From 9/11 to Zohran Mamdani - How Far NYC Has Fallen

From 9/11 to Zohran Mamdani - How Far NYC Has Fallen
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
October 28, 2025

The latest salvo from Zohran Mamdani hit the public’s eyes and ears just days ago. An oldie, but a goodie, from the archives of September 5, 2023, when headlining as the keynote speaker at the Democratic Socialists of America national convention, Mamdani said “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” (Israel Defense Forces) Wow - two slurs for the price of one from the Socialist-Marxist-Islamist candidate for mayor of New York City.

One of Mamdani’s State Assembly (36-Queens) colleagues, Democrat Kalman Yeger (41-Brooklyn) said, upon hearing Mamdani’s antisemitic and anti-police diatribe, “sometimes it’s hard to tell if Zorhan hates Jews more than he hates cops, or if he hates cops more than he hates Jews.” Sadly for the voters of New York City, there has been more than enough putrid rhetoric to go around from the Democrat-Socialist candidate for mayor of the Big Apple. Should Mamdani get elected on Tuesday, November 4, he will be the worm that infests the Big Apple.

This is just one of myriad thoughts, slogans, professions from the catalog of Mamdani’s Greatest Hits. While flying under the radar as a backbencher in the New York State Assembly, Mamdani’s espousal of virulent antisemitic, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-police, anti-capitalist, anti-democracy screeds continue to rise to the forefront. Videos of his own words, and not just rhetoric, but a hard core belief system that is dangerous not just for New York City, not just for the United States of America, but for all of Western Civilization. Just about anytime Mamdani opens his mouth, it’s a fair bet something cringeworthy will emerge from his gaping maw.

Sadly, far too many New Yorkers have fallen for the facade of Mamdani’s smarmy grin reminding folks of the supervillain Joker from the Batman franchise. How is it possible for a Marxist to be the frontrunner in this election in the economic epicenter of the United States, if not the world? How is it that a socialist/communist can be on the verge of victory in the first capital of these United States - where General George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789 - at Federal Hill overlooking Wall Street?

How can the citizens of New York City elect a sharia-supporting, Muslim extremist to be mayor of the city that will forever be the face of September 11, 2001? Imagine next September 11 - the 25th memorial of 9/11 - with “Mayor Mamdani” present with the thousands of victims’ families and friends that are sure to attend for the reading of the 2,977 names of those murdered by Mamdani’s fellow travelers. And don’t forget the additional 8,200 men and women who have subsequently died from 9/11 related diseases and illnesses, according to legalunitedstates.com. The hypocrisy of Mamdani showing his face will stain the somber ceremony and trample the memories of those murdered that fateful Tuesday morning in New York City, at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, and in a field in Shanksville, PA. 

Mamdani recently had the unmitigated audacity to compare the slaughter of 2,977 innocents on 9/11 to an alleged experience he said his aunt had. Mamdani said his aunt no longer felt comfortable riding the subways wearing her hijab. Turns out that story has been debunked, that he didn’t even have an aunt living in New York City at the time of 9/11.  Mamdani even campaigned with a jihadi, Hasan Piker, an extreme leftist who, in 2019 said “America deserved 9/11.” 

How, in good conscience, can a single Jewish New Yorker cast a ballot for Mamdani, an antisemite who does not even support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish sovereign nation? Mamdani has attempted to equate the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023 with Palestinian criminals legitimately locked away in Israeli prisons. In September Mamdani appeared on Qatari television declaring the United States is underwriting the genocide in the Middle East, that he supports jihad, and that terrorism is a western invention not one from the Middle East. Mamdani has links to the Qatari royal family - the family who harbored Khalil Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Mamdani consistently refuses to condemn “globalize the indifada,” both the concept and the language. In fact, he has never actually condemned the Holocaust. Additionally, Mamdani is a keen supporter of the BDS movement (boycott, divest, and sanction) against Israel, calling it “a righteous movement for liberation.” He supports a one state solution, and that state is not Israel, as Mamdani endorses “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and said he would never set foot in Israel. Mamdani also said he would have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested should he set foot in New York City.

“The most frightening thing about him is his antisemitism,” said Emily Compagno, co-host of Outnumbered on the Fox News Channel.

Mamdani, 34, and born in Uganda, has lived a life of privilege and hypocrisy. Hypocritical because he supports the abolition of private property, just so long as it is not his family’s properties being commandeered by the government. One of his advisors, Cea Weaver, posted in 2019 that “private property,” and “especially home ownership, is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as wealth building public policy.” On March 25, 2020 Mamdani said “the oligarchs who want to return to work to goose the stock market, are the same ones with thousands of luxury condos as investment properties, sitting empty while New Yorkers die on the streets and in shelters. Seize those properties. House the homeless. Enact a houses guarantee.” Part of his platform calls for a rent freeze, which he cannot institute unilaterally, and for the construction of 200,000 affordable housing units. Mamdani lives in a $3 million condo in Chelsea.

Hypocritical for calling to defund the NYPD, yet has a personal security team. Not only to defund the police, but replace them with social workers, and has called for a ban on all guns. Naturally, throughout his campaign Mamdani has refuted those defund statements. Of course he can’t deny them as social media is forever. He also calls for the abolition of prisons. On October 18, 2021 Mamdani said “we must decarcerate and we must do it now.” Do the 33,000 men and women in blue really believe Mamdani will have their backs while desecrating Gracie Mansion? Perhaps Mamdani’s security team should be social workers.

Mamdani comes by his belief system honestly, as the antisemitic, anti-capitalist, anti-democracy, anti-Western Civilization candidate did not fall far from the tree of the same hatreds. His father Mahmood, a one time professor at Columbia University, called the suicide bombers “worthy of sympathy, not scorn.” One of his mentors, Linda Sarsour, the co-chair of the Women’s March, a Palestinian-American, is also a virulent antisemite who objected to, and attempted to, bar Jewish and LGBTQ women from participating in the march in 2019. 

There is a video of Mamdani flipping the middle finger at a statue of Christopher Columbus in New York City, and shouting, “take it down!”

Some of Mamdani’s other platform planks include decriminalizing drug possession, providing safe injection sites, legalizing prostitution and sex work, raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour, seizing the means of production, and a $10 billion tax hike on businesses. When businesses begin to flee New York City, as many already have, how will Mamdani pay for his socialist/communist agenda? On the backs of the remaining people, too poor to afford to move away from The City? 

More of the Mamdani agenda includes providing free child care, free city buses, and the creation and operation of city-owned grocery stores, all of which are unsustainable. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said government-owned grocery stores have worked, yet failed to name one locality where it has. These pie in the sky promises to gullible voters goes beyond socialism. Mamdani said capitalism is “theft. When we tax the rich, we’re reclaiming the wealth bosses and corporations steal,” he said. While on the topic of the rich, “I don’t think we should have billionaires because quite frankly it is so much money in a moment of such inequality,” said Mamdani on Meet the Press on June 29, 2025, just five days after winning the Democrat primary.

So in addition to overtaxing the wealthy, opening the prisons, legalizing drugs and prostitution, Mamdani also wants to protect illegal aliens and the homosexual community calling for making New York City an LGBTQ sanctuary city, akin to the sanctuary city for the illegals regardless of their sexual orientation. (Not that there’s anything wrong with protecting appropriate gay rights.) Mamdani wants a $65 billion commitment for transgender surgery for children, but did not say from whom the commitment should come. He also called for free abortion and contraception on demand.

Mamdani not only wants to end cooperation with I.C.E., but he wants to abolish the entire department of Immigration and Custom Enforcement. “He’ll ensure our immigrant New Yorkers are protected by strengthening our sanctuary city apparatus, getting I.C.E. out of all city facilities, and ending any cooperation, increasing legal support, and protecting all personal data,” it said on Mamdani’s “Zohran for NYC” site.

This is who the citizens of New York City are going to entrust as their leader?

Even the liberal Washington Post condemned Mamdani as wrong for New York City and wrong for the Democrats. “...New Yorkers should be worried that he would lead Gotham back to the bad old days of civic dysfunction, and Democrats should fear that he will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist,” wrote the Post in a June 26, 2025 editorial, two days after Mamdani took the primary.

When the shouting's all over, voters in New York City may have to paraphrase Hyman Roth from The G-dfather Part II and say, “this is the government we’ve chosen.” Do the voting citizens of New York City deserve better? Or do they deserve the government they’ve chosen? May G-d continue to Bless the good people of New York City - there’s still a few out there; and may G-d continue to Bless these United States of America.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN. He grew up in northern New Jersey, a short distance from New York City.