There has always been something fishy about Zohran Mamdani’s political rise.
Not because a socialist winning New York City is impossible. New York has been voting itself deeper into the progressive swamp for decades. Eventually somebody was going to arrive with a shovel.
What struck me was how quickly Mamdani went from relative obscurity to the darling of the Democratic Left. He didn’t simply win an election. He seemed to materialize as the answer to a question nobody outside the activist class had been asking.
That deserves a little scrutiny.
And before somebody starts screaming about election denial, let’s be precise. Mamdani won the general election. He got more than 50 percent of the vote. The question isn’t whether the certified result says he won. It does.
The question is how this particular candidate became so politically powerful, so quickly, and whether the manufactured popularity surrounding him deserves more examination.
Because we have now entered the era in which politics is not merely about winning votes. It is about manufacturing the perception that everyone else has already decided to vote for you.
And that brings us to the bot story.
I saw the report circulated by EYakoby on X alleging that a secret bot operation was boosting Mamdani’s presence online and that cyber experts had traced IP addresses to City Hall. The X post raising he allegation
I have not seen enough independent forensic evidence to declare that allegation proven. But that’s precisely why it should be investigated rather than dismissed.
And there is an interesting wrinkle here: even people involved in Mamdani’s own social-media operation have acknowledged that bot activity is part of the environment surrounding political content. City & State quoted Anthony DiMieri, a co-founder of the firm responsible for many of Mamdani’s campaign videos, referring specifically to comments that aren’t coming from “bot farms.” (FlipHTML5)
So the question isn’t whether bots exist. Of course they do.
The question is whether somebody was using them to manufacture the appearance of organic support for Mamdani.
If the answer is no, great. Prove it.
If the answer is yes, then New Yorkers have a rather serious problem, because the guy who supposedly represents the future of democratic politics would have arrived there with a little help from the digital equivalent of a warehouse full of fake voters.
That would be almost too perfect.
Mamdani’s political appeal is built heavily around social media. His campaign understood something most politicians still don’t: young people don’t necessarily want another politician explaining policy to them. They want a politician who looks like somebody they might follow on TikTok.
And Mamdani was very good at it.
City & State called his social-media success “overwritten legend” and noted how his short-form videos helped create an approachable political persona. (FlipHTML5)
That’s legitimate political skill.
But political skill and political authenticity aren’t the same thing.
A candidate can be genuinely popular while simultaneously having his popularity amplified by an organized digital machine. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
That’s why the bot allegation matters.
Now, let’s talk about the larger phenomenon.
New York City has problems.
Lots of them.
Housing costs are obscene. Homelessness is visible everywhere. Crime remains a concern. Businesses are struggling. Taxes are high. Government is bloated. The subway occasionally feels like an audition for a dystopian movie.
And the Democratic answer was Zohran Mamdani.
A democratic socialist.
A man who campaigned on government intervention so expansive that even some Democrats spent the election explaining why his ideas were not quite as radical as they sounded.
This is the guy New York chose to run the largest city in America.
And then there is the identity politics.
Mamdani is New York City’s first Muslim mayor.
Again, that fact by itself means nothing sinister. Being Muslim doesn’t make someone a terrorist, and millions of American Muslims have nothing to do with political Islam or extremism.
But Americans are allowed to discuss political Islam without pretending the subject doesn’t exist.
That’s particularly true in New York.
This is the city where Islamist terrorists murdered thousands of Americans on September 11.
The slogan after 9/11 was “Never Forget.”
Apparently, in some quarters, that has evolved into “Never Forget Unless the Candidate Is Progressive.”
Mamdani isn’t responsible for 9/11. That would be absurd.
But the political Left’s willingness to embrace his worldview while simultaneously treating any serious discussion about Islamism as bigotry deserves scrutiny.
And Europe provides an enormous warning sign.
London has spent decades experimenting with multiculturalism, mass immigration and political accommodation. The demographic and political transformation of parts of Europe isn’t imaginary. British Muslim political organizations are openly pointing to Mamdani as an example of what political mobilization can accomplish. The Muslim Council of Britain has described his grassroots campaign as an inspiration and launched efforts to increase Muslim political participation. (FlipHTML5)
That’s politics.
And Muslims have every right to participate in politics. But can they stop the intifada?
Americans have every right to ask what happens when political organizations increasingly organize around religious identity, particularly when some elements of political Islam hold views that clash directly with the progressive ideology that has embraced them.
That’s where the Left has created one of its most delicious contradictions.
For years, progressives have lectured America about the oppression of women by patriarchal religious cultures.
Then they discovered a political constituency that doesn’t necessarily share all those views.
Apparently oppression becomes considerably more complicated when the oppressed person might vote Democrat.
The Left used to talk incessantly about intersectionality.
Now we’re watching intersectionality turn into a political game of Twister.
And Mamdani is right in the middle of it.
There is another irony here that I find particularly entertaining.
The same political movement that spent decades telling Black Americans that the Democratic Party was their natural political home increasingly seems to be constructing a coalition in which other identity groups have become more strategically important.
The Democratic Party isn’t abandoning Black voters, of course.
It would never say something so politically suicidal.
But watch where the energy goes.
Watch who gets celebrated.
Then, wWatch which movements are suddenly treated as the cutting edge of progressive politics.
The Left has become remarkably flexible about its principles when there is a sufficiently large voting bloc attached to the other end of the principle.
Mamdani may be the perfect expression of that evolution.
He’s young.
He’s attractive.
He’s Muslim.
He’s a socialist.
He’s fluent in the language of activist politics.
He knows how to use social media.
He can package radical ideas in a way that makes them look almost cuddly.
That’s a hell of a political product.
Whether it’s a good government is another question entirely.
And that’s why I actually welcome Mamdani as mayor.
Let him govern.
That’s the beauty of elections.
Eventually, slogans encounter budgets.
Activism encounters administration.
And ideology encounters reality.
You can promise free buses, massive housing intervention, higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers and a dramatically expanded government.
Then somebody has to pay for it.
You can promise the world.
Eventually somebody sends you the invoice.
That’s when the fun begins.
Mamdani has now moved from being a symbol of the progressive future to being responsible for an actual city with actual people, actual businesses and actual consequences.
And that’s where Donald Trump becomes the unavoidable comparison.
Trump spent years being told that his politics were an aberration, that his supporters were a fringe, and that his ideas represented some temporary departure from America’s normal political trajectory.
Mamdani represents almost the exact opposite philosophy.
He is the progressive establishment’s idea of where politics is going.
Fine.
Let’s see.
New York can be the laboratory.
Mamdani can conduct the experiment.
And the rest of America can watch the results.
If his policies produce prosperity, safer streets, affordable housing and a thriving city, I’ll give him credit.
But if taxes rise, businesses leave, government expands and the promised progressive utopia turns into the same old New York problems wearing a more fashionable shirt, then perhaps America will learn something useful.
And if that alleged bot operation turns out to be real?
Well, then we have learned something else.
Apparently the revolution needed a little artificial intelligence.
For a movement that claims to represent the authentic voice of the people, that’s an awfully synthetic way to become popular.
Which brings us back to my headline.
Mamdani may be enormously popular.
He may genuinely represent what New York wants.
Or he may be the political equivalent of untreated syphilis: something that spreads remarkably well, causes enormous damage, and leaves everybody wondering why somebody didn’t deal with it sooner.
