Zohran Kwame Mamdani (born 1991 in Kampala, Uganda) is quite the showman and to get his supporters in New York City to back him he is a political and social chameleon, showing evident maturity way beyond his young age. It's actually quite simple for him and comes naturally and he is obviously very comfortable in his own skin. Little wonder that he succeeded in winning the election for mayor against a very dull, worn out, has-been opponent like Cuomo.
First off Mamdani is quite the showman. Remember, his "profession" before he ran for office was as a rapper. Not an attorney or any sort of boring professional but an out of the box artistic player and performer of rap music. So he certainly qualifies as a successful novice showbiz person and as someone familiar with the undercurrent and above current rhythms and beats of popular culture.
Let's face it, he has become the left-wing media's uniform darling and poster boy, especially as he cheekily stands up to US President Donald Trump with cocky chutzpah. In spite of his on the record anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Capitalist, pro-Islamist and pro-Hamas stance, he comes across as quite the likeable charmer - which makes him all that much more dangerous as an effective opponent, even an enemy, of Capitalist, Christian, and corporate America and of the Zionist and Jewish State of Israel and their cause, hence a big challenger and danger to mainstream Americans and Jews.
Second, he is an excellent communicator and orator with hip charisma. He is able to get his Democratic Socialist messages and agendas delivered in short, penetrating cheerful soundbites with a by-now trademark friendly smile catering to an amenable and fawning media that then transmits it to the gullible masses. This appeals to ultra liberals and pseudo-socialists and resonates deeply with the type of youthful voters freshly brainwashed by a WOKE educational system that does not prepare them for a career (hence the frustration, ed.) but has been infiltrated by pipe-dream pro-Marxist, pro-Arab, pro-Islamist, anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel educators and teachers. These have pollinated millions of young gullible minds with their politically poisonous ultra-leftist ideology and group thinking.
Third, he is very Asian, as both his parents were born in India, with distinctive dark good looks and sporting a short black beard and mustache. He knows how to tap into the unrealistic wild imaginations, twisted dreams and distorted aspirations of his selective audiences by easily, skillfully and manipulatingly appealing to African American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Latino-American and all sorts of minority audiences living in America.
Fourth, he constantly reminds his listeners, audiences and supporters that he is a proud Muslim and believer in Islam, evidently following in his father's shoes and faith since his mother is reportedly a Hindu. So he automatically gets the Muslim and Islamic voters who vote as a block regardless of the fact that he praises gays and the LGBTQ+ crowd.
By the way, that a Hindu and a Muslim get to marry and live with each other means that they have to contravene a sea of cultural and religious cross-currents within their genuine interfaith marriage. Just one glaring difference is that while Muslims are monotheistic, meaning they believe in only one God (Allah), Hindus are polytheists, meaning they believe in many (hundreds of) gods.
Fifth, Mamdani is an immigrant, coming to America at the age of seven and only becoming a naturalized citizen in 2018. So he automatically appeals to new immigrants, both legal and illegal, who have arrived in the USA by the millions and often live in the shadows of American society so they flock to the call of someone like Mamdani who speaks for them.
Furthermore, taking it a step further, Mamdani has the habit to seamlessly graft himself onto African-American culture and its narratives and versions of history by depicting himself as a living incarnation of fighters for Black Civil Rights. He often comes up with quotes, swallowed hook, line and sinker by his listeners, from famous civil rights figures like the two assassinated heros of Black Liberation in America, Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) and Malcolm X (1925-1969). This immediately resonates with his African-American supporters while in truth Asian Americans, mainly Indians, Arabs, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who have a strong family life and have proven to be resilient and successful immigrants to America have avoided the social blight and physical violence that African Americans face in their daily lives.
Unlike most African-Americans, Mamdani has had a charmed existence, having been brought up in wealth and having the advantage of a superior education throughout his entire life. It is this advantageous upbringing and education that has honed Mamdani's personality but at the same time helped to radicalize his views, already radicalized by his uber-educated and financially successful parents, This helps Mamdani connect and resonate with the ultra-Liberals and the so-called Democratic Socialists of America who oppose the American Establishment and civilization rooted in the Western World, the Graeco-Roman and the Judeao-Christian heritage in any form.
Arab and Asian Muslims in America have mostly been refugees from Arab and Asian Muslim countries that have succumbed to military and political chaos and destruction such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and many others. In America they do not join the traditional American immigrant melting pot, retain their Muslim Islamic religion and have been granted a welcoming home where they continue to be Muslims with all that entails.
They basically all hate Israel. After all, all these Arab Muslim countries used to have large populations of Jews living among them and in the twentieth century they uniformly united to kick out all the Jews living in their midst. So it's a no-brainer to realize that here they are in America and in American cities where hundreds of thousands, millions, of...Jews... live so naturally. It's a knee-jerk reaction that the newly arrived Arabs and Muslims continue to hate the Jews now in their new American homeland.
Add this to the visceral hatred of Israel and the no-questions-asked sympathy for the Arab Palestinians and it's a recipe for vicious antisemitism and anti-Judaism.. It is the easiest of dog whistle calls and call to arms to unite the Arab Muslims behind you when all Mamdani has to say is "the Israeli occupation, Genocide in Gaza, suffering Palestinians etc" as well as other anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic and anti-Zionist mendacious tropes and you have the Arab Muslim votes handed to you on a golden platter without much ado.
An important subject that remains unmentioned by Mamdani:
Black Africans treated Asians living in Africa as trash. The most notorious episode that illustrates this is when in 1972 the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin (1928-2003) expelled all of the Indians (i.e. Asians). He gave over 80,000 of them ninety days to get out of Uganda where they had lived for about a hundred years, being brought there by the colonial British to do work in Uganda that the native Ugandans refused to do.
The Indians of Uganda were the economic leaders and backbone of the economy. This mass expulsion was carried out on the orders of Idi Amin who was a faithful Muslim to boot (when he was finally deposed, Saudi Arabia granted him a safe and comfortable exile). It was one of the most disgraceful acts of ethnic cleansing and vile racism displayed openly by a Black African tin pot dictator.
There is a lot of literature and reading to do about the 1972 expulsion of the Indians from Uganda but it is a dark chapter that is not mentioned often or spoken about, certainly not by Mamdani. One of the victims of the mass expulsion of Indians from Uganda was Mahmood Mamdani (born 1946, in Bombay, India), father of Zohran Mamdani, who was expelled together with 80,000 of his Indian brethren. Yet somehow Mahmood Mamdani found his way back to Uganda to work as a professor and married Mira Nair (born 1957, in India) there. It is where their son Zohran Mamdani was born in 1991.
Zohran Mamdani will never mention that his father and 80,000 Indian (Asian) men, women and children were ruthlessly expelled from Uganda by a Black African Muslim dictator, Idi Amin, and his henchmen in 1972. This act of ethnic cleansing that rocked the life of the Mamdani family as well as more than 80,000 of their brethren should serve as a warning about the violent rule of a Black Muslim dictator.
Mamdani does not mention this cataclysmic chapter in the history of Asians in Africa because it would make him seem as either a hypocrite when he praises Black leaders. He would come across as out of touch with reality or as a revisionist of his own family's and people's history.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. From 2017-2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com
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