Zohran Mamdani, before emerging as the Democratic nominee for America’s top city mayor, promoted the notion of ‘queer liberation’ by defunding the police and endorsing prostitution. One wouldn’t be surprised to note his 2020 Twitter feed where he labeled the New York Police Department as prejudiced, encouraged the removal of a Christopher Columbus statue, championed divestment from Israel, and made various other radical statements.
Mamdani marked his political debut that same year, capturing a seat in the State Assembly. The distinct set of issues he proposed extended much further than establishing a socialist grocery store or banning billionaires. He joined the bandwagon of his party, dashing to echo the sentiments projected from his half of the virtual world with a fervent dash towards leftist ideologies.
Today, conventionally moderate Democrats attempt to reconcile the views of their New York City nominee, disregarding those past tweets from 2020 with vague excuses as it was a year of extraordinary circumstances and diluted norms. The often heated debate in 2020 is seen as a thing of the past, lost amid the chaos of health crises, lockdowns, shuttered schools, and the toxic political climate of the era.
The tragic death of George Floyd under a police officer’s knee was viewed as nothing short of inhuman. This event seemed to catalyze the extreme swing in public sentiment, but doesn’t justify the radical views spread by self-proclaimed leaders like Mamdani. His posts captured the attention and invoked heated debates, but failed to give a complete picture of the conditions during the era of 2020.
In his 2020 social media entries, Mamdani expressed his open support for communism. He rephrased one of the tenets from the Communist Manifesto ‘each to their need, each to their ability.’ New York City, he implied, could use a Communist in the mayor’s office. These ideas bloomed amidst the turbulence as anti-establishment sentiments peaked, prompting the tearing down of statues, while Mamdani audaciously flipped off a statue of Christopher Columbus in a display of his opposition to colonialist symbols.
One of the notable takes from Mamdani’s Twitter feed championed the cause of intersectionality, which gained momentum in 2020. It was an attempt to foster unity amongst the leftist activists, emphasizing that all struggles were interconnected. Mamdani drew a parallel between ‘queer liberation’, and potential occurrences of racial injustice, pronouncing his belief that liberation would only be achieved once everyone was free.
The very idea of queer liberation, in his view, was synonymous with defunding an apparently ‘racist and anti-queer’ NYPD, branding it as a substantial public safety risk. He certainly did not hold back in advocating a controversial stance on transgender ideology, with persistent insinuations that a person could switch genders solely based on self-identification.
Ready to embrace gender ideology entirely, demonstrating disdain for the NYPD and Christopher Columbus, and championing the narrative of anti-colonialism isn’t what one would consider unifying principles – yet in 2020, views such as these started to sound ordinary to many.
One could argue that the turbulent social climate of 2020, strained with tensions and radical sentiments, might’ve somehow influenced Mamdani’s extreme rhetoric. It was indeed a distinctive period of left-wing radicalism. But a glimpse at the actions of other Democrats and liberal establishments from 2019 to 2023 reveals an alarming trend.
Vice President Kamala Harris, during her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, professed her support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for incarcerated transgender illegal immigrants. This view can be considered extreme and heedless, but it wasn’t entirely her own invention; she was merely responding to a query from an American Civil Liberties Union survey.
Former President Joe Biden and everyone else on the left-of-center spectrum began addressing Hispanic people as ‘LatinX’, rejecting the traditional, gendered terms Latino and Latina. This questionable attempt to scour away sex differences also saw a shift in language, with terms like ‘pregnant people’ and ‘birthing persons’ replacing ‘pregnant women’ and ‘mothers.’ ‘Chest feeding’ now stood for ‘breast feeding’. A rather awkward attempt to eradicate the implications of gender from language, one might think.
Even government agencies and ruling parties couldn’t resist following in the footsteps of these profound changes. The contradiction reached a peak when major newspapers started publishing baseless conspiracy theories, one of which echoed Biden’s ludicrous claim that opposing abortion somehow translated to white supremist ideology. Even multinational corporations fell for Biden’s unfounded assertion of Georgia’s election law insinuating racial discrimination — a law that surprisingly led to an increase in voter turnout, especially among the black community.
Finally, how could we forget the role of media censorship during this period? Spurred by the justification of suppressing views as ‘dangerous’, it allowed the suppression of diverse opinions on topics like COVID-19. This unjustified effort of censorship pushed the ideological center far to the left and encouraged further radicalism.