The war on America’s radicals: Mamdani is only the latest victim

The war on America’s radicals: [victorious candidate] Mamdani is only the latest victim

B. Duncan Moench, July 4, 2025 [Unherd, via Naked Capitalism 07-06-2025]

…Muslims and non-Western religions aren’t the only groups that have been met with prejudice by the country’s Anglo-Protestant majority either. Even the Mormons, arguably the whitest — and most Middle American — of heterodox religious groups had to abandon its practice of polygamy and dismantle their vast communal economic system before the Utah territory could be admitted as a state. Yes, Catholics, Jews, and Mormons were eventually welcomed into the American mainstream during the 20th century. But that only happened after a full century of cultural, and political, Anglo-centric assimilation. Each group had to prove they embraced Republican versions of democracy, Anglo-liberal “free” market economics and, no less important, Anglo-Americans’ unique take on the Protestant work ethic, which equates state support with personal failure….
 

In American political culture, however, the establishment has eagerly worshipped “wealth creators” while demeaning wage workers as lazy or entitled. This occurs regularly despite the fact that the US has, by far, the weakest labour protections and stingiest welfare state among wealthy industrialised nations. This mentality emerged early in the industrial era, as elites embraced a Robber Baron-style capitalist triumphalism, intertwined with the survival-of-the-fittest ethos promoted by Social Darwinists like William Graham Sumner. The only serious resistance ever mounted against this ideology was the New Deal coalition, built on Franklin Roosevelt’s political genius and relentless popular appeal. The American establishment hysterically condemn Mamdani because they can sense he might have that same potential.

Despite Roosevelt’s unparalleled four-term popularity, when the New Deal coalition collapsed in the Seventies, the role of labour unions and the state in building up middle-class stability began to disappear from the national narrative. In its place, identity politics rose up to become the face of American “Leftism”. As the language of identity replaced the language of class, the establishment’s long-standing worship of wealth and material success became stronger still. That ultimately paved the way for Wall Street plunder and modern Silicon Valley hyper-feudalism where, since 1975, approximately $79 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American workers to the top 1%.

This astoundingly regressive wealth redistribution must, of course, be justified by ideology. That’s where the Social Darwinism of thinkers like Sumner come in, offering a uniquely American cauldron of disdain for the needy and indigent….

Despite the bemoaning of Mamdani as nothing more than a spoiled woke socialist, his surprising political success derives from his rejection of identity-victimhood fixations and — like FDR before him — his refusal to accept the elite dogma that the state is powerless to improve the economic conditions of everyday people.

Mamdani is routinely portrayed as a demonic immigrant antichrist for the same reason the German 48ers were declared an existential threat, despite their small numbers and political irrelevance. These early rebels openly challenged America’s LASP norms and dared to advocate for a different — multicultural and multi-ideological — vision of the country. Mamdani seems set to do the same. Whether or not you support his policies, the intensity of the reaction from the national media and Right-wing influencers toward a mayor’s race, in a place most of them openly hate, reveals something deeper, almost unconscious….