After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
As a European I’d see his policies as left wing but not as socialist, communist or whatever. And as a person who has been to New York countless times I would see anything that improves the quality of life such as public transport, childcare, food poverty as a generally good thing. Whether Mandani manages to pull it off and doesn’t go to the dark side like every single other New York mayor remains to be seen.
His policies are fundamentally socialist and I’m not sure if it’s possible to classify them as anything else. That said, you don’t necessarily need to be a socialist to support them.