So Tuesday is Election Day, and there are several big races on the agenda. But none has been so watched and commented-upon as the New York City’s Mayor’s race. Does it really merit national attention?
It does. But not for the reasons you’ve been hearing.
Whether he wins or not, there’s no doubt that the rise of Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign is based on vague promises of “affordability” and little else, represents a shift on the left towards socialism. Some also see in Mamdani the new influence of the Muslim vote in American politics.
But looked at more broadly, Mamdani actually represents a new vector in the left’s constant “oppressed v. oppressor” narrative: the anti-Israel vote. This cause is now firmly a part of the left’s platform, and it is unlikely that Mamdani would be leading without it.
Now, before you find that to be hyperbole, consider Mamdani’s various positions against Israel and America: he supports the BDS movement, finds America complicit in Israel’s “Gaza genocide,” and considers the Palestinian cause “central to his identity” (for the record, Mamdani was born in Uganda of Pakistani parents; his mother has famously stated that he’s not even American). Perhaps even in the last election four years ago, these would have been disqualifying positions.
Now, however, Mamdani’s positioning represents the new left, as also embodied in AOC, Squad members like Rashida Tlaib and other new faces. For instance, also on the horizon and running firmly in this ideological space is Kat Abughazaleh, who made news last week complaining about her arrest for interfering with ICE operations. She did, and the evidence is on video. But Abughazaleh, half Palestinian, is nonetheless a rising darling of the young left as she seeks the seat of longtime Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky in the Chicago area.
For all the talk of the new influence of the Muslim vote for the American left, there’s no way that demographic alone could significantly shift the vote in a big city like New York or Chicago without marrying to the Democrat’s cherished “oppressor” narrative. Here in New York, Mamdani deftly managed this through membership in the Muslim Democratic Club of New York (centered, of course, in Brooklyn).
Historically (and quite unusually), we can pinpoint the exact moment that this “alliance of the oppressed” was born in the U.S: a 1967 article published in the newspaper of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee titled, “The Palestine Problem.”
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was a black liberation group that, despite its title, saw at least one of its leaders, former Black Panther H. Rap Brown, sentenced to life for killing a police officer. The SNCC article in question, linked here, cast the Palestinian cause as aligned with the 1960’s black power movement – and therefore, allied Palestinians with the various civil rights causes of that turbulent era. It was a force-multiplier for both sides that redounds to this day.
Understand: this was new. Previously, it had been Israel that America’s left had seen as the oppressed, particularly post-WWII era and with the revelations of the Holocaust. But Israel’s success as a nation was rising, it clearly had a friend in the hated U.S. government, and, as the article termed it, Palestinians were, “persons of African descent… our brothers.”
Mamdani understands this, even if he’s never heard of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; the “anti-colonialist” narrative has been a reliable feature of his rhetoric. This is key, because this is the cognitive opening through which the 34-year-old candidate captures the hipsters who we’ve seen shutting down colleges and following their graying elders around at “No Kings” protests. It’s why you suddenly see “radical feminists” and even transgenders cosplaying in hijabs or Palestinian keffiyehs (note that there is arguably no place less hospitable to a radical feminist or transgender than an Islamic society. No matter. All “the oppressed” are allies).
The “oppressor” meme is also a solid contributor to the left’s young lurching to socialism. Socialism’s historical narrative, rooted in Marxism, has always been spiced with romantic buzz-terms like “revolution” and “struggle.” For a youth vote priced out of our cities by over-taxation and AI’s job-stealing arrival, the role of the under-served oppressed comes easily.
The New Democrats are indeed a “big tent” party, and that tent has “Here Meet The Oppressed” indelibly stenciled on its exterior. Mamdani and his fellow Zohranistas represent a group newly arriving to that tent; not “the Muslim vote” so much as the anti-Israel, fellow-oppressed vote. And more and more, traditional Democrats will find themselves on the outside looking in, wondering, “how did we get here?”
Given their past obsession with the relentless competition of identity group politics: they should only look to themselves.
The Coming Case Against John Brennan
Nearly a decade after the 2016 election, former CIA Director John Brennan is back in the spotlight.
If you haven’t been following it, Brennan was recently referred to DOJ by Congress for potential prosecution for perjury. He’s not taking it well. If you haven’t seen them, there are a couple of clips circulating online that depict Brennan reacting to accusations of how he weaponized his position as head of the CIA against Donald Trump (see here and here).
Clearly, John Brennan is a man not used to being challenged.
Now Brennan faces a potential charge of 18 USC 1001 (lying to a federal officer in the course of an investigation). But the case has hurdles.
The case centers on the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that concluded Russia interfered to help Donald Trump. Brennan told Congress in 2017 the ICA relied only on verified intelligence.
Yet later investigation showed that it was Brennan who insisted the intel from the ludicrous Steele dossier be included. Staffers in fact derided the Steele dossier, attempting to dissuade Brennan from using it by telling him it didn’t remotely meet CIA standards.
Brennan’s response? “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?” He then insisted on its inclusion.
When Congress attempted to investigate all this in May of 2017 (after Trump’s first election), Brennan’s sworn statement was that the Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.”
Oops.
The problem: the statute of limitations for this perjury charge is only five years; it expired in 2022.
So then: Why do so many observers expect Brennan to be the next Obama/Biden official indicted by Trump’s DOJ?
Here’s the most likely scenario. In Brennan’s later testimony of May, 2023 to the House, this time regarding the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop (Brennan was also one of the 51 intel officers who signed the infamous “Russian operation” open letter), then-Congressman Matt Gaetz went off-script and brought up the Steele dossier.
Brennan responded to Gaetz with, “the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment.”
Again: Oops.
That 2023 statement — once again contradicting what the record shows — is within the statute of limitations. Further, if DOJ uses that statement to secure an indictment, Brennan’s prior statements all come in against him. The 2023 statement gets the horse’s nose into the barn; DOJ brings in the rest at trial.
Brennan is quite vociferous in denying all this (in the second linked clip above, he looks ready to brawl). But notice his claim in that clip: that the open letter from the 51 intel officers doesn’t actually say that the laptop was a Russian op.
Here’s the quote from that letter: “It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter … has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Too cute by half; he’s lying. Apparently, a habit of his. Because that’s exactly what the letter says, and he knew that when he signed it.
Expect to wake up one day soon to the news that John Brennan has been indicted for making false statements to Congress.
And, by proxy: to the rest of us.
Sunday Podcast: Legendary Undercover Jack Garcia
In the wake of the big FBI/HSI/NYPD takedown of a mob crew who had infiltrated the NBA, we talk to Jack Garcia — among the greatest undercovers ever.
Now generally, an undercover assumes one identity, and if the case he’s working on branches out, all the better. What made Jack different? In his 26-year career, he was undercover for 24 of them — and often while juggling up to five different simultaneous identities, in different parts of the world.
It’s an amazing story of an amazing man and an amazing life — and a reminder of just who the good guys are out there.
How did a guy born in Cuba and raised in the Bronx manage to infiltrate the Gambinos right on their home turf? Never mind the other mafia families, along with Mexican cartels and Asian organized crime?
Join us to find out — straight from Jack! (P.S, with Part Two to follow…).
As ever, click below for a preview… and HERE for the full pod.
And finally….
Maybe the only person more worried about the New Democrats than the Republicans?
Chuck Schumer. If he doesn’t retire, AOC eats his lunch for him in 2028.
