ON 4TH NOVEMBER (4/11), New Yorkers made history. The 34-year-old immigrant Democratic Party’s New York City’s mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, trumped up and trounced President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s and other American billionaires’ independent candidate, Andrew Cuomo, a former New York governor, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate in New York City’s (NYC) mayoral election.
Unlike a quarter of a century ago, when NYC was an epicentre of bombings, deaths, anguish and seemingly endless processions in honour of the dead, and unusual BIG threats by former American president, George Bush Jnr., to American enemies – especially the Axis of Evil states – the NYC narrative has changed.
Mandani’s fight with the capitalist system, which endeared him to the NYC electorate and his policies – rent freeze, free buses, affordable housing, free childcare, higher corporate taxes, etc, regarded as an upliftment from the Communist Manifesto – made him detestable to the Republicans and his party’s dominant faction, and their billionaire backers – might have been picked from his father’s critiques of colonialism, capitalism and the liberal state. Put off by his ideological convictions, President Trump and Elon Musk call him a communist, and Congressman Andy Ogles calls for his deportation from the United States.
Today, NYC isn’t funeral-like, it exudes democratic fragrance to a fringe of Democrats highly disposed to Mamdani’s candidature, liberal Whites, African Americans and American immigrants, whose forebears pushed the Western frontier up to the Pacific in 1890 or thereabout, daily toiling to transform the United States into a prosperous melting pot.
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The narrative may have changed for the majority of New Yorkers, but has remained unchanged for the United States Presidents. During 9/11, President George Bush Jnr was so pissed off, he could only rain invectives and BIG threats to the anonymous bombers and a few “rogue” states. It is now the turn of President Trump to be grotesquely livid with angst, hurling invectives and threats on the eve of 4/11 and thereafter to Mamdani and New Yorkers.
Why is Mamdani so hateful to President Trump, American billionaires, the MAGA oligarchs and coldly regarded by the Democratic Party’s establishment?
The Republican negation of America’s multiculturalism with Trumpism is being negated by NYC ‘s emergent Mamdanism. And 4/11 is New York City’s, and by extension United States’ affirmation of faith in America’s pluralism, a monumental rejection of the MAGA viewpoint that the United States should be made great only by Heritage Americans, the next graded citizens and the American Zionists.
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4/11 underscores that MAGA profiled minorities have been graciously offered an American context to dream big dreams and realise them – including Mamdani’s actualized mayoral project.
And the republican extremism upturning American politics and society upside down, has never been more threatened by anybody than Mamdani’s 4/11 victory, bursting the myth of Trump’s infallibility in, and domination of New York’s and American politics.
To the chagrin of MAGA establishment, Mamdani is the composite other changing the political narrative in NYC: a two-layered immigrant: Indian-Ugandan, son of Mahmud Mamdani, an Ugandan public intellectual, and above all, a Muslim on a frontal collision course with Zionism, unapologetically sympathetic to Gaza, vowing to deal with Prime Minister Netanyahu as he is: a war criminal.
Mandani’s fight with the capitalist system, which endeared him to the NYC electorate and his policies – rent freeze, free buses, affordable housing, free childcare, higher corporate taxes, etc, regarded as an upliftment from the Communist Manifesto – made him detestable to the Republicans and his party’s dominant faction, and their billionaire backers – might have been picked from his father’s critiques of colonialism, capitalism and the liberal state. Put off by his ideological convictions, President Trump and Elon Musk call him a communist, and Congressman Andy Ogles calls for his deportation from the United States.
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Whilst Trumpism is transforming America into a pariah nation by an exclusive fascist trajectory, and jumbled protectionist economics, nascent Mamdanism is poised to truly Make New York Great by pluralist inclusion and pro poor policies.
The impact of 4/11 on NYC’S politics and its spill-over effects on America’s body politik is nightmarish for President Trump and Elon Musk. The danger is that the NYC model could become dominant in American politics. As its foreign ripples are nightmarish for sit tight democrats around the world, apprehensive that 4/11 could become a veritable global lesson in the assertion of political strength by the people.
And due to the concentrated bipartisan venom against Mandani’s vision, 4/11 could provide another context for the military industrial complex to wage wars at home or outside, to divert attention from the New York model, whose momentum could hardly be slowed down or lost in American politics without a ferocious Republican fascist backlash.
If it becomes a global democratic battle cry beyond the United States, then 4/11 would be a big fillip to tottering democracies, choked by fascist democrats in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
With a pluralist trajectory, New Yorkers are becoming politically identity-blind. Mandani’s 30% Jewish votes in the mayoral election, has deconstructed the Zionist lobby’s larger than life image in NY City’s, and possibly American politics.
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New York’s 4/11 victory isn’t only a ray of hope to American pluralism, it underscores that dysfunctional African democracies – such as Nigeria’s – where a governor’s candidate could hardly lose an LGA election; where at critical hours governors, senators and congressman abandon their parties, and join the ruling party, could be saved.
4/11 raises disturbing questions about the state of African democracy:
1. If the voter is an emperor in NYC, why can’t he be a king in Cameroun or Nigeria?
2. If the New York electoral agency could seamlessly and transparently conduct the 4/11 mayoral election, what prevents Africa’s electoral agencies from conducting highly transparent elections in their countries?
3.Why are most of African democracies dysfunctionally disconnected from the people?
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In 2001, NYC provided a context for the hawks in President George Bush Jnr’s administration, fronts for the American military industrial complex to commence the global war against terror. A quarter of a century later NYC has provided a context for American immigrants to say enough is enough to fascist politics, Zionist overkill and corporate greed.
And due to the concentrated bipartisan venom against Mandani’s vision, 4/11 could provide another context for the military industrial complex to wage wars at home or outside, to divert attention from the New York model, whose momentum could hardly be slowed down or lost in American politics without a ferocious Republican fascist backlash.
Jahun writes from Dutse, Jigawa State.
