In Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech two weeks ago, he said:
The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.
The unmistakable charisma and undeniable popularity of the democratic socialist up-and-comer have caused a flurry of contradictory reactions from opponents. On the one hand you had Donald Trump, who stands in diametric opposition to Mamdani’s politics on nearly every issue, slapping Mamdani with a seal of approval after the two met privately at the White House. On the other, you had the GOP-led Congress passing a nonbinding resolution, H.Con.Res.58, “Denouncing the horrors of socialism.”
What’s going on here? In a word: Mamdani’s political opponents are threatened by his unapologetic democratic socialism, and they’re trying a range of strategies to neutralize it. Honey, vinegar, whatever works to maintain the wealthy’s stranglehold on the economy.
First we have Congress’s resolution, the text of which suggests that adopting “socialist policies” would lead to totalitarianism and that any redistribution of wealth is a grave violation of traditional American values. It’s all nonsense.
Eight of the resolution’s twelve “whereas” lines are about the crimes of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and other authoritarian dictators. As a general rule, it’s probably a bad idea to try to learn history from Congressional resolutions instead of reading the work of serious historians, but there’s no denying the brutality of these regimes. What, though, is this supposed to have to do with the politics of Zohran Mamdani or other democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Democratic socialists oppose authoritarianism in our time. Our commitment to democracy is right there in the name. And we carry on the legacy of socialists before us…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
