Does the Mamdani Moment Signal an Off-Ramp for the Carousel of Scapegoats?

Some Democrats, aided by well-funded think tanks, believe listening to voters means having to accept Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy. Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City shows another way is possible, writes Matt Gallagher

New York City has fallen – at least that’s the apocalyptic ‘MAGA’ worldview, in which the election of 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as Mayor-Elect marks the dawn of a new ‘Islamo-Marxist’ dark age.

Terrified by visions of breadlines in Times Square and a burqa on the Statue of Liberty, radical keyboard warriors furiously type that ‘Western civilisation is being destroyed from within’.

“He’d never have won were New York full of New Yorkers,” wrote right-wing pundit Michael Knowles. Meanwhile, conservative William Wolfe declared that “Americans didn’t elect Mamdani – foreigners did”. And self-styled “proud Islamophobe” and Donald Trump ally Laura Loomer labelled the Democratic Party’s Mayor-Elect of New York City an “enemy combatant”.