Zohran Mamdani, the slick Muslim communist who bids fair to be New York City’s next incompetent, ruinous mayor, is already showing himself to be useful and amusing in the ways that he is inspiring his Axis defenders to reveal to all just how dishonest and corrupt they are. For example…
Item I: The New York Times, which broke the story on how Mandani claimed to be black on his application to Columbia, has been attacked in some woke quarters (that is, much of New York City) for, you know, practicing actual journalism rather than burying inconvenient news and issuing useful leftist propaganda. Keith Olbermann, Professional Progressive Asshole, tweeted on behalf of the lunatic fringe by issuing this…
Since the story has been authenticated by multiple sources including Mamdani himself, one must wonder what “standards” Keith is referring to if not “the Axis media’s job is to support all Democrats and progressives, and to deceive the public to the extent possible when necessary.”
Times assistant managing editor for “Standards and Trust” Patrick Healy rushed to tweet the official explanation for why the Times would published such a story. Oddly, the paper never did this when it was asserting that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, or when it was publishing misleading statistics to terrify readers about the Wuhan virus so a panic-fueled lockdown would wreck the economy, or when it declared that the Deep State intelligence community was quite sure that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a nothingburger. But I digress. Healy grovelled,
“Our reporters obtained information about Mr. Mamdani’s Columbia college application and went to the Mamdani campaign with it. When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times. Mr. Mamdani shared his thinking about the limitations of identity boxes on forms like Columbia’s, and explained how he wrote in “Uganda,” the country of his birth – the kind of decision many people with overlapping identities have wrestled with when confronted with such boxes. We believe Mr. Mamdani’s thinking and decision-making, laid out in his words, was newsworthy and in line with our mission to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices.
“We sometimes receive information that has been hacked or from controversial sources. The Times does not solely rely on nor make a decision to publish information from such a source; we seek to confirm through direct sources, which we did with Mr. Mamdani. On sourcing, we work to give readers context, including in this case the initial source’s online alias, as a way to learn more about the person, who was effectively an intermediary. The ultimate source was Columbia admissions data and Mr. Mamdani, who confirmed our reporting.
“We heard from readers who wanted more detail about this initial source. That’s fair feedback. We printed his online alias so readers could learn more about the person. The purpose of this story was to help illuminate the thinking and background of a major mayoral candidate.”
Translation: “Oh please, please, don’t be mad at us! We were just trying to be a real newspaper for a change! It’s been a while!”
Item Two: Politifact, the hilariously biased and dishonest “fact-checking” service which for some odd reason almots always declares that the facts back Democrats and progressives, declared that President Donald Trump’s Truth Social declaration that Mamdani was a “communist” last week was “false.” The candidate has declared himself a foe of capitalism, wants government-owned grocery stores in the city, government run free child care, and other tell-tale policies, and both walks and quacks like a communist (so do Bernie Sanders and AOC), but never mind: Politifact called the label a “red scare tactic that has existed in U.S. politics for decades.”
“New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s platform proposes free buses and day care, rent control and city-owned grocery stores to make city living more affordable,” the post continued. “Mamdani’s platform is not akin to communism, a system of government which calls for government takeover of private property and control of industry.”
Well yes, because if Mamdani dared to be completely open about his ideology before the election, he might lose. Nobody has accused him of being stupid. Politifact also dug up some useful idiot academics to defend him. “Mamdani is NOT a communist,” wrote Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University professor of international studies. “Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority. There is no democratic political competition, and instead a single party rules the country. He is not calling for any of this.”
Not to belabor the obvious, but the fact that he isn’t “calling for” such measures now doesn’t prove that he doesn’t support such measures. These people had no difficulty declaring that Donald Trump really wanted to “end democracy as we know it” if elected, though literally nothing he had said or done suggested that. True, as Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”…..
“Many western democracies — from France to Canada — have policies such as free or heavily subsidized child care and public transit,” Oxana Shevel, a Tufts University associate professor of comparative politics,” told PolitiFact, agreeing that Mamdani is no Commie.
Then someone tracked down this tweet from 2020:
Hey, I’m sure he didn’t mean it….
Ethics Alarms 
Communism has morphed from the centrally planned, government ownership of private productive assets to a more sophisticated version in which political allies own the assets and are allowed to keep the some of the surplus value created provided they support the central political planning of the single party. This is what creates the Russian oligarchs and is exactly the CCP model. The productive assets are not controlled by the people but by the Party.
The professor says in a communist country “There is no democratic political competition, and instead a single party rules the country. He is not calling for any of this.”
To which I say, “Bullshit.” The entire left, including the Democratic Party, have been calling for single party rule ever since Bush v. Gore. That’s the only way to look at U.S. politics today. Until the GOP is eliminated, the Dems won’t be satisfied. It’s as simple as that. Anything short of their irrevocably controlling all branches of the government is unacceptable.
“Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority…”
I have been told that True Communism™ is a stateless system, and therefore has never been tried. It certainly doesn’t have a central government controlling everything. Not that it’s anything more than a fever dream. A tyrannical government is an unavoidable result of trying to force it into being.
“Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority…”
The problem is: there are always market forces. They will always work within whatever limitations are put on them. It may be a black market, or it may just be in bartering between individuals. But, the inclination to evade control is often there. (I would say, “always there,” but some cultures are more compliant than others.)
-Jut
From what I can see, Jut, the main market force at work in communist regimes is the uncontrolled, turbo-charged, relentless greed of the guys who’ve seized control under the guise of effecting a revolution.
I’d wish NYC would get the communism that they sorely deserve…
The problem is that liberals learning any lessons from their mistakes appears impossible. They’d just list it as yet another example of “well but that wasn’t real communism.”
“…limitations on identity boxes.”
I’ve also detested these things, and I’m wholly north and western Europe stock. There is little downside to choosing the most advantageous plausible option, so that is what’s done.
It’s a racist construct, it is spoiled with incentives to derive distorted data, and needs to go away.
[From your host: Actually, A Friend is now entering heroic territory, manfully sending in banned posts to protest against all impugning of the New York Times, no matter how justified and well-documented. You have to admire that, or at least I do. It’s like Trump during his lawfare travails. AF puts a lot of thought into these retorts, which would be productive additions to the discourse here and welcome under different circumstances. But he has stubbornly refused to apologize for the violation that got him banned in the first place, and his now years’ long defiance makes it impossible for me to issue a pardon. Too bad. Too bad.]