the right struggles to react to a new york race
There are often very few causes for optimism these days in electoral politics if you’re on the political left. After Trump’s re-election in November 2024, some in the centrist chattering class seemed to take the wrong view—namely, that populist leftist economic programs should be treated as a thoroughly disowned baby to be tossed out with the bathwater, and that expressing disgust over the genocide in Gaza is inappropriate.
There’s some truth to the belief that our neoliberal order dragging its feet until something changes is preferential to the world collapsing into chaos. It’s better to have a struggling system than a nonexistent one. But it’s a lack of vision in the face of a political movement that even centrist commentators were calling “fascism” that’s troubling.
This is what Donald Trump and his allies have capitalized on since January. It’s what you need when you come into office promising to bring “retribution.” Outside of the long, winding lines for his dystopian indoors-only inauguration bonanza, there were dozens of street vendors selling t-shirts proclaiming “Daddy’s Home.” The psychoanalytical opportunities are endless, but it shows what the right believed it needed: a left that is demoralized, fractured, and visionless.
I bring this up to take stock of the right’s reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in New York City earlier this week. It’s one that comes not from a position of strength—contrary to what some mainstream news outlets have reported about Republicans being “giddy” about Mamdani’s win—but unacknowledged weakness. Mamdani, a Uganda-born self-described democratic socialist, has been a member of the New York state legislature since 2021. He offers a robust vision for expanding social welfare programs, raising the minimum wage and lowering rents, and improving the accessibility of public transit. Unlike other Democrats, he didn’t shy away from criticizing Israel and supporting Gaza. Primary results have yet to be finalized, but with 93% of the votes as of this writing, he has a solid seven-point lead over Andrew Cuomo. If elected, he would be New York’s first Muslim mayor.
Lacking any other response, the pro-Trump right has gone for straight Islamophobia and racism. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a photo of the Statue of Liberty in a black burqa. Brigitte Gabriel of ACT for America, who has said that practicing Muslims “cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America,” posted that “Sharia Law is coming to the United States.” (The post, of course, included a link to a donation page highlighting her group’s Islamophobic activism in Texas, a state located approximately 1,500 miles away from New York City.) Betar, an extreme ultra-Zionist group that promotes Kahanism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the Republican Jewish Coalition encouraged Jews to “evacuate NYC.” Laura Loomer, the self-described “proud Islamophobe” with an unnerving amount of access to the White House, called Mamdani a “jihadi Communist” and warned of an impending “red-green axis.” She has accused him without evidence of planning to shutter Jewish nonprofits in the city.
Others blamed immigration. (Mamdani moved to the United States when he was seven-years-old.) “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, tweeted on June 25. Brandon Gill, a congressman in Texas, referred to him as an “open borders socialist” in a conversation with the anti-immigrant website Border Hawk News.
The racist rhetoric proved too disquieting for some. After Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk tweeted, “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11[.] Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City,” a co-host of “The Five,” a talk show on Fox News, criticized his post as “gross and Islamophobic.” Instead of apologizing, Kirk doubled down.
“Debate me on the merits, don’t just throw out petty thought terminating cliches,” Kirk said in a response to Jessica Tarlov, “The Five” co-host. “This isn’t 2015, that doesn’t work anymore. What Muslim country do you prefer to live in, Jessica? What western city or country has improved as the Muslim population has increased?”
At the risk of overselling a primary, it’s one of the first times that the MAGA coalition seems to have expressed any kind of genuine anxiety about its opposition. Writing in Unherd, Sohrab Ahmari noted that “Mamdani’s victory should raise discomforting questions for Republicans as they head into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 general election” and derided the right’s response as “[s]currilous accusations of crypo-Islamism.”
He’s right, though it’s hard to tell how much of Trump’s coaliton has internalized it. Nevertheless, I’ve seen some evidence that this realization seems to have taken hold among the right-wing activists. Gavin Wax, the former chairman of the New York Young Republican Club, acknowledged that “[c]alling Mamdani a socialist & anti-Israel on repeat didn’t hurt him, it helped him win.” The club’s own X account has cycled between fearmongering about socialism and a bizarre racist bit asking Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to deport Mamdani. At least one Republican congressman has jumped on board. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee shared a letter that he wrote to attorney general Pam Bondi, encouraging her to subject him to denaturalization proceedings on the basis of years-old rap lyrics.
New York’s mayoral election isn’t until November, and just about anything can happen within the next several months. But MAGA is a perpetual victim of its own baser instincts, and its adherents leaning into its cruelty and overt racism in lieu of a real strategy would be—if the 2022 midterms were any indication—would be on brand. At the very least, it’s refreshing to see a cadre of unimaginative schoolyard bullies taken down a notch.