New York is the headquarters of the UN, and leaders from across the world come there. A Mayor Mamdani may not succeed in arresting any of the leaders on his list of enemies, but for purposes of grandstanding may make the effort, and grab international headlines.
NEW DELHI: Judging by several of his public utterances, prospective US mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani seems more in the ideological mould of “Field Marshal” Asim Munir than he does anyone in India. President Trump has spoken of Mamdani as a “communist”, and Vice-President J.D. Vance, whose loyalty to his Commander-in-Chief is total, has similarly used political phraseology to characterise Mamdani. If what he has so often said in public bears any resemblance to his actual views, Zohran Mamdani, prospective Mayor of New York City, is much worse than such descriptions. Judging by what is in the public domain, he is a religious extremist devoid of any of the finer qualities of the great faith of Islam. A man who seems to have such an intense dislike of Jews and Hindus must have the same adverse views about the Christian faith as well, as also about moderate Muslims. He speaks of an imaginary genocide of the prosperous Muslim communities in Gujarat, yet his language suggests a mindset tuned towards a culling out of the population of at least the Hindus and Jews in New York. With such a mindset, it is logical to assume that Christians would have been next, had the numbers made such a faith-based elimination impractical.
In his term as Mayor of New York, the NYPD is likely to witness a phenomenon seen in parts of Canada during the Trudeau regime. This is the covert but determined removal of moderate officers from the NYPD, a truly admirable force, and their replacement with elements who have the same extreme views as Mamdani appears to have. In Canada, K-Group extremists were recruited into the police force in select locations. As a result, such locations were rapidly and increasingly characterised by the narcotics trade, gang violence, as well as assaults including on women and on parts of the population even if these be law abiding. Ultimately, the stench of misrule became too much for Canadians to bear, and public pressure forced the exit of Trudeau and the installation of Mark Carney, who is on course to cleanse the dirt left behind by the previous government. New York already has far too many substance abusers and violent individuals, and does not need more but less, much less, of such elements.
New York is the headquarters of the United Nations, and leaders from across the world come there to attend and to speak at UN events. A Mayor Mamdani may not succeed in arresting any of the leaders on his list of enemies, but for purposes of grandstanding may make the effort, and grab international headlines. The universal character of the UN has been put at risk by the fact that the leaders of major world powers such as President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of Russia, cannot travel to New York to address the UN without the possibility of arrest by the police of a third country as a consequence of an ICC warrant that seems to have been driven by political and not legal standards. Such a warrant has made even a visit to Brazil a risky matter for Putin. Now other leaders of consequential countries have joined that list, thereby denying the UN General Assembly and Security Council the prospect of hearing their side of the story first hand.
It is not certain that Zohran Mamdani would inevitably get elected as the Mayor of New York. Rather than field its own candidate, the Republican Party may choose to back an independent candidate who may split with his party over the candidature of Zohran Mamdani as the Mayoral choice. With disaffected Democrats and with Republicans on his or her side, such a candidate may defeat Mamdani at the hustings. Donald Trump is a wily politician, as shown by the success of his effort at re-election after having been defeated by Joe Biden in the previous US Presidential polls. He is certain to understand the merits of such a strategy and allow it to proceed. Should even such an effort fail, and should moderate Muslims fail to rein in Mayor Mamdani as they failed to rein in Mayoral candidate Mamdani, New Yorkers may be in for an unpleasant non-surprise. The financial capital of the world would witness a decline in property values and in the fleeing of capital and talent to other shores. Gangs would multiply, some with transnational support, and violence would increase. The NYPD would find itself handicapped by a Mayor who seems unable to distinguish the good guys from the bad. Judging by his public utterances, Zohran Mamdani is neither democratic nor socialist, the description of him by CNN. The only chance of redemption of a great metropolis is the slim chance that Mamdani is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, however improbable each of his public utterances make this sound.
