Adam Lehrer, writer for Tablet Magazine, seems to have go the measure of him.
(Edited for brevity)
Forget, for a moment, Mamdani's absurd and self-canceling politics-a tangle of Third Worldist pseudo-communism, performative radicalism, and the sort of NGO-scented global liberalism that flatters itself as rebellion-and just look at him as a man. As a personality. And ask yourself, sincerely: What is it they see in him?
To understand why he's winning—and why he'll keep winning— you have to understand this creature of thwarted ambition, whose politics are not born of conviction but of resentment, who has mistaken vengeance for virtue and failure for depth.
Despite the apparent diversity of Zohran's supporters, it was clear who truly dominated the crowd: the young. No doubt, the overeducated, underemployed left-wing 20-and 30-something have set the foundation for Zohran's messaging and campaign aesthetics, and it's their sensibilities that are most taken into consideration.
Zohran is a human algorithm trained on the gestures and cadences of the constituencies he hopes to seduce.
Today's young activists don't really want to change the world. They want to find themselves, or at least a version of themselves that photographs well. Political dissent has become an another lifestyle trend, ripe for monetization. Radical
symbols-the raised fist, the pride flag-are stripped of context, rebranded as empowerment kits, and sold back to their original owners.
While many Jews are alarmed by Zohran's flirtations with Islamist rhetoric, the truth is far duller-and somehow more sinister. He's not so much a Hamas ideologue as he is a bland liberal opportunist masquerading as a
revolutionary. His politics are a chaotic slurry of leftist identity jargon, boutique communism, NGO globalism, and shallow religious signaling.
We stand on the threshold of a new era, one in which the world's largest, most intricate city will be governed by people who possess no convictions, no principles, nothing but the day's trending slogan and the algorithmic confidence of the perpetually online.