New York City’s radical Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is under fire over past statements made by his father, a tenured Ivy League professor.
Resurfaced remarks from Professor Mahmood Mamdani link Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler.
The academic asserts that Nazi policies were inspired by the United States.
Mamdani, a self-described socialist and sitting New York state assemblyman, has been climbing the city’s progressive ladder with backing from far-left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America.
But attention has turned sharply to his upbringing following a 2022 panel discussion in which his Columbia University professor father made a series of jarring historical comparisons.
Speaking at an Asia Society event, the elder Mamdani alleged that Adolf Hitler drew direct inspiration for the Holocaust from Abraham Lincoln’s handling of Native American tribes during the U.S. Civil War.
“With the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln generalized the solution of reservations; they herded American Indians into separate territories,” Mamdani said.
“For the Nazis, this was the inspiration – Hitler realized two things: one, that genocide is doable.
“It is possible to do genocide, that’s what Hitler realized.
“Second thing Hitler realized, is that you don’t have to have a common citizenship.”
He went even further, claiming the Nazi regime’s infamous Nuremberg Laws were “patterned after American laws,” and that there was little moral separation between the goals of Nazi Germany and the Allied Forces.
“The Nazi political project was shared by the Allies, and that political project was to turn Germany into a ‘pure’ nation,” Mamdani said.
“A ‘pure’ nation rid of its minorities.
“When the Allies defeated the Nazis and went into Eastern Europe, they began to create ‘pure’ nations.
“To ethnically cleanse Eastern Europe of Germans – move them back into Germany.
“One crime doesn’t wipe out another.”
The remarks have drawn heavy criticism, especially as his son seeks the top executive office in America’s largest city.
According to The New York Times, Mamdani has credited his parents with a “privileged upbringing,” shaped by political debate and global affairs.
His mother is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker.
But the controversy doesn’t stop at the professor’s academic musings.
In a now-circulating video from a 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Zohran Mamdani told supporters that they must remain uncompromising in their radical policy goals, including “seizing the means of production.”
Another video, produced by The Gravel Institute, showed Mamdani calling for the communist-style “de-commodification of housing,” proposing the replacement of luxury condos with communal-style housing that features shared laundry rooms and co-op kitchens.
“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing,” Mamdani declared in the video.
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The resurfaced videos and his father’s inflammatory remarks have fueled growing concerns about the ideological foundation of Mamdani’s platform, particularly among moderate Democrats and independents wary of the far Left’s agenda.
Further remarks by the elder Mamdani also stirred backlash, including his defense of radical terminology.
In an interview about his book “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,” he claimed that the term “suicide bomber” is a “misnomer.”
He equates the act to that of “a soldier whose objective is to kill.”
According to a report by the Washington Free Beacon, Mamdani has also argued that Israel is “the logical conclusion of Nazism”, adding yet another explosive comparison to his academic record.
As political scrutiny intensifies, critics say the mayoral candidate’s refusal to distance himself from these views raises legitimate questions about how he would govern a city already battling crime, illegal immigration, and housing crises, all while navigating the growing influence of radical leftist ideology within the Democratic Party.
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