Three weeks ago I met US Senator Bernie Sanders in London. He was on publicity rounds for his new book, meeting with a few crusty old socialists in their multi-million-pound North London residences (“solidarity, comrades”) and was scheduled to appear on the BBC Radio 4’s Today Show the following morning.
He’s a genial guy, and couldn’t have been better company – until the subject of the state of the Democrats in the US was raised. He put his hand on my shoulder and went a little dead-eyed, scowling: “Things will start changing.”
He was right. On Wednesday, New York, a place that claims more highly-educated people than any other city in the world, elected as its mayor a self-confessed “Muslim socialist”. Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda, grew up for a while in South Africa, then moved to the US aged seven. (His father was a visiting professor at UCT).
He changes his accent depending on whom he is talking to: if it’s the US legacy media, he’s New York, if it’s African-Americans, then he goes bad hip-hop, and if it’s a group of students from the sub-continent, then it’s Ravi Shastri and the cast of Slumdog Millionaire.
Endorsed
Sanders endorsed Mamdani because that’s the kind of thing he does. Mamdani is an unhinged critic of Israel and its war against Hamas. He appears to like criminals, so much so that his manifesto included things like “Re-enfranchise incarcerated New Yorkers” and “Reduce maximum sentences” and “Repeal sentencing examples”.
This will appeal to hardened gang-bangers cooped up on Rikers Island in the way that McKinsey’s mea culpa for their indiscretions [read: “restorative justice” – or cash] to the ANC did.
Sanders wasn’t alone in his endorsement of Mamdani. The campaign was fought with meaningless Tik Toks, wild promises, false reassurances, and of course, celebrity blessers. Damaged, unstable actresses like Cynthia Nixon broke cover from making transgender babies, (six or seven now – possibly?), and threw their support behind his candidacy.
His timing was fortunate. After New York’s rapid decline. initiated by a buffoon called Bill de Blasio, its premier educational institution, Columbia, has been repurposed into an anti-Semitic social club or madrassa. Mamdani will have scooped those votes.
Tony Blair warned of Islamo-left alliances, one of the metropolitan West’s most fashionable habits, but possibly because he told us things we didn’t need to hear – making love to his wife the night former Labour leader John Smith died as one example (kind, but unnecessary) – we didn’t listen when he said things we did need to hear.
According to Blair, this arrangement is no good. He should know, as it has happened in the borough where he lives in the capital of the country he once led. It has now degenerated to the point of having ageing television stars being roughed up by hyper-feral youth, Rolex gangs prowling Soho, and other features of the contemporary Yookay aesthetic.
Can’t win
As opposed to some of the Slavic or Baltic capitals, you can’t win with Western cities. This is a point proved since Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, when race ‘boomer writers’ celebrated them as fortresses of “democratic values”: perceived centres of resistance against actual democratic events and processes, like referendums and elections.
The mayors of all major western cities appeared to stand in opposition to the ideals of public safety or sound fiscal administration, and were now prioritising themes like “diversity”. What resulted was confusion, followed by denial and ultimately, suicidal empathy, which is where we are today – where people force themselves to accept the entirely avoidable for the sake of something that is not known, nor can be seen.
In the despair around Wednesday a few points are being ignored.
Hell hath no fury
Firstly, hell hath no fury like a scorned Democrat experiencing a tantrum. This is the very group which thought it could work within Blair’s Islamo-left model, so went out on a few dates, fooled around on the sofa – but then got ghosted, or worse. Since September last year the party has been incoherent, at times lost and listless. Its East Coast supporters, already seething with Joe Biden, his wife, controllers, and autopen, have clearly found their party’s opposition to Trump thus far insubstantial, so – true to Bernie Sanders’s caution – came out for a maniac who promises to torment that party much more than he irritates Trump.
Secondly, on this model, cities as they have been understood for the last 30 years are bound to collapse sooner than expected. For aspirant, upwardly mobile folks, to live in a Western city is now the worst value-for-money existence on the planet – from Berlin to Barcelona and Dublin.
Coupled to a neurotic desire for ideological purity and extortionate taxes, there is also zero willingness to conserve history’s good record in them. In places that have witnessed considerable migration, particularly from countries with an unorthodox grasp of things like women, the theory of traditional assimilation has been altered. There is now the suggestion that it should be cities that must adapt to new cultures. Not the other way round.
Members of the DA who oppose Helen Zille as Mayor of Johannesburg don’t know what they’re talking about. If they’re obsessing about “representation” now, it’s almost certain that their technical concerns will be limited to things like pride parades or congestion charges or “green highways” – luxury items distracting them from the most urgent matters. Zille is ideal for fixing cities. Iin 2013, some of the world’s authorities on the subject compared her to Antanas Mockus, the former Mayor of Bogota, who completely transformed that city from a hellhole of grime and kidnapping to one of the safest in the region.
If she is denied the opportunity in Johannesburg for frivolous reasons, not only will it be lost, but Western cities won’t have a successful case to prove that with a bit of intelligence and application, decline can be reversed.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend