Mamdani and the “Woke Jihad”
“Judeo-Christian and American values treat men and women of all races as created in the image of God and possessing equal inherent worth and rights.”
I happened to spend New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 and January 1st of 2001 in New York City. On the first morning of the actual new millennium (not the falsely celebrated one in 2000), I took the dizzying elevator up to the top of the Empire State Building and admired the iconic skyline. I wanted to commemorate the moment and had my photo taken with the Twin Towers in the background.
It was a time of innocence, when no one knew what would befall the free world nine months and ten days later. New York was bustling, invigorating, and safe under Giuliani, and so symbolically American that people on both sides of the political spectrum could revel in a genuinely good time together on New Year’s Eve at Times Square.
Fast-forward to December 31, 2023. My family and I were enjoying a festive drink at home in anticipation of 2024 and switching through the TV channels. We watched Paul Anka sing “Imagine” at Times Square. I have always instinctively disliked the lyrics of “Imagine,” despite the phenomenal musical talent of John Lennon and the Beatles, whom I adored in my youth.
Authors like Melanie Phillips have pointed out the fallacy of the message promoted by “Imagine.” Kathleen Hayes explains:
“Imagine there’s no countries | It isn’t hard to do | Nothing to kill or die for | And no religion too.”
What could be wrong with John Lennon’s “Imagine” — a song many of us listened to endlessly in high school — and his dream of a peaceful “brotherhood of man”? Everything, says Melanie Phillips in her brilliant new book “The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West — and Why Only They Can Save It.”
There are things worth dying and, terrible as it is to contemplate, killing for. A society that no longer believes this is spiritually empty and threatened with collapse. Lennon’s anthem isn’t just saccharine (as those high schoolers often decide when they get older) but, in a sense, the perfect expression of what’s wrong today in the West.
Imagine my shock — no pun intended — when Paul Anka continued his performance with an adapted version of Sinatra’s magnificently emblematic song, in which “My Way” became “Our Way.” I knew that Anka had been the one who, mesmerized by the original French song “Comme d’habitude,” had composed the English lyrics of “My Way” especially for Sinatra. “My Way” is an archetypal American song, which evokes in my mind random images of cowboys, rangers, and the Marlboro man. I love its unapologetic and courageous individualistic message. Instead, Anka sang a collectivist version of the song, reflecting the new ideology of the Obama and Biden eras.
This new ideology reared its ugly head in Mamdani’s inaugural ceremony several days ago. Bromides such as “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism” have an emetic effect on anyone who has experienced that “warmth” amid power, heat, and food shortages. Just think of the communal apartments in the Soviet Union and other countries, where several families were forced to share a minuscule space, robbed of their privacy and dignity. Compared to this, I considered myself rather fortunate, since my family inhabited a one-bedroom apartment in Sofia, and I shared the bedroom with my grandparents, while my parents slept in the living room.
But back to Mamdani’s “collectivist warmth.” Socialist ideologues are adept language manipulators who ensnare innocent young minds with the false allure of a warm and fuzzy picture of a utopian brotherhood of men. However, they omit a crucial distinction that has to do with freedom and individual rights. Kindness, charity, and cooperation are good things when they are voluntary. People in frigid climates naturally help each other when someone gets stuck in the snow. However, if the government forces individuals to cooperate, donate, and sacrifice, then there is no virtue in such acts, since there is no free will behind them. Moreover, when the economy becomes centrally controlled and taxation skyrockets, there will be no wealth left to distribute but only, in Churchill’s memorable words, “the equal sharing of misery.”
Mamdani’s first actions affirmed his image as an “intersectional” promoter of “woke jihad.” He revoked various orders by the previous mayor that protected the Jewish community. He also swore on the Koran at his inauguration, an act that the leftist media heralded as a “historic” achievement. I find this deeply disturbing. It is one thing to be tolerant of different religions and treat all individuals as equal before the law, as countries like the United States and Israel do. It is very different, however, to treat antithetical ideologies and values as equal to ours and insert them into our political and social institutions.
Judeo-Christian and American values treat men and women of all races as created in the image of God and possessing equal inherent worth and rights. Islam and socialism do not. It is one thing to swear on the Bible in a U.S. court or another government institution. It is altogether another to swear on the Koran, which sends an unmistakable message about Mamdani’s allegiances and agenda.
Abe Greenwald provides a vivid illustration of what he calls “the woke jihad.”
In April [of 2024], a long-haired flower child on the campus of Princeton University was captured on camera. The picture, posted on social media, shows him sitting on his guitar case, guitar in hand, ready to play. Spread on the grass before him, completing this otherwise faithful portrait of hippiedom, is not a peace sign or a tie-dyed bedsheet but the flag of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Look closer, and you’ll spot the keffiyeh around his neck. But what is incongruous about the picture — the pairing of hippie garb and jihadist imagery — is nothing of the sort in real life. This tree-hugging terrorist supporter is the moronic face of a harmonious marriage.
And an old Bulgarian proverb says: “He is not crazy who eats the pie but the one who gives it to him.” Those who elected Mamdani are as much at fault as those behind the movement that he represents. I have but a flicker of hope that many misguided voters will soon experience buyer’s remorse. I long to see New York City as the glorious symbol of Americanism that it once was when I ascended to the top of the Empire State Building on January 1, 2001.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I cannot fathom what New Yorkers are thinking by electing Mamdani mayor. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (for the second time, mind you), the Pentagon and Flight 93 is the purest expression of Islam in generations. The reaction of our leaders in the past 25 years has done little to stem the river of hatred coming from muslims against those who do not share their toxic beliefs.
Don’t believe a word that comes out of Mamdani’s mouth (including “Hello”) as he has already shown that he is steeped in the practice of taqiyya.
Enshrine “NO BAILOUTS” into law.
Boy, those New York City-based, 25th anniversary memorial events in tribute to the victims of the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attacks are going to be super-awkward, with the Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist piece of excrement mayor in office.
NYC has shamefully forgotten the horror of that day, one-quarter century later.
Some, heck many do seem to have forgotten. The more relevant point is that 9/11 was 25 years ago and the population of NYC isn’t static. Nearly half of NYC households have at least one foreign born person. More than half of children in NYC live in a household with at least one foreign born adult. About 38% of the NYC population is under 30 years old so the oldest among them were in kindergarten on 9/11.
It’s not that they don’t remember but more that so many weren’t there to experience it.
“25 years ago?! OK, Boomer!”
Assuming that there will be such memorial events…who knows?
Not forgotten, deliberately indoctrinated. Immediately after the day, the media stopped using the images of people jumping from the towners. The schools never taught about who did it and why. the establishment swept it away. They were more concerned about islamaphobia than any factual education about the event.
bro they will turned into
the day the joows were removed from power,, holiday
Them that want will get in due time.
But God bless the child that’s got his own. 🔫
It took a century, but Kaiser Wilhelm won the millennial battle.
The history of the failure of socialism/communism is all there, in many, many examples, but nowadays, you have to wade through “trans” and pro socialist Demspeak to find it.
Which do New Yorkers and Americans have to fear most? That Mamdani will govern as an Islamist or a collectivist?
And does it matter? Both are purely authoritarian and have nothing but contempt for the individual.
In a strange sort of way, I am for “collectivism,” That support depends on the definition which I will say is “community.”
My parents came out of WWII and bought what could be called a “track home” in Baltimore. Dad was from a farm, and had worked in a airplane company before going off to war. He then worked for the bus company (a private firm) while going to school on the GI Bill.
He was the epitome of “rugged individualism.”
At the same time, the people that moved in around my parents were the same “rugged individualists.” They all had stories. They all had different backgrounds, (including Jews who had fled from the Nazis and an Italian couple that got out of Italy.)
As these “rugged individualists” came to live next to each other, they became a community – a community of warmth. People that had skills in one area would help others. If someone was sick, the community cut the grass for them. Sidewalks for the elderly were shoveled by kids at the direction of their parents. Kids played in the backyards of people who didn’t have kids or whose kids had left the home. People had things fixed by the welder down the street. My mom who worked in a bank helped people with finances.
That is the warmth of “community.”
Community cannot and will not ever be created by the government. It is only created by those same “rugged individualists” that the left hates.
If you want “community,” keep the government out of people’s lives. We can figure out how to be a community with the government stealing from people.
I think the phrase you’re looking for is “tract home.”
“Community cannot and will not ever be created by the government.”
Or, for that matter, government’s bastard children — HOAs.
The “community” Mamdani and his class are referring to is the “community” where everyone calls each other comrade, so warm and fuzzy.
Mamdani – the shocking thing about him isn’t that he’s a socialist, it’s that he’s a complete idiot. He has zero chance of achieving a single policy goal. No doubt he’ll make things much worse than he found them.
But being a socialist means never having to say you’re wrong or sorry. He’ll just deflect blame.
Leave a Comment