https://arab.news/wxenc
As a former New Yorker, I found Zohran Mamdani’s great political upset on Tuesday remarkable. But the 34-year-old recent Muslim immigrant from Uganda with Indian roots did not do it the usual way. He did not just repeat the mainstream ideas of one of the two major parties, as candidates from marginalized communities usually do, nor did he hide or apologize for his religious or ethnic identity. He did the opposite, running against the mainstream, advocating unorthodox views and wearing his minority bona fides on his sleeve, while focusing on the main goal, which was how he could serve New Yorkers better.
It was a historical upset against long odds — his opponents threw everything at him. President Donald Trump trashed him as a communist and threatened to cut off federal funds. Calling him a communist, as Trump and Elon Musk have done, is a stretch; Mamdani ran as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but he was not the first to do so in New York and there have been scores of officials across the country who belonged to this group. Democratic socialism can be placed on the left of social democracies in Europe, but way to the right of authoritarian socialism or communism.
