Radicalism Isn’t Fringe Anymore In The Democratic Party

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the radicalism problem on the Right. It is, indeed, a problem that exists.

But is it nearly as mainstream as it is on the Left? Has it been imbibed? Has it been ingested? Has it been sucked into the great maw of the party and turned into the mainstream position on the Right?

The answer, of course, is no.

But on the Left, the answer is very much yes.

The Democratic Party has decided to let the radicals run the show. This has become extraordinarily clear over the course of, not just of the past couple of election cycles, but the past few months, now that Zohran Mamdani has been vetted by the entire Democratic Party as the future of the party.

All of the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party refuse to dissociate in any way from Mamdani, who is, in fact, a terror sympathizer; who is, in fact, a Marxist radical; who is, in fact, a complete, useless ne’er do well of a human being who has somehow managed to manipulate himself into a position to become the mayor of the financial center of planet Earth in New York City.

Mamdani is a Marxist with jihadist leanings. That’s the reality. And in the modern Democratic Party, that is a feature, not a bug.

There are a lot of people in the media who’ve been struggling to figure out how Mamdani was able to win a primary despite having these radical positions. I’ve been saying since he won the Democratic Party primary that his winning is not a bug; it is a feature quite popular among Democratic primary voters, because the Democratic electorate has basically split between moderates who are increasingly bleeding over into the Republican Party or into the independents, and the hardcore Democrats, who are increasingly moving ever further to the left.

We are now two generations removed from the specter of communism via the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union fell 35 years ago, and that means that there are a lot of people who don’t remember the Soviet Union or the risks of communism. When they think of socialism, they actually are thinking of mixed states, capitalist states that have a significant welfare portion in places in Europe.

But the solutions that they are proposing are full-scale nationalization projects, Marxist projects directly from the Soviet, Cuban, Venezuelan handbook. And they don’t even know they’re doing that — or they don’t care.

What that means is that the candidate who signals the furthest to the Left in many of these areas in the primaries is actually quite likely to win. That’s how someone with Mamdani’s positions on the Middle East and terrorism and jihadism — only 24 years removed from 9/11 — can be elected mayor of New York.

 New York City is likely to elect as mayor somebody who has sympathies for Al-Qaeda. I don’t mean he’s sympathetic to the actual terror attacks of 9/11, although he’s quite sympathetic to the terror group Hamas. I mean he believes that the Osama bin Laden-articulated grievances of 2001 against the West are mostly correct.

There are people who’ve been trained for generations in this country to believe that Western civilization is responsible for everything bad that happens on planet Earth, that third-world countries are third-world because of exploitation by the first world. They believe that terror centers are terror centers, not because of a deeply steeped radical Islamic ideology, but instead because somehow the West has been cruel to people.

That’s the kind of garbage Mamdani is preaching, and it is finding a ready audience among Democratic primary voters.

Very few Democrats have had the stones to simply say, “No, this is a bridge too far. The answer here is no.”

What’s amazing about that is that the risk factor in making such a statement is relatively low. Imagine that you are a mainstream Democrat, an elected official from Kansas, and somebody asks you about Mamdani. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that guy’s too extreme. I would not vote for him. I’d vote for Andrew Cuomo.” Would that cost you anything?

Let’s say that you’re a purple state Democrat. Or let’s say that you’re a blue state Democrat. You’re just not a New York City, far-Left Greenwich Village Democrat. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that dude is too much for me. I understand the primary voters chose him, but the reality is that is not representative of America.”

Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Instead, the Democratic Party has decided they must draft off of the Mamdani energy. And that’s why you’re seeing nationally a reflection of Mamdani politics via the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.

Mamdani is a child of the Bernie Sanders revolution because Bernie obviously is not just a socialist when it comes to domestic policy. He is also a Howard Zinn, anti-American extremist when it comes to American foreign policy. Mamdani is just following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders. But he’s adding a more diverse backstory.

People think Mamdani’s radicalism about the Middle East is somehow an inhibitor to his political success.

Wrong.

In New York City, with its Democratic primary base, his radicalism is an aphrodisiac. The Democratic Party base wants this signaling. They want the extremism. They want the Howard Zinn-ification of American foreign policy.

Israel pulls out of Gaza, and Hamas immediately starts consolidating control by literally pulling people out of their houses, lining them up, putting them on their knees, and shooting them in the head. There are videos of this happening.

And Mamdani has nothing to say about this. Not only does he have nothing to say about this, he’s asked whether Hamas should disarm now and he won’t even answer a question as to whether Hamas ought to be disarmed.

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was asked by a New York Times reporter, “I’m a reporter for the Times. I’m writing about Elise Stefanik’s comments in response to Mamdani’s Fox News interview, Mamdani’s campaign has said that her comments calling him a jihadist were Islamophobic. Please let me know if you want to respond.” 

Stefanik responded publicly on X:

I call Zohran Mamdani a jihadist because he is. Zohran Mamdani is a raging antisemite. Mamdani is the definition of a jihadist as he supports Hamas terrorists which he did as recently as yesterday when he refused to call for Hamas terrorists to put down their arms – the same Hamas terrorist group that slaughtered civilians including New Yorkers on October 7, 2023. 

He is Kathy Hochul’s endorsed jihadist Communist who she has empowered to destroy New York City. It’s why the New York State Democrat Party Chair refuses to support him. It’s why multiple Democrat Members of Congress refuse to support him. It’s why Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have still not endorsed him. Because Zohran is a jihadist who will destroy New York.

Why aren’t Democrats dissociating from him?

None of them will say it because they are trying to draft off the jet fuel that is radicalism and nut-jobbery inside the Democratic Party.

Bill Ackman stated on X of Mamdani:

It is now abundantly clear he is completely full of it. The whole thing is an act. Just look at the identical practiced smile with which he ends each answer. After watching him recreate his fake smile, your skin will start to crawl. Mamdani exudes inauthenticity and smugness. He denies or disavows any of his previous public statements that he knows will now cost him votes. The only takeaway is that he is an extremely articulate inauthentic actor. You can’t trust one word out of his mouth. And that’s before you get to his policies which make no economic sense.

This is the nature of the modern Democratic Party.

And they are moving in this direction at light speed.