A self-declared democratic socialist and a member of both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, Mr. Zohran Kwame Mamdani was elected on November 5, 2025, and assumed office on January 1, 2026, as the 112th mayor of New York City, with much hope and fanfare. His victory was built on many decades of struggle by Black communists in Harlem, workers’ struggles under the leadership of the Communist Party (CPUSA), and many civil rights activists who shaped the progressive and democratic political consciousness of the city. These struggles were central to the rise and victory of Mr. Mamdani as mayor of New York City.
The gap between his populist politics and his practice has created many disappointments among the progressive circles who campaigned and voted for him with hopes of radical change. He has not even completed his first year in office, but his policies reveal a shallow politics concomitant with the requirements of the American establishment within New York City. Subsidized travel within the city, city-run grocery stores, and a rent freeze definitely helps working people, but these are cosmetic changes and do not affect the core operational power structure of the city and its capitalist apparatus. The rent freeze stabilizes the income of landlords in a fragile rent market.
From the appointment of Jessica Sarah Tisch as New York City police commissioner to his reciprocal support for Hakeem Jeffries, Mamdani defines a politics of accommodation rather than the politics of radical change that the working people of New York want and voted for. The highly efficient Jessica Sarah Tisch represents the billionaire families of the city, whereas the Democratic Party leader Hakeem Jeffries, as U.S. representative for New York’s 8th congressional district, has received more than $1.5 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and pro-Israel PACs and defends the Zionist regime in Israel. These representatives do not hide their politics and priorities, but this reveals the shallow politics of Mamdani and his meaningless solidarity with Palestinians.
Leading anti-Zionist Jewish groups in the city, in solidarity with the Palestinian Youth Movement, led the protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but Mr. Mamdani neither participated in the protest nor encouraged people to participate in it against the Zionist regime in Israel. He told New Yorkers that he “never encouraged them to protest… they have the right to do so in the city… I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision.” Such statements define a hollow politics without principles. While taking such political positions, Mr. Mamdani does not bother to explain or justify his political position, as if he is not accountable to the people who voted him into power as mayor of New York.
However, Mr. Mamdani joined the Union Square vigil for the Hamas victims of October 7, which was organized by Israelis for Peace New York. Solidarity cannot be divided, but Mr. Mamdani’s political priorities are different, and his support for Palestine is cosmetic—like his smiles. He might be successfully balancing the budget of the city, but balancing politics by bartering principles is an ideological death trap in unforgiving history. No amount of propaganda or public relations stunts can rescue the rotten ruling-class politics from the dustbin of history.
The English author, teacher, and philosopher Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad’s oft-quoted phrase “Socialism is like a hat that has lost its shape because everyone wears it” is an apt analogy for politicians like Mr. Mamdani who take cover behind socialism to pursue populist politics that accommodate and create compliance with the structures of power without changing them. Such politics and leadership provide much-needed oxygen to the ruling classes and legitimize their capitalist structures with popular political and democratic support. Such political alliances not only ruin the image of socialism, socialist politics, and radical leadership but erode trust in revolutionary socialist politics as an available alternative. Mr. Mamdani’s politics is not even minimal social democracy but pursues a politics of compliance with the bourgeois system while hiding behind populist politics branded as socialism—sans socialist principles and its radical politics of change.
Mr. Mamdani’s political praxis is squandering the historical legacy of the Harlem communists and their struggle for justice in the city. His politics is ruining trust in the socialist and progressive politics of many working-class struggles which fundamentally kept the progressive soul of the city alive—the very soul on which Mr. Mamdani built his political campaign and won. It is not only the worst form of ideological betrayal but political hypocrisy concomitant with the requirements of the ruling class to destroy any form of alternative politics from within and weaken the movements against capitalism in the city and beyond. Its ramifications will be felt far beyond the borders of the USA and New York. But who cares? Mr. Mamdani is merely another bourgeois politician who used socialist and progressive planks to cross the electoral river successfully without upholding the interests of the people in the city and beyond.
Political praxis is not a purity test but an ideological commitment to use political power and positions of authority to uphold the interests of the marginalized majority who work but suffer under patriarchal, feudal, and brutally racialized capitalism that exploits New Yorkers, Americans, and working people across the world. Mr. Mamdani and his politics represent none of this, and he does not even celebrate the working-class values that shaped many structures in the city he calls his home. Homes are based on mutual trust, and Mamdani is breaking the trust of the people who campaigned and voted for him to victory. The same people can write his political epitaph as well. Survival alone is not enough, and cosmetic changes are not sufficient. The empowerment of people to lead, change and shape state, governments and policies to fulfil their own needs and desires is an urgent necessity in democratic politics if human rights—which are eroding daily under bourgeois politics—are to be reclaimed.
