A Fascist on the Ballot in New York

The hour is late as I write. Not per the clock on the wall, but America’s darkest hour is nearly upon us. While I sleepwalked through the past months, a fascist managed to win the Democratic primary election for the mayorship of New York City. Mr. Zohran Mamdani and his popularity heralds the rise of antisemitism to power in America. Pandora’s box has been opened. May God have mercy on our souls.

It has taken a while for me to articulate just what it is that causes large crowds of antisemites to typically have their hate marches in locations and neighborhoods with large Jewish populations. The primary election victory of Zohran Mamdani—a man who is explicitly, proudly, and deeply antisemitic—in the city of New York, the largest Jewish minority city in the world and the second-largest Jewish population anywhere opened my eyes fully to what is happening. The fact that so many Jews live in New York City is exactly why Mamdani HAD to be elected there, or at least given a popular chance at being so. The reactionary force of antisemitism is at play. We have seen it many times throughout history; the Farhud pogrom, for example, in Baghdad, a city that used to be one-fourth Jewish. 90,000 Jews lived in Baghdad when the Farhud broke out in 1941.

Unmitigated and totally unprovoked violence (it always is unprovoked where antisemitism is concerned, though the instigators universally claim otherwise) against those Jews then quickly reduced that population to zero. That Jewish community had been there since the Babylonian exile 2500 years ago. ‘Hajj’ Amin al-Husseini, once-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and close ally of Hitler was there in Baghdad instigating the Farhud and pro-Axis resistance to the Allies and specifically the British. He would survive the war and go on to found modern ‘anti-Zionism’ and lead the charge of pan-Arab violence and war against the Jewish nation until being replaced by the equally-genocidal ‘Palestine Liberation Organization’.

Now, approximately 450,000 Iraqi Jews and their descendants live in Israel. Apparently there are three Jews now left in all of Iraq. This and so many other similar stories are exactly why Israel MUST exist—and why Mamdani and his ilk want so desperately to destroy it. Because people like Zohran Mamdani, and Amin al-Husseini, and Yahya Sinwar, and Hitler and his jackboots, and Khamenei and all his terrorist proxies, and going all the way back to the story of Haman and Xerxes I—antisemites like these come about every generation. They instigate the latent antisemitism woven into the very fabric of our culture, and have done so across millennia.

Antisemitism is popular, across every cross-section of society. It wins elections in democracies. It holds no specific political allegiances; or rather, it holds all of them. In fact, the rise of democracy and national identity that came with it across Europe was the primary catalyst for the ever-escalating series of antisemitic pogroms that began in the 1880s and culminated in the Holocaust, which left six million Jews dead on top of the many thousands across the sixty years prior. Until we the gentile world actually come to grips with these facts, the only safety valve for Jews across the entire world must be protected and defended as if the lives of millions are at stake. Because they are.

Among Mamdani’s many despicable beliefs and positions is the core idea that Israel should not exist as a Jewish state. He masks and obfuscates his rhetoric by claiming that he “supports Israel”—just not as a Jewish nation. In other words, he is a Jew and Israel hater. Anyone that knows Israeli history knows the simple fact that it is a refugee state from the hatred of the gentile world. To claim you want a “one state solution” wherein Jews no longer control their own national destiny—i.e. the destruction of Jewish self-determination—is the first of many dominos to fall that will ultimately allow for the extermination of the Jewish people across the entire world.

Since the first days after October 7th, 2023, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani has repeatedly invoked the new blood libel of “genocide” against the Jewish people and nation. This is Holocaust inversion against the great-grandchildren of Holocaust and Farhud survivors; the brave men and women of the IDF, the most moral army in the world, do not deserve this defamation. Antisemitic libel is nothing new in this world; but I did not expect to see its rise to power in my lifetime.

Mamdani has attacked those he claims are “progressives except for Palestine”. There is nothing “progressive” about supporting genocidal terrorists as they rape and murder Jews. You play your word games, Mamdani, and claim you “condemn” Hamas; yet, by unrelentingly attacking and defaming Israel and parroting Hamas talking points all the while, you are directly supporting Hamas, and have for years. Progressives—true progressives and futurists like myself—will always back the Jewish nation. Your hatred is but the passing of small men who fear the way of human progress. We who believe in true human flourishing know that a brighter future for all includes the Jewish people. Mamdani, you only seek to drag us back to the periods of time we promised we would never go back to again.

And, let’s be clear—Mamdani and his fascist movement co-opted “support” of LGBTQ Pride to unquestioningly support a fictional country called ‘Palestine’ that has never once existed in all of human (or any other) history. They may as well call themselves ‘Queers for Camelot’—if the Knights of the Round Table were also genocidal terrorists. I’m queer too, you know. I’ve never truly fit in anywhere in my entire life. Exiled from my communities for holding identities present humanity believes are incompatible with each other. Well, I may be alone, but I’d feel safer in a den of rabid hyenas than in Mamdani’s New York City; and if Hamas had their way there, we would all be thrown off the Empire State Building together.

There is no reality in which Mamdani’s election does not decrease the Jewish population of New York City; at least in the short term, say the next several decades to centuries. It may start slowly, but undoubtedly as Mamdani institutionalizes anti-Zionism across the five boroughs the flight from hate will rapidly increase. Though he promised to “work with” Zionists, he will start purging every Jew that doesn’t ‘bend the knee’ from positions of power on day one of his administration. Many will flee to other states in the hopes of finding a more understanding gentile community elsewhere. Many more will make Aliyah and move to Israel, and likely for good. These are not predictions, but simply observations of future history, based on the two thousand years prior.

Eighty years after the Holocaust, the current Jewish population of Europe is roughly 1.3 million, down from nine million before the industrial genocide of the Nazis and their collaborators kicked into high gear. Jews will leave for Israel long before they are slaughtered like in the past. Mamdani’s election as the eminent ‘anti-Zionist’ of America will ironically reinforce the Zionist nation with some of the best and brightest minds in America. It is brain drain that is already happening as I write; and we Americans will live to regret our shortsightedness.

A vote for Mamdani is a vote for a Jew-free New York City. It’s as simple as that. Remember this as we observe the next ten days, the words of President George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, August 18th, 1790: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

Mamdani has officially mainstreamed the new antisemitism in our country, to our greatest shame. Even if by some miracle he does not win this election, other Mamdanis will start emerging from their lairs of hatred, bigotry, and antisemitic depravity. Some will win positions of power. Mamdani may even eventually make a bid for President of these United States, especially if he wins the mayorship now; but that would be the end of life as we know it, and I do not wish to speculate further down that line of thought. All who have now ‘endorsed’ the fascist Mamdani shall bear the eternal shame of future history. You have sacrificed your own souls to score cheap political points from antisemites.

There’s that old joke about Mussolini, that despite the violence at least he made the trains run on time. The trains Mamdani wants to run are rather more like Herr Hitler’s. By eliminating the Jewish state, Mamdani and his ilk would clear the way for a new Holocaust; because the only reason roughly three and a half million Mizrahi Jews and refugees from pogroms across the Middle East and North Africa live now is because they could escape the violence and hate by fleeing to the Jewish state. Not to mention the fact that once Jews become a minority population anywhere, and especially in a democracy, eventually, inevitably, violence will come for them. If the Jewish state is not a Jewish state anymore, in time, it will be Jew-free.

This is simply a historical fact. The gentile world has not rid itself of humanity’s oldest hatred. I wish it were different. I wish we were better than this. But I have studied ourselves too much to be so naive. There’s a reason both Plato and Aristotle, diametrically-opposed as they were, both deeply mistrusted democracy. It killed their teacher, Socrates; the first sin of humanity against philosophy. A single individual who holds irrational views may possibly be reasoned out of them, with more or less ease. An entire crowd that holds those same irrational views is nigh impossible to reason out of them. Antisemitism is the oldest irrationality still extant among us. I know not how to save us from it.

If I were Jewish, I would have made Aliyah long ago. I love and cherish my friends and family in the states. But the intimate hatred of anti-Zionists is simply too much for someone of my weak constitution to bear. It stings like a Nazgûl blade; every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day. Even if you are much stronger than I and can bear the mental and emotional trauma, we are all but flesh and blood. You cannot ‘tough out’ Kristallnacht. You cannot ‘suck it up and endure’ the Farhud. Your choices are simple: flee, fight, or die; and fighting the mob that comes for you will probably lead to the latter. As Eli Sharabi wrote in ‘Hostage’, you always have a choice. To go down fighting can be noble; but to survive is much harder.

America is the only home I have. Thus, I must fight. I will no longer run. I will no longer cower. The antisemites may come for me in time; but if they do, at least I stood for the Good while I lived.

Am Yisrael Chai forever and ever.

_____

If a single voice can change the world, please let it be mine. For the rest of my life, I will regret not writing this article months ago when Mamdani’s campaign may yet have been nipped in the bud. I pray to a God I don’t believe in that I am not too late to save us from this fate now.