let's not eat ourselves

on moving forward with mamdani

in an interview with stephen colbert, zohran mamdani was asked whether he believes israel has a right to exist. mamdani answered:

Yes, like all nations I believe it has a right to exist and a responsibility to uphold international law.

colbert continues his line of questioning:

There are many people in New York, even people who would support your candidacy otherwise who don't want to support you because of the Jewish community's fear of the true and rising anti-semitism, not only around the world but in this country and shamefully in New York… What do you say to those New Yorkers are afraid that you wouldn’t be their mayor?

mamdani uses this question to first recall an anecdote, saying:

After the horrific war crime of October 7th, a friend of mine told me about how he went to his synagogue for Shabbat services and he heard the door open behind him and a tremor went up his spine as he turned around not knowing who was there and what they meant for him.

before moving onto proposed policy:

That's why at the heart of my proposal for a department of community safety is a commitment to increase funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800% because, to your point, anti-semitism is not simply something that we should talk about, it's something that we have to tackle. We have to make clear there's no room for it in this city, in this country, in this world.

there are leftists who’d condemn zohran mamdani’s sympathies for israel.

i believe we should do as the kids say and “let him cook”.

you see, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the western political landscape. we must be cautious. in a NYC democratic town hall debate where everyone was asked where they’d visit first as a mayor—every candidate creepily reeled off some variation of “i would visit israel”. these aipac-funded freaks were clearly trying to bait mamdani into the same zionist quicksand that trapped jeremy corbyn. the british left watched in agony as the best prime ministerial candidate the uk has had in decades was smeared by ruport murdoch’s cthulian media empire with allegations of anti-semitism that were so relentless, it cost him a general election against boris fucking johnson.

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mamdani is doing his best to dodge that fate and he’s a better man than me. i would’ve cackled like a banshee at the absurdity of being asked whether i believe in the right to exist of somewhere 5,000 miles way from the city i’m trying to be the mayor of¹. mamdani managed to respond with an answer that left him relatively unscathed:

I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs.

there comes a time where we gotta consider whether it is strategically expedient to whip off our shirts, reveal the white, black, green and red painted on our naked bodies and yell, “free, free palestine!” sometimes you gotta realise that you’re in handcuffs and smile with a hairpin behind your teeth.

as a publicly debated question, “does israel have a right to exist?” is an open booby-trap—the political equivalent of a creepy guy following a woman home on a dark night to hound her for her number. there’s no right way to respond to someone so spooky but, even if she’s single, she knows it’s less stressful and far safer to respond “sorry, i have a boyfriend” than “ew… no.”

without indulging the pessimism that mamdani’s history of solidarity with palestinians is insincere, performative or not radical enough—i’d rather not get bogged down by the idea that telling a stage of zionists and/or zionist supporters what they wanna hear is a cancellable offence.

mamdani’s policies are socialist without shame. he has openly refused capitalism on cnn by finessing . the presentation of his ideas into public discourse via somewhere as internationally recognised as new york is tactically crucial. we are fighting a war that needs to be won on many fronts. we have been losing for far too long. i’m a massive supporter of saying whatever the fuck you gotta say to make it home. if mamdani’s victory reveals anything, it’s that its time; time to understand the environment beyond theory, maneouvre in ways to further our aims, engage with people beyond digital audience and discern when a fight needs to be won by thumbs in the coliseum and when the fight just needs to be fucking won.

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in an interview on the breakfast club, mamdani was asked about the nypd budget. ideologically, i’m an abolitionist. my instinct in any conversation about police is to get rid of them altogether and re-direct all the funding into more robust social services and community-led safety initiatives.

“Liberals co-opt leftist ideas and language and misapply them so that conservatives then get to point out the gaping holes in the liberalized versions of them to discredit the original concepts”

despite this, i’ve seen how debates about “defunding the police” appeared in public discourse after the calls for abolition were warped into a more toothless, liberal shape.² it is clear that abolition is an unpopular opinion generally and one that would require mass co-operation in order to fully realise. it’s a topic easily shouted down by right-wing opponents and liberals alike and thus too volatile to present in public discourse without being bastardised.

with that in mind, mamdani responds:

I want to be very clear: we are not defunding the police. What we are talking about is sustaining the number of police that we have within the police department. When I talk to those police officers themselves they tell me they signed up to join the police force to tackle serious crimes and yet what they're being asked to do today is serve as mental health professionals and social workers… What we've seen elsewhere in the country is you can actually move mental health calls out of the police department. That can reduce the calls police have to deal with by 20% and in doing so, you can increase police response time to those major categories of crime.

the most recent study shows the nypd has a 67% approval rating among new yorkers. i’m not gonna fault mamdani for finding a diplomatic way to put an electorate that nut-guzzles the police at ease.

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zohran mamdani ticks enough boxes ideologically where anyone remotely leftist should be able to recognise that he is someone to get behind and/or learn from.

i realise what i’m saying about him echoes what a lot of others attempted to say about kamala harris, that we should all just rally behind her because she’s the best option. where harris differed to mamdani was the scope of their respective offices and their visions for those offices.

to this day, harris still has not called the israeli occupation of palestine “a genocide”. forget the dire urgency for intervention, (something the us doesn’t have a problem with when it comes to dropping bombs, god forbid they make another country stop) she still avoids fully condemning a genocidal regime in the banal realm of language.

as president, her positions on foreign policy would’ve echoed throughout the world. abstaining to vote for funders of genocide is an understandable moral position to stand resolute in—especially considering her supporters confess that her inauguration would’ve lulled them into a political state of brunch complacency.

mamdani is not running for president. again, outside of zionist duress, he speaks of palestine favourably enough that it is not overly naive to consider his verbal capitulations to israel are largely ceremonial (and he’s still used his position to introduce bills against the funding of illegal israeli settlements in palestine).

his democratic socialist approach to political issues are principled. he’s likely not going to align with the everyone on everything and the idea that he is, is the sort of magical thinking that stagnates political action in the relative comfort of theoretical fantasy. wake up. its time to win in a realm beyond the gotcha.

we have been marvelling at palestinian resilience, outsourcing liberation to the people of Gaza whilst not facilitating our own. but there are many ways to skin a cat. there is a promising candidate ticking a large portion of boxes, fighting and winning. this should radicalise you—wherever you are. at a certain point, it is necessary to relinquish moral purism and pyrrhic victories to focus on securing material wins.

the point is now.

1. i guess they had to ask, seeing as the nypd has a branch in israel.

2. plugging a rare, non-substack essay if you’re interested: https://blackyouthproject.com/the-price-of-radical-concession