Mamdani’s ‘Warm Collectivism’ is Just Anti-White Hatred

In his inaugural address as mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani made the now-infamous pledge to govern with the “warmth of collectivism.” It did not take long for his acolytes to supply a more concrete definition for the obtuse: dispossessing white people of their property.

In a series of resurfaced statements, Mamdani’s top housing official, progressive tenant advocate Cea Weaver, decried home ownership as a vestige or “weapon” of “white supremacy” that is something we should abolish. In a 2022 podcast interview, Weaver suggested that whites will be hit especially hard by an inevitable new reality in which property is forcibly taken and distributed among the (presumably non-white) wretched of the earth.

This is what the socialism preached by Mamdani is about at its core: resentment of whites and their historical success. Mamdani has been widely credited, even by begrudging conservatives, with acknowledging real issues associated with housing costs that are crippling the next generation. However true that may be, his solutions are infused in a kind of pathological envy—a view of the world that considers an abundance of white people as a problem to be solved.

There is, of course, a great irony with these left-wing demands for reparations: New York City has not been majority-white for several decades, thanks to mass immigration and the exodus of whites during the crime waves of decades past. Per capita, Asians own more property in the city than any other demographic group.

Still, whites are the left’s preferred punching bag. This is true also among some conservatives who have not found the courage or the words to denounce anti-white hatred. Calling out radical white women is one thing, but noticing the weaponized resentment of a minority underclass is a bridge too far for many. It can lead to a loss of social respectability.

The center-right New York Post took the safe line of attack against Weaver, depicting her as a privileged brat because her mother owns an expensive house in another state. This is rather thin gruel, and all it does is echo the very lines used by leftists to villainize successful white people. Her remarks attacking white homeowners are the issue, not her family’s relative wealth and real estate ownership.

Compared to Mamdani, who is Indian, Weaver is considered a safe target because she happens to be white, and because she is an out-of-state transplant to New York who now decries the state’s “gentrification.” That makes her a hypocrite and fair game in the current anti-white climate that protects minorities and women, unless those women are white, from criticism. My own congressman, Republican Nick LaLota, condemned Weaver’s collectivist proposals but neglected to mention her explicitly racial motivations.

For her part, Weaver has not said anything that Mamdani himself has not espoused in one way or another, going back to his time at Bowdoin College, where he complained about white “privilege” in his class newspaper. During his campaign for mayor, Mamdani stood by his proposals to tax white neighborhoods severely.

Despite his rather explicit racialist proposals, criticism of Mamdani has often been dressed up in ideological abstractions, casting him as a dangerous communist or a subversive Muslim. It is on this terrain that the right prefers to fight, focusing on relatively safe and anodyne concepts and familiar Boomer tropes. One can fight “collectivism” with worn-out slogans and not have to risk getting one’s hands dirty.

Where race is concerned, criticism against Mamdani has focused almost exclusively on his perceived encouragement of anti-Semitism, which led to at least one staffer resigning over old posts before he even took his oath of office. Mamdani has defended Weaver, and it’s unclear whether her anti-white views will be enough to cost her a position. My guess is that she will be just fine when the storm blows over.

If Weaver were not in a position of authority, one might be tempted to dismiss her comments as the sophomoric, ignorant musings of an activist, but as things are, they reflect the official policy of the nation’s largest city and the substance of what passes for left-wing thought these days. They should also serve as yet another warning that the fight against wokeness is just beginning.

It is encouraging to hear President Trump propose a ban on institutional investors owning single-family homes, a move that is sure to give “free market” conservatives tremors of anxiety. The alternative is to send America’s youth into the “warm embrace” of an anti-white maniac with a silver tongue.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/mamdanis-warm-collectivism-is-just-anti-white-hatred