So, the Great Replacement Theorists had a bad day last week, when we all woke up in our different time zones to the news that young Mr. Z. Mamdani had been elected Mayor of New York City. In contrast to them, I’m so happy about this that all my sentences are sounding poetic.
He first got my attention because his main competitor Mr. Cuomo seemed to find it difficult to pronounce his surname. He said, rhythmically like a rapper, “The name is Mamdani. M. A. M. D. A.N.I. You should learn how to say it.” Having one’s name mispronounced is a micro aggressive discourtesy that all immigrants experience, and it’s at the heart of the multicultural culture that New Yorkers exemplify. If you meet me, and my name is unfamiliar, and my face is different, and my history is different from yours, if you want to get to know me, as I am, not as a stereotype, or a caricature, ask me: ‘How should I pronounce your name?’ It’s a first step. Extend to me some grace, and some respect, and some empathy. We can build a civilization on that.
Mamdani has been elected against every attempt to discredit and challenge his right to try to represent the citizens of the most famous City in the USA. As a recent citizen, naturalized in 2018, and born of immigrant parents on both sides, from South Asia and Africa, his electoral success threatens the white supremacist narrative which is being aggressively pursued by the current US administration.
Specifically, his election is triggering those who fear that Muslims are taking over leadership positions in Western countries, as part of a systematic and long planned global takeover in which long marginalized minority people in settler / colonizing countries assert that ‘their time has come’. In fact, those very words were part of Mamdani’s campaign slogan. In his case, he successfully converted the ‘Our’ in ‘Our Time Has Come’ to include the majority of people whose vote he needed. They identified themselves with his campaign goals.
Ironically, he has appealed to the same demographic in NYC that Trump appealed to in the broader USA - the disenfranchised, and those who felt disillusioned and disempowered by traditional politics; those who felt they were being disinvited, not included, in the benefits and rewards of the glorious American Dream, and who could increasingly not afford to live in ‘the greatest City in the world’.
He has alchemical qualities, he has successfully transformed his perceived liabilities into assets: his youth and relative inexperience, his ethnic minority status in a majoritarian Anglo European trending social system, and his socialist principles in a country which worships capitalism, and in which social inequality is becoming rigid, in violation of the democratic values it proclaims.
He ran a positive campaign, believing New Yorkers deserved better representation. He contrasted strongly with Cuomo, who has several charges of sexual assault and harassment of women against him. Mamdani stated that if that was what ‘experience’ looked like, he did not want it. Nor did he want the experience of causing hardship and devastation to citizens through bad policies and choices, as Cuomo did during Covid. He said: ‘I did not do this and this and this - because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo’. It was a litany of accountability, to which hardened and cynical legacy political campaigners had not been subjected for years, if ever.
Instead of being driven around in sedans, behind shaded glass windows, Mamdani walked, escorted to his speech venues by crowds of supporters, ordinary citizens, revelling in populism which looked humane and attractive, for a change. Many societies in the world have been drifting towards unconcern, indifference and cruelty towards their most vulnerable citizens in recent years. Supremacist ideas, based in historical injustice and ignoble beliefs, have been resorted to by many, as a way of finding some sense of certainty in a time of disruption. If a sense of security means insulating oneself from others and differentiating between those who have social capital and those who have not, that has been the chosen path. We see this in the dehumanization of ‘those who do not belong in our country/city/neighbourhood’, ‘who are not one of us’, ‘whose values are different from ours.’
I suggest it’s not race appeal that Mamdani embodies but gender empathy: a more equitable and effective courtesy towards women, who have been the great losers in politics in the past decades. It is frankly astonishing that men who have historically gone on record, both verbally and in their gross conduct, disrespecting women and girls, have had the brazen audacity to repeatedly present themselves for election. It is a disgrace to be represented politically by people who we would not feel safe with, whether inviting them to our own home or being invited to theirs. Mamdani represents a generation with progressive views, which does not reduce women to the status of tradwives, subordinates, objects or toys.
It has been a dangerous time. People have been manipulated into thinking their choices are limited, and that they should be grateful to occupy the margins of other people’s wealth and success, and become a designated underclass, devalued and dependent on the whims of those in power, their rights eroded. Performative politics has taken the stage, and the word ‘unprecedented’ has become a euphemism for the overthrow of democracy and decency, both in principle and in process. But let us remember the 5th of November. It’s a turning point.
And it’s a welcome change. Imagine if he is not a Trojan horse but a real and inclusive leader, whose focus is not on self-enrichment but on building self-worth, self-respect, human dignity and community. We have not seen such a one for so long, we may find it hard to recognize when he does come. We may find it hard to pronounce or spell his name. So, we should learn how to say it.
