Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory over Governor Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City is a sign of the ascendancy of the antisemitic, radical, socialist left. Were he elected the mayor of the city that is the center of the American press, Mr. Mamdani would become a symbol of the new party. 

Mr. Mamdani would be spending a city budget of $115 billion — larger than those of 46 states, behind his own state, California, Texas, and Florida. But as a good socialist, Mr. Mamdani is planning to raise $10 billion in new revenue through higher taxes on businesses and the wealthiest New Yorkers. 

Mr. Mamdani also has plans to invest $70 billion in publicly subsidized housing and open public land for housing development. Mr. Mamdani has promised tax-paid buses and childcare. In his greatest proof of hostility to free enterprise and love of big government, he has proposed a government-run grocery store program for New York City. 

That the most underserved neighborhoods are dominated by small, immigrant-owned bodegas and shops doesn’t seem to have fit into his calculation. Mr. Mamdani’s big-government grocery store plan would destroy the small businesses he ought to be helping. 

The clearest test of Mr. Mamdani’s socialist dream would be to see if and how government bureaucrats can run grocery stores cheaper and better than Trader Joe’s, Wegman’s, or the local Gristedes and D’Agostino supermarkets. 

Mr. Mamdani’s positions on social policy would make him the most radical major politician in America. While Mr. Mamdani shares socialist economic beliefs with Senator Sanders, the mayoral candidate’s antisemitic statements and social views are far from even the mainstream left.

As former secretary of the Treasury and lifelong Democrat, Larry Summers, posted on X: “I am profoundly alarmed about the future of the @DNC and the country by yesterday’s NYC anointment of a candidate who failed to disavow a ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan and advocated Trotskyite economic policies. I fear it is evidence that our party is following the most problematic aspects of Britain’s Labor Party. It didn’t work there, and it won’t work here.”

The slogan “globalize the intifada” refers to the first and second intifadas, which were violent uprisings in the late 1980s to early ’90s and early 2000s by Palestinian activists against Israeli citizens and military. Many Jewish scholars consider the slogan a direct incitement of violence against Jews. Mr. Mamdani’s refusal to repudiate the slogan led the Holocaust Museum at Washington to call his position “outrageous and especially offensive.”

Mr. Mamdani has promised to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu should he ever travel to New York City. His willingness to lock up the Israeli leader is based on the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu last November. 

As the Washington Post described it, Mr. Mamdani is “seeking to become the first Muslim mayor of a city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel.” He “did not shy away from criticizing the Israeli government for its handling of the war in Gaza … including declining to condemn pro-Palestinian rhetoric like ‘globalize the intifada.’” 

In addition to antisemitic rhetoric, Mr. Mamdani fits the radical social values perfectly. 

He wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer funds for a transgender treatment facility, including for minors. His campaign website promises to create an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs that would have $87 million in funding.

As author Nick Adams wrote, “Mamdani promised that his city will achieve ‘queer liberation’ by defunding the police. I do not pretend to know what ‘queer liberation’ is, but I do know that defunding the police in a city that is already experiencing a horrific crime wave is both insane and absurd.”

Faced with the reality of the unpopularity of defunding the police, Mr. Mamdani has moderated his language. However, he has said he would cut the police overtime budget and the department’s $80 million communications budget. 

Before the campaign, Mr. Mamdani in a post on X called for the New York City Police Department to be defunded and branded it a “rogue agency.” In another post, he described the NYPD as “wicked and corrupt,” while calling for it to be dismantled. In classic hard-left anti-police style, Mr. Mamdani said he would not hire more police officers and instead would create a city agency called the Department of Community Safety. 

By every standard, Mr. Mamdani is way out of the norm. He will almost certainly be a disaster for New York City and the Democrats.