I finally had a chance to read that long Astead Herndon profile of Zohran Kwame Mamdani in the New York Times, which I recommend. I was especially struck by this passage.
Gaspard first met Mamdani in South Africa in 2016, at the premiere for “Queen of Katwe,” a Disney movie set in Uganda and directed by Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair. Gaspard said the young man, just 24 at the time, showed flashes of the charisma that would later serve his entrance into politics. He compared the curiosity and demeanor of young Mamdani to that of — yes — Barack Obama. But Mamdani’s is a story that, like that of many other first-generation immigrants, doesn’t fit neatly into American political conventions like the two-party system or our Black-white racial framework. A composite of multiple worlds: Indian, Ugandan, American, Muslim, New Yorker.
Many moons ago, after the first Bernie Sanders campaign, I wrote a piece for the Times on the rise of democratic socialism in America. What got my attention at the time was what Herndon emphasizes here: how the new generation of democratic socialists break, in all sorts of subtle ways, ways that are both local and global, with the nation-state. Here’s what I wrote:
Today’s young candidates of the left tell a story of personal struggle that meshes with their political vision. Mr. Obama did that — but where his story reinforced a myth of national identity and inclusion, the socialists’ story is one of capitalism and exclusion: how, as millennials struggling with low wages and high rents and looming debt, they and their generation are denied the promise of freedom.
The stories of these candidates are socialist for another reason: They break with the nation-state. The geographic references of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — or Ms. Tlaib, who is running to represent Michigan’s 13th District in Congress — are local rather than national, invoking the memory and outposts of American and European colonialism…
Auteur: Corey Robin
