A viral clip of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is raising fresh concerns about the Democratic socialist’s political views.
The clip comes from a 2021 Zoom meeting of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the youth section of America’s largest socialist organization, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
During the meeting, Mamdani said the group has to “continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism… …whether it’s BDS, or whether it’s the end goal of seizing the means of production.”
Mamdani was, at the time, representing New York’s 36th Assembly District in the state assembly, and was present as a guest speaker for the YDSA Zoom meeting.
Mamdani’s message was specific to the political zeitgeist in 2021, where, according to Mamdani, “the left is in a more ascendant position than we have been in recent years.”
He told listeners their “agenda must not be dictated by calculus, but by conviction,” urging them not to abandon their socialist ideals to pursue more moderate goals that were popular at the time beyond the socialist base. Mamdani specified those goals as student debt cancellation and medicare for all.
Mamdani said issues like “BDS, and the end goal of seizing the means of production” have less support among the general public, but should not be abandoned.
In socialist terminology, the “means of production” refers to everything used to produce goods, including capital and physical tools. A key tenet of socialism is that these “means” should be seized by the people who produce the goods. DSA officially advocates seizure by peaceful and democratic means, but revolutionaries have historically used violence to accomplish this goal.
“I’m in this organization because we didn’t just pick and choose the battles that everyone was ready for in this very moment, but because we picked and chose the battles that were right and that are extensions of the values that we have as socialists,” Mamdani said.
The call for ideological dedication and consistency is a relatively common one for DSA leaders, since the group is both small and ideologically diverse. According to DSA communications director Chris Kutalik, there are only around 78,000 dues-paying members in the country.
DSA is also not technically a political party, but a political nonprofit organization, meaning it does not run its own candidates, but instead endorses candidates who are already running. DSA has three endorsed politicians elected to national seats, all of whom serve in the House of Representatives and are members of the Democratic Party.
Mamdani, a member of the DSA since he was in college, is the presumptive winner in the Democratic primary race for mayor of New York City. He will face incumbent Eric Adams, who is running as an Independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election.
Despite moderating his rhetoric, focusing his campaign less on socialist messaging and more on kitchen-table issues like housing and grocery prices, Mamdani has not left the DSA. The first sentence of his biography on the campaign website calls him a “democratic socialist.”
However, he clarified he is not a communist during an NBC News interview on Sunday.
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Author: JBaron
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