Zohran Mamdani is the left's Charlie Kirk — like him or not, he represents his party's future

What does that mean, though?

I’m comparing Zohran Mamdani to Charlie Kirk NOT in any substantive moral sense. Philosophically, Mamdani and Kirk represent radically different ideas about America. The former is an unapologetic democratic socialist; the latter was an unapologetic Christian conservative.

Yet the New York State Assemblyman and Turning Point USA founder — the soon-to-be New York City mayor and the martyred symbol of President Trumps’s agenda — share a single crucial similarity. They represent the futures of their respective political parties.

For the last decade, the Democratic Party has been moving toward democratic socialist. When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders waged a pair of presidential campaigns in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, he won roughly 43 percent and 26 percent of the vote, respectively. Notably, Sanders’ dip in the latter contest occurred entirely after the Democratic Party establishment united to sabotage him after he won a series of crucial early primaries. Meanwhile the most colorful and media-savvy segment of the Democratic Party is the so-called “Squad,” a collection of democratic socialists in Congress including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Greg Cesar (TX), Summer Lee (PA) and Delia Ramirez (IL).

Now Mamdani, who like his recent antecedents openly embraces democratic socialist ideas, is likely to be elected the next mayor of America’s most populous, most financially powerful and most culturally powerful city.

“He has fought for the working class in and outside the legislature: hunger striking alongside taxi drivers to achieve more than $450 million in transformative debt relief, winning over $100 million in the state budget for increased subway service and a successful fare-free bus pilot, and organizing New Yorkers to defeat a proposed dirty power plant,” Mamdani states on his website. “The cost of living is crushing working people but Zohran believes that government can lower costs and make life easier in our city — he’ll use every tool available to bring down the rent, create world class public transit, and make it easier to raise a family.”

Kirk, like Mamdani a millennial, was also the leader of a grassroots movement. He founded Turning Point USA in 2012 after being noticed by wealthy Tea Party backers. Over the subsequent dozen-plus years, Kirk combined shrewd social media tactics with a clearly-articulated right-wing agenda to mobilize a generation of young people around Christian conservative ideas. Once Trump emerged as the leader of modern American conservatism, Kirk pivoted accordingly, providing Trump with his easiest and most potent access to activist-minded conservatives among millennials and even younger generations.

I do not need to articulate Kirk’s philosophy here. To understand it, merely look at the policies implemented by President Trump.

Despite the vast differences in the Mamdani and Kirk worldviews, they must be compared. I state these things about Mamdani and Kirk because, despite the massive differences in what they believe(d), both embody the futures of their respective political parties. Like it or not, Democrats will need to reckon with Mamdani’s ideas if they want to be viable in the future. Republicans by contrast have embraced Kirk’s movement, which perhaps explains why their young supporters seem to be growing while Democrats’ seem to be shrinking. At the same time, Kirk’s ideas were extraordinarily flawed, and for this reason his posthumous influence is ominous.

This is why, personally, I welcome the prospect of a Mayor Mamdani. It would show that the same dynamics which are empowering Kirk in death can perhaps strengthen American politics on the left… and from someone who is still alive.

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Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, “Neurosocialism,” which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.