FLASH
Shkruar nga Nicola Porro
Mamdani's victory is not at all enthusiastic, as we are reading these days, American democracy is less damaged than described, and if there are any blows, they come from the left...
Three considerations, difficult to dismiss, must be made regarding Zohran Mamdani's recent victory in the elections of America's most important city, New York.
These considerations, whether political or merit-based, are purely objective.
1. This is not a big victory. The youngest mayor of the “Big Apple” in the last 100 years won 50.4 percent of the vote, equivalent to about 1 million votes. In the same metropolitan area, a year ago, Kamala Harris, badly defeated nationally by Donald Trump, won 70 percent of the vote, equivalent to about 1.9 million votes. Take just the part of Manhattan, the heart of New York that we all know. In the presidential election, Harris received 533,000 votes, and Mamdani, last Tuesday, about half that, 270,000. In the areas stretching from Wall Street to Central Park, in the last presidential election, only 1 in 5 New Yorkers voted for Trump: everyone else voted for Harris. In short, even if we are comparing different types of elections, the perspective remains the same. In New York, they have always voted left. But this time, the new Islamist far left has suffered a setback. The two Democratic mayors who preceded the current one received roughly 200,000 fewer votes, but with much higher percentages, approaching 70 percent. This means, contrary to popular belief, that Mamdani’s victory largely divided the Democratic Party, rather than destroying the Trump-led Republican Party, which has consistently underperformed in the Big Apple.
2. The first thing the new mayor said after his victory was this: "I am a Muslim and a democratic socialist, and I do not have to apologize for either of them." Let's focus on the first qualification that Mamdani gave himself: his religion. For the secular West, this is a trivial matter: he is not the first Muslim mayor of a major Western city. In our country, religion should have nothing to do with state affairs. Think for a second whether a similar statement would be possible in most Muslim countries: "I am a Christian and I do not have to apologize for that." Perhaps in a city that was hit by a terrible attack by fundamentalist Christians. Unthinkable. When we talk about the superiority of the West, this is ultimately what we mean. In our country, the bourgeois immigrant son of the Muslim faith wins the election. Some might say we are succumbing to it. But this is a value judgment, a judgment that anyone can make with Houellebecq. We limit ourselves to saying that in the West, the daisy from which we can pluck better petals for our administration, our business, our culture, it doesn't matter in what soil it grew.
3. The third consideration concerns the authoritarian tendencies of Trump’s America. One could argue that our democracy is much stronger than its current leader. The election of a socialist in New York, America’s emblematic city and the backyard of the White House tenant, shows that despite the apocalyptic media, it is business as usual. But what authoritarianism? Americans, if they want, can get rid of the president with the stroke of a pen. There is something more. It is not directly related to New York. Just two days ago, California approved a referendum called by its left-wing governor that is an affront to democratic fair play. We don’t want to call it authoritarianism, but it could certainly be called voter manipulation. Let’s be clear: similar things have been done by Republicans. Californians, through a referendum, decided to change the boundaries and perimeters of electoral districts in order to help Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections. At the request of their incumbent governor, he agreed to rig the ballots to win the upcoming race.
In short, Mamdani's victory has none of the fanfare we've been reading these days; American democracy is less damaged than is being portrayed, and if anything, some of the pressure is coming from the left.
Finally, in the city that has become a symbol of Islamic fundamentalist attacks, citizens elect a mayor who claims his faith in Muhammad as the main definition of himself, something that in many parts of the world, for a Western Christian, would not be possible.
Then about socialism, free buses, a $30 minimum wage, cutting funding for the police, freezing rents, public supermarkets and so on, we'll see what happens with that. /Adapted from Il Giornale/
Islami dhe doktrina socialiste demokrate jane jo vetem te paperputheshme por dhe ne kundershtim me njera tjetren. Atehere cfare eshte ky???!