Mamdani – progressive for the West, blind for the rest

Vassily Grossman famously described antisemitism as “a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures, and state systems”, going on to say: “Tell me what you accuse the Jews of… I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the regime Grossman laboured in service of turned against him when he accused it, as the extent of its antisemitism became clear to him. The work in which Grossman wrote those lines – Life and Fate – was heavily censored in the Khrushchev-era USSR, and it would be almost a quarter of a century before it was published in full in the West.

Those lines ring true today as they did when Grossman wrote them. Indeed, they are unavoidable when one looks at the behaviour exhibited by both the far-right and far-left. Qatari-funded propagandists screech about Israel having bought American politics. People whose response to 7 October was public jubilation would subsequently accuse Jews of having a lust for slaughter. A European country which has indulged in levels of Israel hatred which have imperilled its small but proud Jewish community has just elected as president an individual who called Israel a “terrorist state”, yet went on a trip to Assad’s Syria at the height of the country’s civil war, where she was shown around by regime propagandists.

Tell me what you accuse the Jews of — I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.

New York, meanwhile, is about to elect its first avowedly anti-Zionist mayor. Zohran Mamdani has described how the issue of Israel inspired him to enter politics; the man literally set up the “Students for Justice in Palestine” chapter at the higher education institution he attended.

Mamdani’s many highly questionable statements on Israel are a matter of public record, but one of the key ideas that drives him – he has regularly talked about it in the past – is common in far-left US circles. It is called “Progressive Except Palestine”, and its aim is twofold – to accuse anyone in the wider progressive movement who supports Israel of being hypocritical, and to provide a litmus test which effectively banishes any Progressive seen as pro-Israel from the wider so-called coalition-of-the-good.

The charge is simple – that progressives who support Israel (many of them Jewish) leave their progressivism at the door for Israel. ‘You support equality? What about the inequality to which Palestinians are subjected to? You’re anti-apartheid? What about Israeli “apartheid”’? The aim is to ideologically cleanse any Zionists from progressive spaces, by attempting to prove that there is a fundamental inconsistency between being Zionist and being progressive.

Grossman, however, was right – “Progressive Except Palestine” is a mirror of the failings of those who most fervently believe in it, and nowhere is that clearer than with Zohran Mamdani, whose politics, alongside those of much of the far-left, can be best described as “Progressive for the West, anti-imperialist for the rest”. Countries that engage in hideous human rights violations on a regular basis can be ignored, because the west is worse.

Take the United Arab Emirates. There is clear evidence that the UAE is responsible for arming the RSF in Sudan. Over the last two and half years – in other words, before 7 October 2023 – the RSF has been carrying out full-scale massacres of men, women and children. No one knows the full number of the dead – largely because so many ‘human rights’ organisations effectively left the area as soon as the slaughter began. As many as 150,000 may have been killed, and it is one of the world’s most open secrets that the UAE is ultimately responsible. The ICJ managed to shrug off responsibility for investigating, not because the evidence does not exist, but because it claimed it did not have jurisdiction.

That matters because at the same time as Mamdani’s foam-flecked denunciations of Israeli “genocide”, last December he held a lavish destination wedding – in the UAE.

Or take Uganda, where Mamdani was born, and where his family still owns property. Another part of Mamdani’s multi-continental wedding was held there, and the US politician – who has regularly taken part in LGBT+ parades in NYC, was photographed smiling next to a prominent Ugandan politician infamous for pushing a draconian law calling for gay people to be jailed for life. Uganda is one of the most homophobic countries in the world – but if you’re looking for Mamdani’s regular, full-throated condemnation of Uganda’s policies, you’ll look in vain.

Or look at Mamdani’s publicly stated view on Israel; he says he recognises Israel’s right to exist – just not as a Jewish state. Why? Because, he says, he does not “recognise any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy based on race or religion.” Except, of course, that he seems to have no problem with any other country which does have such a hierarchy. Pakistan, for example, has an official state religion – Islam – and the persecution of non-Muslims there is a matter of public record. That did not stop Mamdani attending a Pakistan Independence Day parade in New York this year – while confirming he would not attend Israel Independence Day parades.

Mamdani and his fellow travellers love to talk about the double standards of Zionist Progressives. Perhaps they figure that if they shout about it loud enough, no one will notice the far larger double standards they themselves adhere to.