Zohran Mamdani will destroy NYC, so come visit before it's Sharia and KGB

Zohran Kwame Mamdani New York Assemblyman, mayoral frontrunner, proud Muslim and DSA mascot, and the only guy who can call himself an anti-landlord socialist while texting from his family’s Ugandan estate during his 3rd wedding celebration.

The Trust Fund Socialist’s Brooklyn Takeover (And Why You’re Already Part of It)

Look around your Poli-Sci seminar. See the kid in the vintage Carhartt jacket who always has opinions on the Global South but seems suspiciously vague about where the money for his off-campus Williamsburg apartment comes from? He’s about to become the Mayor of New York City.

And you—drowning in student loan applications while applying for unpaid internships at The Nation? You’re the reason he’s winning.

Welcome to Zohran Mamdani’s New York, a meticulously curated fantasy island where the vibes are immaculate, the buses are free, and reality is politely asked to wait outside. Mamdani, a 33-year-old State Assemblyman and the Democratic nominee, is cruising toward Gracie Mansion, polling numbers (hovering around 40%).

He’s only winning because the opposition is a spectacular clown car: the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, the semi-disgraced Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa, a 71-year-old man whose entire personality is wearing a red beret.

The narrative being pushed by the media—when they aren’t busy unionizing—is that Mamdani is the voice of the people. He promises a “life of dignity” guaranteed by City Hall. Sweet, right? A $30 minimum wage (which will definitely not kill the bodega where you buy your 3 a.m. beer). An eternal freeze on rents (because the best way to fix a housing crisis is to ensure nothing new gets built). And replacing the NYPD with a "Department of Community Safety," which sounds suspiciously like an RA with a clipboard.

We’ve seen this movie before, and it always ends with the audience demanding a refund. In San Francisco, progressive DA Chesa Boudin was recalled so hard he practically left a crater in the pavement while the city deteriorated into a nationally embarrassing mess.

Spoiler alert: The actual working class of New York isn't asking for this. The city has actually been lurching rightward. So if the city hates his platform, how is the DSA’s golden boy winning?

Because the New York that votes is no longer the New York that works.

Mamdani’s rise isn't about policy; it’s about aesthetics. It’s the triumph of the BA Brigade—the young, highly educated, often white, and usually childless transplants who have colonized the brownstone belt from Astoria to Park Slope.

This is a demographic that treats politics like a Spotify playlist—a curated selection of beliefs that signal virtue without demanding sacrifice. They are, in short, you. Or at least, who you are training to be.

You think New York is the epicenter of ruthless American capitalism? That’s adorable. New York is now the epicenter of the Do-Gooder Gravy Train. The city is home to 600,000 jobs in the nonprofit sector. That's 17% of the private workforce.

These aren't soup kitchens. These are NGOs, foundations, and activist hubs swimming in public money—$20 billion in taxpayer cash in 2021 alone. This is the nonprofit-industrial complex, and it is the new political machine.

Mamdani is its perfect avatar. Before winning his assembly seat, his resume was aggressively thin. He was rejected from The Nation’s internship program (ouch). He tried to launch a rap career (don't ask) and worked as a music coordinator on a Disney film. The film was directed by his mother, the globally renowned Mira Nair. His father is a famous historian.

He is the multinational trust-fund kid who slummed it as a "housing counselor" at a nonprofit largely funded by the government grants he now pretends to despise. It’s performative poverty, financed by generational wealth.

It’s easy to mock the resume, but it misses the point. In today's urban Democratic verticals, working at an NGO is the qualification. It’s where the idealistic college graduates are warehoused.

It helps that his campaign was also subsidized. Thanks to New York’s insane 8-to-1 public matching funds program, Mamdani turned $2.5 million in private donations into an extra $9.8 million in taxpayer money. Those slick, TikTok-ready campaign videos? You paid for them.

Look at who endorses him. The United Auto Workers (UAW). Why? Because there are almost no auto manufacturing jobs in New York. Instead, the UAW organizes the subsidized professional class: the museum workers, the publishing assistants, and the thousands of "student workers" at NYU and Columbia.

While the subsidized class rises, the actual productive industries are fading. Manufacturing jobs? Gone. The multi-generational working class—the Black, Puerto Rican, Irish, and Italian communities that built the city—are leaving in droves. Over 200,000 Black residents left NYC between 2017 and 2022.

They are being replaced by people whose values are, frankly, bizarre. In neighborhoods that went heavily for Mamdani, like Park Slope, 79% of residents have a degree.

Look at the streets. Citi Bikes litter the sidewalks—fantastic if you’re a single 26-year-old commuting from Bushwick to a hybrid job in SoHo; useless if you have three kids and groceries. Weed dispensaries with Apple Store aesthetics are popping up next to youth soccer fields. The entire city is becoming an urban environment designed exclusively for people who view adulthood as an extended adolescence.

This new class is high on its own supply of ideological purity. A reported 63% of NYC Democrats support Mamdani’s fantasy of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the UN. It’s a titillating left-wing fever dream that ignores minor details like the U.S. Constitution. It’s symbolic, unrealistic, and wildly popular among people who think organizing a protest encampment solves complex geopolitical issues.

The real danger of the Mamdani mayoralty isn't just that his policies will fail—they will. It’s that his supporters are entirely insulated from the consequences.

They believe their own values are the solution to the urban decline happening around them. When the $30 minimum wage strangles your favorite bodega, they won’t notice. When the free bus service turns the MTA into a rolling homeless shelter, they’ll just Uber. When the lack of police makes the city dangerous, the consequences will fall on the neighborhoods they only visit for the "authentic" food.

The New York of the nonprofits is a place where people without great wealth, trust funds, or public subsidies can no longer afford to raise a family.

And when the dream inevitably curdles—when the tide of human damage reaches the brownstones and the vibes turn sour—they won't stick around to fix it. They’ll just decamp to Austin, or the Hudson Valley, or wherever isn't yet broken, ready to try their experiments on a fresh batch of human beings. By then, you'll probably be moving with them