A Catastrophic Media Failure

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, July 03, 2025

 

In the days since Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory, Americans have received an education in the philosophy that guides the man who is likely to be the next mayor of America’s largest metropolis. It hasn’t been pretty.

 

Occurring far too late in life to be dismissed as a youthful indiscretion, Mamdani endorsed the Leninist goals of augmenting “class consciousness” and “seizing the means of production.” With the power he seeks, “we can . . . gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership,” he promised. He lavished praise on the Bolshevik putsch in Russia. He feted the Black Liberation Army figure Fred Hampton, a figure who “believed” in the “socialist revolution.” His model for a successful mayor is an explicitly communist revolutionary who helmed a “detachment of Red Volunteers” in India.

 

Mamdani sure walks like a duck. Now that there’s nothing much to be done about his political ascension, the truth can be told.

 

The press has not ignored these revelations, even if they did little to uncover them. On Sunday, Mamdani was asked by NBC News host Kristen Welker about his apparent communist sympathies. “Are you a communist?” she asked. “No, I am not,” Mamdani replied. He suggested the allegation was an outgrowth of his accusers’ racism more than their powers of observation.

 

Who knows? Maybe Mamdani is less a communist revolutionary than he is a generic revolutionary with an affinity for anti-American radicals, whatever their ideological stripe.

 

In his NBC News interview, Mamdani insisted that his economic prescriptions mirror those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, insofar as he seeks “a better distribution of wealth.” But if Mamdani supports Dr. King’s economics, he rejects the civil rights leader’s adherence to nonviolence.

 

That’s what we must conclude from a recently uncovered series of social media posts in which Mamdani extolled the wisdom of a leading figure in al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that murdered thousands in the very city Mamdani seeks to lead.

 

Kyle’s right. Why is it that Mamdani had to become the prohibitive favorite for NYC’s mayoralty before inquiring minds learned that the candidate has a soft spot for a man who advocated violence against Americans and “played an important role” in plotting terrorist attacks against the United States? Indeed, why is this probe still largely the exclusive province of conservative journalists?

 

The press will be quick to blame Andrew Cuomo’s languid and entitled campaign for the oversight. But it wasn’t the Cuomo campaign’s job to inform the public of developments with vital civic importance. That’s the political media’s mission statement. Kyle raises the possibility that the Cuomo campaign did manage to conduct a cursory search of Mamdani’s past remarks — indeed, it would be bizarre if curiosity alone didn’t move Cuomo’s staffers to execute a handful of keystrokes. It’s possible, even likely, that the Cuomo camp determined that this “oppo” wouldn’t play with the Democratic electorate in New York City.

 

That is a searing indictment via implication. If the insurgent mayoral candidate is a secret Marxist, that’s a story. If the Cuomo campaign concluded that New York City’s Democratic primary voters wouldn’t recoil in revulsion from an unreconstructed Trotskyite with a soft spot for the Islamist terrorists, that’s a story, too. On their merits and irrespective of their effect on the race for mayor, these allegations demand extensive coverage. Voters’ ignorance on these matters could have serious consequences for New York City residents.

 

Uncharitable though it may be, observers could be forgiven for thinking the media establishment overlooked these stories because they were invested in the outcomes that could be secured only through the cultivation of voters’ ignorance. More understandably, if not excusably, the political press might have dismissed Mamdani’s chances, or folded coverage of his radicalism into horserace coverage of the contest for mayor — muting its significance. Regardless, we’re witnessing the consequences of a profound journalistic failure. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last, but it might become one of the most consequential political media fiascoes in a very long time.