Zohran Mamdani will become mayor of New York City in just a few weeks now, and he is planning to hit the ground running with an ambitious socialist program that promises to bankrupt the Big Apple while making it a good deal more dirty and dangerous than it already is. Really, how could anyone not love that? And now that he is safely mayor-elect, Mamdani is unveiling details of his program that ought to be causing an epidemic of buyer’s remorse among voters all over the city, but what can they do about that now? Maybe by 2029, if there is anything left of New York City by then, they can try to right the ship, but more likely Mamdani will coast to re-election. Socialists, after all, have ways of ensuring that.
In the meantime, it’s going to be a rocky ride for New Yorkers. The New York Post, which must be a fairly depressing place to work these days, as they sounded the alarm all summer and fall about Mamdani, to no avail, reported Friday that Mamdani has announced his intention to “end the clearance of homeless encampments in New York City.”
See? Mamdani ran for mayor on claims that he would be the champion of the little guy, and what little guy doesn’t love having to run the gauntlet past a row of tents full of criminals and drug addicts just to try to get to work in the morning? Anyone who doesn’t like it can walk in the street instead, dodging the cars and trucks, which most everyone will be doing anyway, since the tents don’t leave much room on the sidewalk for anyone to pass.
The Post points out the obvious: “The inevitable result of this decision will be more crime and disorder on the streets — and more deaths among the homeless themselves.” Yes, but the socialist boy wonder “claims that encampment clearances are cruel because they aren’t ‘connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing they so desperately need.’” And letting them set up tents on the sidewalk and menace passerby will connect them to the housing they need?
Maybe Mamdani means that the tents, being large, visible, unavoidable signs of the presence of large numbers of homeless people, will move New Yorkers to approve his schemes to take housing out of the private sector and make it all government-owned. The Post also notes that Mamdani’s claim that removing the tent cities is “cruel” rings hollow in light of the fact that the city “has the most expansive ‘right to shelter’ laws in the nation.” Getting to the heart of the matter, the Post says: “Those sleeping outside have the option to get inside. They just don’t want to take it.”
This is because homeless shelters “have rules, including rules forbidding alcohol and drug use,” and “the largest national survey of the unsheltered homeless found that about three-quarters had a substantial substance abuse problem, far higher than the rate of the sheltered homeless.” Thus “the more the homeless are outside, the more they will be abusing drugs and alcohol.”
So why would Mamdani want to ensure that as many homeless people as possible are on the streets, rather than in shelters? Could it be because he actually wants to bring about the chaos that will inevitably ensue?
Related: Great News: Now There’s a Cure for ‘Islamophobia’!
Inconceivable, right? Maybe not. As Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani shows, Mamdani is a hardcore Marxist, a real true believer in the idea that government control of absolutely every aspect of life is a positive good that ought to be pursued. Such people believe that chaos is a good thing: introduce it among the people, and they’ll clamor for authoritarian control, which is exactly what the goal of Marxism is. Mamdani obviously can’t make New York City into the authoritarian socialist state of his dreams as long as it is part of the United States, but he can make its people welcome such a government as the only viable path toward restoring even some semblance of normal life.
Mamdani’s defenders would say this is far-fetched, but they can’t deny that their man takes the long view. He exhorted a socialist audience in 2020 not to lose sight of the long-term goal of the seizure of the means of production, and blamed “capitalism” for all the ills of New York City and the country at large. Foes of capitalism have always inflicted pain upon their captive people. Why should Zohran Mamdani be any different?
