The Democratic Party nominee for the upcoming New York mayoral elections has opened cultural, ideological and political cans of worms—all at the same time. From Jerusalem to New Delhi and Kampala to Kathmandu, Zohran Mamdani has already become a household name. But the drama has only just begun, and as it reaches its climax in November, Mamdani will, at his worst, burn all of his fingers, and, at his best, he will have established an alternative view to look at culture, ideology and politics in the United States of America.

Cultural faultlines

The most important can Mamdani has opened must be the cultural one, exposing how America remains a cultural melting pot, where cultures are assimilated, rather than a cultural salad bowl, where cultures have independent identities of their own. He has not only unabashedly owned up to his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent from Africa but also projected this identity as a force that New York, as one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, should reckon with. Being a minority comes with the burden of misrecognition, which is why Mamdani had to emphatically remind his opponent that he was to be named correctly as: “M A M D A N I”. Expectedly, he has faced a barrage of accusations of being a “jihadi” and threats to his life from right-wingers across the world, not least from India, his ancestral home.

The meltdown among the Indians at home and abroad came when he called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “war criminal” in the same vein as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And yes, he has made it clear that he is pro-Palestine, and that New York under his leadership will potentially arrest Netanyahu, while also agreeing that Israel has the right to exist as a free nation with equal rights and not necessarily a Jewish state. That’s too many “anti-Indian” boxes to tick at the same time.

At home, he has received ire from the top guns of American politics, including Donald Trump, who called him a “100 per cent Communist lunatic”, even suggesting that Mamdani would be arrested for obstructing the work of immigration officers and even deported for a potential citizenship fraud. Meanwhile, Mamdani continues with his cultural crusade, eating with his hands, and creating reels in Hindi. Mamdani’s crusade can hardly be relegated to the domain of the personal, as it is very much a political issue. His potential victory will not only make history as the first Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent with pro-Palestine views to be a mayor of the city that has the second-most concentrated Jewish population outside of Israel, but he will also have won an ideological war in a city that is an epitome of neoliberal capitalism.

Ideological churning

Mamdani’s victory in the primary reflects an ideological shift among the young, urban voters of New York who are comparatively more open to immigrants and are at the same time seeking alternative political and economic systems that will ease their lives. After all, they have chosen a committed democratic socialist with a singular slogan of affordable living over a seasoned yet disgraced politician like Andrew Cuomo, who was allegedly backed by the same billionaires who had helped bring Trump back to the White House. What is important is that there are people within the Democratic party who think along the lines of Trump.

Having internalised neoliberal capitalism to the core, the Republicans and Democrats of the establishment kind alike are highly suspicious of Mamdani’s seemingly radical ideas of egalitarian access to public resources and dignity for the working class. The concerns that Mamdani’s tax policies would drive their billionaires away from New York are certainly exaggerated, to fuel the ill-founded suspicion about Mamdani being a communist with a deep hatred of billionaires and capitalists. Mamdani is certainly not seeking a redistribution of wealth by snatching billionaires' money and handing it to the poor. Rather, he is calling for a slightly more progressive tax for the wealthy so that basic amenities such as transport and groceries could be subsidised.

Fanning the suspicion about Mamdani’s views on the economy and the taxation system is the American media, mainstream and otherwise, that lives off neoliberal capitalism. The idea of a new kind of politics hinged on the commitment to uplift the working class through the humanisation of capital does not only sound disruptive but also self-destructive in America. The market coopts you in such a way that you are ashamed of asking for a dignified life or are shamed when you do so. Mamdani has set out to turn such a co-optation on its head, and that is perhaps his most significant intervention in American politics today.

Moment of reckoning

Apart from his cultural and ideological crusades against the American establishment, Mamdani, with his forceful campaign of affordability, ruffled the feathers of the Democratic Party establishment. The big old politicians of the party have had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that a young democratic socialist with seemingly radical ideas has struck a chord with the working-class Americans who seem to have deserted them. It is tempting to say that Mamdani’s politics will bring a fundamental change in the Democratic Party, but it is the same party that pushed an equally fierce Bernie Sanders to the brink in favour of the darlings of the establishment, such as Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden.

The way the Democratic Party held on to a sickly Joe Biden for the longest time, finally conceding the ticket to Kamala Harris only at the last minute, showed how it had lost the plot even as they were faced with as disruptive a charisma as Trump’s on the opposition. The same story is repeating itself in Mamdani’s case, as many of the establishment Democrats have publicly refused to endorse him amid the party’s nonchalant response to the young leader’s coup. Certainly, the party has much at stake when the seemingly radical lot, such as Sanders, Mamdani and the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, stir up emotions on the progressive line in a country dominated by big pharma, oil giants and tech conglomerates.

If anything, the Mamdani win should serve the Democrats as a moment of reckoning—that the American voter, especially the Democratic voter, is seeking a way out of the status quo. Not only do the voters want the party to deliver on its ideals of social welfare, progressive taxation and civil rights, but they also want the party to come clean on its attitude towards the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict. The best bet for the party at this moment would be to endorse and invest heavily in new leaders with progressive views, despite the obvious rattle among the establishment gerontocrats.