Mamdani is building a brand. He does not need to depend upon actual policy success to be politically successful -his constituents are trained to blame failure on others. Major Democrats are falling in line behind him, and with that kind of backing he has what he needs to fail up. But the gist of these two pieces (thank you Mlle. Briboua) concerns far more than electoral fortunes. Is he transplanting a new ideology into a spiritually exhausted party? Time will tell.
This is exceptionally good. I was particularly struck by your line: 'There is nothing more effective in an asymmetric struggle than convincing the population of another country that it no longer deserves its own success.' That is demonstrably true and yet is a sentiment that has been allowed to run riot throughout the institutions of my own country (the UK) for decades.
You're not entirely wrong that Muslims are beginning to grow weary of the 20th century reduction of Islam to an anti-colonial ideology, but it would be naive to expect Muslims to suddenly warm up to Israel because of this, with the exception of the largely secularised elite of the Emirates and other Gulf States.
At the end of the day, we are acutely aware of the fact that, even if the Israeli government was not responsible for a myriad of atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, its propagandists have spent decades portraying Islam as the civilisational antithesis of the West, often recycling the antisemitic tropes of yesteryear to cast us as the irrationally lawbound, irredeemably disloyal, and impossible to integrate other who must be viewed with suspicion at every opportunity.
They have rejected the rich history of productive Muslim-Jewish interactions in favour of the narrative that there is a singular "Judeo-Christian" civilisation united against the saracenic realm of darkness, despite the many occasions when the Muslim world was a refuge to Jewish refugee of Christian pogroms. This is unlikely to be quickly forgotten by the Muslims, even those who are disturbed by the reduction of Islam to a socialist, anti-imoerial ideology.
Muslims probably should have considered said rich history of productive Muslim-Jewish relations before they expelled their Jews, largely to Israel
You aren't innocent. You look away from your crimes to claim the grievance-as-virtue folly that you don't understand despite ostensibly reading this essay
But if you really did treat Jews so well, surely you'd be happy to be treated as you treated Jews. Dhimma is a privilege, right? You'd happily switch places, right? Oh.
The myth of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” is laughable when you consider that from St Paul onwards, Christians and the church set about delegitimising, dehumanising and eradicating Jews wherever they found them. The ghastly Melanie Phillips bases her “Londonistan” book on this myth, even going so far as to claim that Christianity is our (England’s) “founding faith”!
I might be wrong, but I think the modern Judeo-Christian values mantra is more about rule of law, secular democracy and a progressive( in the original sense) notion of technology and society. Sure, to normies the Old Testament can be used as touchstone, but there is something real to the notion of Judeo-Christian values really being Post Enlightenment* values.
Indeed, those are the post-enlightenment values that they try to characterise as Judeo-Christian, but there’s nothing remotely Judeo about them and they were only “Christian” in so far as the Church conceded ground to science and technology and abandoned the tenets of Christianity one by one.
It's interesting how you connect these dots. The Raymond Aron quote about teaching everyone to doubt all models really resonated with me. It's such a briliant reminder of the importance of critical thinking and not surrendering to abstract ideals. Really insightful analysis!
One of Schlesinger's many great passages from The Vital Center:
"Angelo Herndon, a Georgia Negro, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for passing out Communist literature on a street corner in Georgia. When he was finally freed, after nation-wide agitation, he was rushed to New York. A group of Communist big shots met Herndon, an intelligent, light-skinned Negro, at Penn Station. In the cab on the way to Harlem, Herndon heard Anna Damon of the International Labor Defense, a top Communist leader, remark that it was a pity he was not blacker."
What the author gets wrong about America. The United States had several colonies: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Guantanamo, N. Mariana Island. We can call them territories or possessions or whatever makes us feel better. But America is/was a colonial power. That mindset informs and distorts way too many policy makers.
Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Andre Gunderson Frank, etc, all were highly influential on college campuses in the late 1950s and 1970s during the Viet Nam years. If you think about it, there was a solid core of outrage against US adventurism tied to a theoretical notion of falling dominoes tipping under Soviet influence which had some degree of basis in fact, or aspiration, but led the U.S. into arguably, its most unfortunate war (though that can be debated). It is undeniable that the grinding and worsening separation between the haves and the have nots globally (despite certain undeniable gains in parts of the “third world” to improved health and longevity, income levels in some cases, etc) has now found its way onto American shores with prospects for far too many of Gen Z in particular now very unclear under the current economic and governance system. So to me, it is pretty clear why Mamdani, given his erudition and (give him credit) strong work ethic getting out there in the ground, galvanized a movement in NYC. How much further the third world platform can go outside of NYC is debatable, save that it’s true - there are LOTS of disaffected people of all ages out there in the hinterlands of America beyond the two coasts that at some point may say: hey, this system and its rhetoric ain’t working for me. One would think the more moderate liberal messaging of a Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger would prevail in most of America but hey, if things go too much further south for too many people, the third world platform may become more than na clarion call of a Ugandan born immigrant mayor of New York.
Mamdani is the symbol of shifting course in the United States of America. However, one has to be watchful. When Barack Obama was elected as the first African American president in the country, people believed that a lot might change. Electing a Muslim mayor may not change anything.
Third Worldism is what Dinesh D'Souza once accused Obama of. And there was element of truth in it. The world will always have dominant cultures, and those that are dominated. And the dominated cultures will need ideologies that help form a defense against the dominant ones. The weak, being dependent, deploy irrational forms of defense, because the strong are very good at deploying rational arguments to complement their natural power over the weak.
I am no supporter of Fanon or Sartre, but they may have been responding to this dynamic, giving voice to the weak. These ideologies serve their purpose in these developing economies, but the problem is using them to indoctrinate the kids in the West, especially the white kids who, in order to get along with other minorities, are willing to take the "blame" for everything the West did to gain dominance in the world.
The shift from objective analysis to condemnation as a duty in academia has infected the news media as well. TV interviewers were seen repeatedly and aggressively challenging parties to “condemn Hamas” after October 7, even when it was not the latter’s prerogative or role to do so.
Mamdani is building a brand. He does not need to depend upon actual policy success to be politically successful -his constituents are trained to blame failure on others. Major Democrats are falling in line behind him, and with that kind of backing he has what he needs to fail up. But the gist of these two pieces (thank you Mlle. Briboua) concerns far more than electoral fortunes. Is he transplanting a new ideology into a spiritually exhausted party? Time will tell.
Thank you for this brilliant analysis.
I agree Third Worldism has everything to do with the exhaustion of left paradigms and progressive politics.
The comment about anti-Semitism being an implicit part of Third Worldism was challenging. I would like to believe it is not but maybe it is.
Thanks again.
This is exceptionally good. I was particularly struck by your line: 'There is nothing more effective in an asymmetric struggle than convincing the population of another country that it no longer deserves its own success.' That is demonstrably true and yet is a sentiment that has been allowed to run riot throughout the institutions of my own country (the UK) for decades.
You're not entirely wrong that Muslims are beginning to grow weary of the 20th century reduction of Islam to an anti-colonial ideology, but it would be naive to expect Muslims to suddenly warm up to Israel because of this, with the exception of the largely secularised elite of the Emirates and other Gulf States.
At the end of the day, we are acutely aware of the fact that, even if the Israeli government was not responsible for a myriad of atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, its propagandists have spent decades portraying Islam as the civilisational antithesis of the West, often recycling the antisemitic tropes of yesteryear to cast us as the irrationally lawbound, irredeemably disloyal, and impossible to integrate other who must be viewed with suspicion at every opportunity.
They have rejected the rich history of productive Muslim-Jewish interactions in favour of the narrative that there is a singular "Judeo-Christian" civilisation united against the saracenic realm of darkness, despite the many occasions when the Muslim world was a refuge to Jewish refugee of Christian pogroms. This is unlikely to be quickly forgotten by the Muslims, even those who are disturbed by the reduction of Islam to a socialist, anti-imoerial ideology.
Muslims probably should have considered said rich history of productive Muslim-Jewish relations before they expelled their Jews, largely to Israel
You aren't innocent. You look away from your crimes to claim the grievance-as-virtue folly that you don't understand despite ostensibly reading this essay
But if you really did treat Jews so well, surely you'd be happy to be treated as you treated Jews. Dhimma is a privilege, right? You'd happily switch places, right? Oh.
Annihilationist antisemitism vis a vis Israel preceded Jewish rapprochement to Christianity.
Annihilationst antisemitism against Israel by Arab polities and widespread pogroms in the MENA region preceded Jewish rapprochement to Christianity.
The myth of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” is laughable when you consider that from St Paul onwards, Christians and the church set about delegitimising, dehumanising and eradicating Jews wherever they found them. The ghastly Melanie Phillips bases her “Londonistan” book on this myth, even going so far as to claim that Christianity is our (England’s) “founding faith”!
I might be wrong, but I think the modern Judeo-Christian values mantra is more about rule of law, secular democracy and a progressive( in the original sense) notion of technology and society. Sure, to normies the Old Testament can be used as touchstone, but there is something real to the notion of Judeo-Christian values really being Post Enlightenment* values.
Indeed, those are the post-enlightenment values that they try to characterise as Judeo-Christian, but there’s nothing remotely Judeo about them and they were only “Christian” in so far as the Church conceded ground to science and technology and abandoned the tenets of Christianity one by one.
I used to think this as well, but the Protestant Reformation jumbled things up quite a bit: https://www.compactmag.com/article/tucker-carlson-is-wrong-about-christian-zionism/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It's interesting how you connect these dots. The Raymond Aron quote about teaching everyone to doubt all models really resonated with me. It's such a briliant reminder of the importance of critical thinking and not surrendering to abstract ideals. Really insightful analysis!
One of Schlesinger's many great passages from The Vital Center:
"Angelo Herndon, a Georgia Negro, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for passing out Communist literature on a street corner in Georgia. When he was finally freed, after nation-wide agitation, he was rushed to New York. A group of Communist big shots met Herndon, an intelligent, light-skinned Negro, at Penn Station. In the cab on the way to Harlem, Herndon heard Anna Damon of the International Labor Defense, a top Communist leader, remark that it was a pity he was not blacker."
What the author gets wrong about America. The United States had several colonies: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Guantanamo, N. Mariana Island. We can call them territories or possessions or whatever makes us feel better. But America is/was a colonial power. That mindset informs and distorts way too many policy makers.
Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Andre Gunderson Frank, etc, all were highly influential on college campuses in the late 1950s and 1970s during the Viet Nam years. If you think about it, there was a solid core of outrage against US adventurism tied to a theoretical notion of falling dominoes tipping under Soviet influence which had some degree of basis in fact, or aspiration, but led the U.S. into arguably, its most unfortunate war (though that can be debated). It is undeniable that the grinding and worsening separation between the haves and the have nots globally (despite certain undeniable gains in parts of the “third world” to improved health and longevity, income levels in some cases, etc) has now found its way onto American shores with prospects for far too many of Gen Z in particular now very unclear under the current economic and governance system. So to me, it is pretty clear why Mamdani, given his erudition and (give him credit) strong work ethic getting out there in the ground, galvanized a movement in NYC. How much further the third world platform can go outside of NYC is debatable, save that it’s true - there are LOTS of disaffected people of all ages out there in the hinterlands of America beyond the two coasts that at some point may say: hey, this system and its rhetoric ain’t working for me. One would think the more moderate liberal messaging of a Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger would prevail in most of America but hey, if things go too much further south for too many people, the third world platform may become more than na clarion call of a Ugandan born immigrant mayor of New York.
Mamdani is the symbol of shifting course in the United States of America. However, one has to be watchful. When Barack Obama was elected as the first African American president in the country, people believed that a lot might change. Electing a Muslim mayor may not change anything.
Third Worldism is what Dinesh D'Souza once accused Obama of. And there was element of truth in it. The world will always have dominant cultures, and those that are dominated. And the dominated cultures will need ideologies that help form a defense against the dominant ones. The weak, being dependent, deploy irrational forms of defense, because the strong are very good at deploying rational arguments to complement their natural power over the weak.
I am no supporter of Fanon or Sartre, but they may have been responding to this dynamic, giving voice to the weak. These ideologies serve their purpose in these developing economies, but the problem is using them to indoctrinate the kids in the West, especially the white kids who, in order to get along with other minorities, are willing to take the "blame" for everything the West did to gain dominance in the world.
He is what the progressive dems were looking for; the affordability crisis is real to many young people; he is a force with which to be reckoned.
Très intéressant 👍
Really perspicacious article.
The shift from objective analysis to condemnation as a duty in academia has infected the news media as well. TV interviewers were seen repeatedly and aggressively challenging parties to “condemn Hamas” after October 7, even when it was not the latter’s prerogative or role to do so.
This was very informative. Thank you!