A Mamdani For No Seasons

A marvelous review of my new book, Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani: “A Mamdani For No Seasons,” by Bruce Bawer, FrontPage Magazine, October 20, 2025:

I haven’t lived in my hometown, New York, for 27 years, but thanks to the Internet I’ve been able to keep in such close touch that sometimes, sitting at my computer in Norway, I catch myself thinking for a split second that I’m actually still in my last apartment on the Upper East Side, right down the block from Gracie Mansion, where the mayor lives. It’s an easy mistake to make: after all, I write regularly for Manhattan-based publications; I peruse the New York Post website daily for the latest local news and check the New York Times to keep updated on the newest twists in the left’s narrative; I exchange e-mails with New York friends; and I follow old New York acquaintances on social media mainly to monitor their Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Alas, as far as I can tell, these people’s TDS is still going strong. Nor is it just TDS that they’re afflicted with. Since October 7, 2023, many of them have been outspoken critics of Israel and have wrung their hands over the supposed suffering of the supposedly innocent people of Gaza. And in recent months, while the mayoral campaign has been heating up in advance of the November 4 election, many of them have expressed enthusiasm for the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani, who identifies as both a socialist and a Muslim. Yes, he’s made clear his distaste for Jews and his admiration for Islamic terrorists: on October 18, the Post ran a picture of him campaigning with Siraj Wahhaj, “a notorious, gay-hating Brooklyn imam who is an unindicted co-conspirator in 1993 World Trade Center bombing.” Yet a good number of the people whom I used to socialize with back in the Big Apple – many if not most of them Jewish – are likely to cast their votes for Mamdani.

To be sure, Mamdani wouldn’t be New York’s first lousy mayor. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, John Lindsay and Abe Beame turned Fun City into the crime-ridden, garbage-strewn, dystopic nightscape that you can see in Taxi Driver (1976). Ed Koch improved things slightly, only to be succeeded by the hapless David Dinkins, whose sheer incompetence made possible the election of Rudy Giuliani despite hysterical New York Times editorials calling him a dangerous fascist. Of course, Giuliani proved to be the city’s savior, ushering in an era that older New Yorkers remember as golden. (Not to mention that his expert handling of 9/11 led Americans to refer to him as “America’s Mayor.”)

But let’s face it: Mamdani makes Lindsay, Beame, and Dinkins look like Winston Churchill. In any case, despite all the damage they did, memories are short. And they seem especially short in New York City, where old buildings are always being razed and new ones raised, and where longtime New Yorkers move away while every year brings a fresh crop of young arrivals who have no historical memory of the city, and thus no idea which policies have made it livable and which have taken it to the brink of chaos. These newcomers tend to be reflexively left-wing and mindlessly in love with New York’s diversity and even, to an extent, its palpable danger, which they find exhilarating in comparison to the dull – if safe – Midwestern cities and suburbs where they grew up; many are also recent graduates of fancy colleges where they learned to view whiteness as evil and people of color as virtuous victims, whatever the facts on the ground. Between these naive young folks, then, and the aging Manhattan liberals who still believe everything they read in the Times and who feel that voting for a socialist Muslim would be the ultimate testimony to their own nobility of soul, it appears to be likely that Zohran Mamdani will become the 111th mayor of the City of New York.

Astonishingly, even people who’ve been around a long time, who’ve paid close attention to New York politics, and whom one thinks of as old-fashioned mainstream liberals are in Mamdani’s corner. Take 76-year-old Frank Rich, a veteran New York scribe who, in a stunningly fatuous and fawning 4500-word piece in the current issue of New York Magazine, whitewashed Mamdani to a fare-thee-well, depicting him as someone who provides “rare hope” (shades of Obama!) because he’s “smart,” “focused,” “transparent,” “consistent on the core political convictions that guide him,” “not an ideologue,” an “immigrant who fell in love with his family’s adopted city and country,” and “a politician who actually wants to do the job he is running for” – in short, the perfect candidate for upscale voters who are “clamoring for change” and who deplore “the damage that Donald Trump has inflicted on the Republic.” What? What “damage”? Not an ideologue? Transparent? Consistent? Good Lord, how can someone have been around for so long and still be so clueless?

There is much more. Read the rest here.