Geoff Russ: Race socialism is coming to the West. It will start in New York
The Africa Report, an award-winning quarterly focusing on the continent's current affairs, reported in June that the Mamdanis were awash with 'diasporic intellectualism, where ideas about justice, decolonization and identity were household conversations.'
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How exactly did decolonization play out in Africa following the collapse of European rule? There was great enthusiasm for wealth redistribution and the scapegoating of ethnic minorities, led by charismatic figures like Uganda's Idi Amin and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.
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Following the British departure in 1962, Idi Amin demonized and purged the country's mostly South Asian merchant class in the 1970s, Mamdani's father among them. Their businesses were expropriated, and their assets confiscated.
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In the 1980s in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe seized the lands of the remaining white farmers in an attempt to loot and redistribute the wealth associated with it.
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Concurrent to that, Mugabe began a violent repression of the country's sizable Ndebele minority, whom he accused of subversion and sabotage. It resulted in the deaths of up to 30,000 Zimbabwean citizens.
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The Ndebele remember it as a time when their people were singled out and slaughtered. Mahmood Mamdani described this period as one of 'massive social change,' in which 'very little turmoil' took place. For those who champion decolonization, the violent cleansing of certain ethnic groups is immaterial if it furthers the cause.
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According to Africa Report, his son Zohran would be 'the first to carry the intellectual legacy of postcolonial Africa into the political heart of the West.'
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Right now, the West's cultural zeitgeist is perfectly aligned for the arrival of this sort of decolonial race socialism in New York City.
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It is impossible to ignore the newly emerged, constructed narrative of the 'colonizers' and the 'colonized.' Resentment and the assignment of ancestral guilt are at the core of it, and it has spread throughout the English-speaking world.
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Statues of explorers, monarchs and historical business and political leaders are common targets for radicals who despise the countries they helped to found. They have been toppled, smashed or vandalized in Victoria, Hamilton, and Melbourne, usually without legal repercussions.
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This fabricated Indigenous-colonizer conflict is not only permissible, but given space in respectable society across Australia, Canada and even Britain. The hustlers are given prime- time television slots or academic tenure to vent, and usually receive polite nods from the presenters in return.
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In America, Zohran Mamdani's rise to political stardom is where this wave of racial politics meets the socialist revival spearheaded by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have wholeheartedly endorsed him.
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The politics of the English-speaking world have always been connected, and the United States is its most powerful engine for driving new narratives. Mamdani's team are artful practitioners of social media, and his presence is felt well beyond the U.S.
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Already, Canadian NDP politicians like Marit Stiles and MP Leah Gazan are falling over each other trying to heap praise upon him.
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Gazan, a leading voice for radical decolonial, anti-Western politics in Ottawa, posted on X: 'Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York is an inspiring example for how progressives can stand up to establishment liberals or authoritarians like Trump.'
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