’s not really prioritized calming down rich people, but he has gone out of his way to reassure New Yorkers that he’s not antisemitic. It’s unclear in what way anyone, especially a Muslim, can safely be pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel’s right-wing government without critics declaring them antisemitic, but Mamdani keeps trying.

“I know that Jewish New Yorkers, like Jewish Americans, are fearful in this moment of antisemitism,” Mamdani told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “They are fearful, especially after the horrific attacks that we saw in Washington, DC, and in Boulder, Colorado. And they're fearful also in conversations that I have heard myself about life in this city. And I spoke to a Jewish man in Williamsburg not too many weeks ago who told me about the fact that he now locks the door that he used … to keep open for years because of a fear of who may come in. I spoke to a friend of mine after October 7th, who told me about going to his synagogue for Shabbat services and hearing the door open behind him and turning around with a tremor going up his back, not knowing who was walking in and what they wished for them.” (Watch below.)

“It’s through the conversations I’ve had with Jewish New Yorkers that I have developed a proposal for the Department of Community Safety that would include an 800 percent increase in funding for hate crime prevention programs,” Mamdani continued. “Because, ultimately, we cannot simply say that antisemitism has no home in this city or no place in this country. We have to do more than talk about it. We have to tackle it. That’s what we will do through this funding and through this commitment. We will root out bigotry across the five boroughs.”

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Zohran Mania Is Here

Some of Mamdani’s critics have argued that he’s guilty of an antisemitic trope when he says Jewish people are “afraid,” as that suggests they are playing the victim. I’d argue that true unreasoning bigotry is when you refuse to give people the benefit of the doubt. Twisting an expression of empathy into proof of antisemitism is appalling, especially when Mamdani is literally responding to questions that state as fact that Jewish people are rightly afraid.

Obviously, Republicans and even many Democrats won’t acknowledge the fears trans Americans feel right now. They certainly aren’t passing laws to make trans people feel safer — quite the opposite.

Republicans in particular rarely acknowledge escalating racism in America. At best, they’ll deem incidents of racist violence, especially by law enforcement, as an isolated incident. Anything more than this is considered “divisive,” like when Nikki Haley claimed that Barack Obama somehow made racial tension worse. Mamdani has never suggested that Jewish people are responsible for rising antisemitism just because they’ve talked about it.

Yet, Mamdani’s empathetic words and proposals still aren’t enough. Axis of Evil architect David Frum directly linked Mamdani’s primary victory to antisemitism in New York. Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen repeated the bigoted smear that Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s government is tantamount to antisemitism. Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand shamelessly suggested that Mamdani had endorsed violence against Jews. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said, “I don’t associate myself with what he has said about the Jewish people.” Does this mean Swalwell doesn’t agree with what Mamdani said on Psaki’s show and many other places? Fortunately, New York Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish, has defended Mamdani from this not-so-friendly fire.

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Right-wingers and craven Democrats are weaponizing antisemitism against the left, while downplaying and outright ignoring antisemitism from mainstream Republicans. This includes the current president. Trump has dined with Nazis and repeatedly trafficks in antisemitic tropes. He’s called Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer a “Palestinian senator,” rejecting Schumer’s Jewishness and using “Palestinian” as a racial slur. Yet, Gillen hasn’t labeled Trump an antisemite. She even voted to censure fellow Democrat Al Green because he wasn’t deferential enough to the fascist in chief.

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Gillibrand, during her interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, sounded like the president of one of those homeowners’ associations from the 1950s that tried to keep Black people from moving into their neighborhoods. Her rhetoric puts Mamdani on the defensive. He must prove he’s not a threat who’ll decrease the Democratic Party’s property values.

When Mamdani appeared on The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert asked him to address concerns that Jewish people might have that he wouldn’t be their mayor. No one ever seriously questioned whether Rudy Giuliani or Mike Bloomberg would be Black people’s mayor, as well. Worse, the policies that instilled fear in Black people, such as stop-and-frisk, were celebrated as helping “clean up” the city. That was the supposed “golden age” of New York.

As someone who lived in New York in the 1990s, I’d be more sympathetic to claims that “Mamdani makes me feel unsafe” if so many of the people saying this hadn’t voted for Giuliani twice. Giuliani consistently showed nothing but contempt for Black New Yorkers. The New York Times, however, endorsed his re-election “enthusiastically” in 1997, just months after New York police officers brutally tortured and raped Abner Louima outside a Brooklyn nightclub.

On February 4 1999, Amadou Diallo was standing outside his apartment building when four plainclothes cops stopped to question him. They were looking for a serial rapist and when you’re Black, you’re born a suspect. Diallo reached for his wallet, presumably to show that he lived there. This was a fatal mistake. One of the officers thought he was reaching for a gun and opened fire, but the recoil caused him to fall backward. The other officers assumed Diallo had shot their partner so they fired 41 shots total at Diallo, hitting him 19 times. An eyewitness said they kept firing even after Diallo was on the ground. Diallo, just 23, was dead. The NYPD ruled that the officers had acted within policy and behaved reasonably. Giuliani of course defended them.

The officers were charged with second-degree murder and reckless endangerment, but they were acquitted on all charges. Interestingly, midwestern tourists who freely carried wallets didn’t fear cops mistaking them for serial rapists and mowing them down outside their hotels.

I remember my mother calling me and warning me about taking my wallet out around cops. I reassured her that I’d stopped carrying my gun-shaped wallet, but underneath the snark, I was afraid. I didn’t know how I’d avoid a similar situation other than just dumb luck, and worse, when I was lying dead on a street, my body riddled with bullets, my grieving mother would hear the mayor of New York insist it was all my fault. What mattered most was the right people felt safe in Times Square. My insecurity somehow made more important people comfortable. That was New York City 25 year ago. There were no New York Times articles about Black people fleeing the city because of Giuliani’s aggressive policing or Bloomberg’s continued use of stop-and-frisk.

The Times endorsed Bloomberg in 2005, claiming he could be “one of the greatest mayors in New York history.” Bloomberg repeatedly defended stop-and-frisk, later saying, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.”

Giuliani and Bloomberg never proposed sweeping legislation directly targeted at making Black people feel safer or even wanted, usually quite the opposite. They focused on reassuring the same people Mamdani currently terrifies — well-off New Yorkers from all religious backgrounds.

Mamdani is a Muslim, and he’s been on the receiving end of mounting Islamophobia, both subtle (like Gillibrand) and gross, like Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, who posted on social media, “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York. He needs to be DEPORTED. Which is why I am calling for him to be subject to denaturalization proceedings.”

Politicians are often asked if they believe Israel has a “right to exist.” Republicans should also confirm whether they believe Muslim citizens have a right to exist in America.

I’d hope that anyone experiencing fear over a potential Mayor Mamdani would learn some empathy for how non-white minorities have felt under past mayors (and current presidents) who were openly hostile to us. Unfortunately, as Jean-Luc Picard warned, fear is an incompetent teacher.