Comparing Zohran to H*tler Is Why Americans Hate the Media
The New York Times reaches a new low.
Following the shocking results of last week’s New York City mayoral Democratic primary, the mainstream media is laser-focused on the great political question of our time: Will Zohran Mamdani condemn the slogan ‘globalize the intifada,’ which he’s never said?
A week before the election, Mamdani was asked to denounce the familiar protest chant on The Bulwark podcast. He declined, stating that while it’s not the language he uses, he doesn’t believe ‘intifada,’ an Arabic word with multiple translations, is the call to violence conservative English-speakers claim it is. It was a straightforward and reasonable answer, yet Andrew Cuomo and the media acted like Mamdani had admitted to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. Cuomo made the non-scandal the closing message of his campaign, and Mamdani could hardly sit for an interview without the host acting like he had a suicide bomb strapped to his chest.
As we now know, New Yorkers saw through the bad-faith, racist attacks that Mamdani was ‘inciting violence against Jews’ (Cuomo’s words1) and overwhelmingly chose the democratic socialist to be their Democratic candidate for mayor. One would think a failed campaign attack would disappear with the election’s end, but that's what separates laypeople like you and me from Very Serious Journalists. Despite accruing a double-digit electoral mandate, with much support coming from Jewish voters,2 the mainstream media and establishment politicians are still pressing Mamdani on a trivial slogan that he’s never even said. While some will disregard the constant questions about ‘global intifada’3 as the media squeezing every drop of ratings out of an already-twisted lemon, this line of questioning can’t be viewed in isolation. It’s the latest part of an ongoing campaign to smear the Democratic candidate, and the anti-Zionist movement he represents, as antisemitic and unacceptable in respectable politics.
Regardless of the channel or publication, the tactics used to slander Mamdani are the same. The host misrepresents ‘Globalize the Intifada’ as a call for antisemitic violence, then asks Mamdani to condemn it. When he doesn’t, the interviewer insinuates he’s a Jew-hater for refusing to accept their bad-faith framing. Here’s Meet The Press host Kristin Welker using this manipulative strategy during Mamdani’s recent appearance.
Notice how Welker sets what she believes is a trap for Mamdani. She opens with, ‘Many people hear [intifada] as a call to violence against Jews.’ A rhetorical device made famous by Donald Trump, the ‘many people’ framing creates the impression for the audience that the public earnestly believes Zohran Mamdani is ideologically aligned with the Waffen SS. (If you think I’m exaggerating, keep reading.) In fact, Trump also used this tactic against Mamdani, recently saying, ‘A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.’
The messengers differ, but their intent is the same. Both Kristin Welker and Donald Trump frame a fringe conspiracy theory as something ‘many people believe’ to trick their audiences into thinking that Mamdani’s immigration status and violent nature are worth their consideration. Both claims are equally preposterous. Upon investigation into who these ‘many people’ are, the narrative crumbles, and the true intentions come to light. A perfect example of this can be found in The Paper of Record. A day after Mamdani’s victory, The New York Times published the below article, misrepresenting the anti-Zionist mayoral candidate as a legitimate threat to Jewish safety.4
At the risk of sounding overdramatic, this article is one of the most insane and offensive things the NYT has printed in recent memory. It begins by brushing over the prominent Jewish politicians supporting Mamdani, and that he was the second choice for NYC’s Jewish voters (polling above Jewish candidate Brad Lander).5 These two developments would lead a principled journalist to conclude that Mamdani isn’t an antisemite, and maybe they should write something else. However, Katie Glueck and Lisa Lere continue undeterred from their mission to paint Mamdani as comparable to Adolf Hitler. (Once again, I’m unfortunately not exaggerating.) They write:
‘But for other Jews around the country who were already struggling with their place in the progressive movement, Mr. Mamdani’s stunning result confirmed their worst fears about the direction of the American left, fueling a sense that urgent concerns about the community’s safety are being dismissed in a movement and a city that Jews helped build.’
To support the preposterous claim that democratic socialism is a threat to ‘Jewish safety,’ the article interviews a handful of Mamdani critics, framing them as if they are good-faith ambassadors of typical Jewish New York families. But they are not. The critics are either Zionist activists who support Israel’s imperialist and murderous policies, which Mamdani sternly opposes, or they outright lie about his statements.
The first critic, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue, has a history of using religious services to promote hardline Zionist politics. A 2022 sermon was spent denouncing Amnesty International’s report on Israeli apartheid, though Cosgrove admitted he didn’t read past the executive summary.67 Even more shockingly, on June 13th, Cosgrove praised Israel’s illegal bombings of Iranian civilians as ‘an expression of Jewish self-defense.’8 The Park Avenue Synagogue uploaded his speech to YouTube under the title, ‘Rise Like A Lion,’ a direct copy of the IDF’s operation name for the illegal attack that violated the United Nations charter.
As if platforming an IDF propagandist isn’t bad enough, the Times then interviews Deborah Lipstadt, a Zionist activist and President Biden’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. A longtime Israel apologist, Lipstadt has recently joined the rightist pearl-clutching campaign, warning upper-income reactionaries that the college kids are out of control! Writing in Bari Weiss’ $100 million digital rag, Lipstadt claimed she turned down a professorship at Columbia because the sister-school, Barnard, antisemitcally refused to punish anti-genocide protestors. (Barnard expelled the students in question, which speaks volumes to the true intentions of Lipstadt and The Free Press.9) It’s also not clear that Columbia ever offered Lipstadt a position. She repeatedly writes she’d been ‘considering’ an academic appointment, a convenient word game to imply she’d been offered a job when in all likelihood she just wanted one. Or at least a backstory that portrayed her as a victim.
Another quoted individual warning about the dangers of Zohran Mamdani is Rabbi Diana Fersko, who leads a reformist congregation in Manhattan. Speaking (again) about the protest chant, Fersko misrepresents Mamdani, saying:
“The Jewish community has seen time and again how violent rhetoric has transformed into actual violence, so for us it’s just deeply unsettling to have a mayoral candidate who condones and uses that language.”
Mamdani has been extraordinarily clear every time this question is posed to him. He does not use the term ‘Globalize the Intifada.’ Either Fersko lied to attack Mamdani, or she was misinformed — which is no excuse when you’re charging someone with inciting violence against a historically marginalized community. Regardless of whether Fersko’s falsehood was malicious or malpractice, The New York Times decided to print her claims as fact. This hints at the true intention of this article, which was laid bare in one of the most jaw-dropping lines I’ve ever read in a mainstream publication. The article concludes with this passage:
‘On private text chains and WhatsApp groups, Jewish voters circulated mock ballots showing Mr. Cuomo ranked first to stop Mr. Mamdani’s rise. Social media influencers with large pro-Israel followings circulated Mr. Mamdani’s past statements about Israel, saying he would threaten Jewish safety in the city.
“I feel like last night’s NYC election result is like a spiritual Kristallnacht. It proved Jew hatred is now OK,” posted Jill Kargman, a Jewish writer and actress.
After Mr. Mamdani won, dark jokes circulated on some of the same chains about moving out of the city.’
For context, Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, was the Nazi pogrom now recognized as Hitler’s escalation from antisemitic governance to the Holocaust. On the night of November 9th, 1938, fascists slaughtered hundreds of Jews, torched their homes and synagogues, and raped an unknown number of Jewish women. The SS and Gestapo rounded up 30,000 Jews, the first mass-arrest of many, and sent them to the death camps, where eventually they would be pushed into the gas chambers.10 According to The New York Times, the pain these victims experienced is comparable to what the star of Momzillas felt when Zohran Mamdani won a primary for mayor of New York City. Fuck all the way off.
It is beyond grotesque to suggest that the democratic socialist is in any way comparable to the Third Reich. (I can’t believe I had to type that.) It’s not just offensive to Mr. Mamdani and the millions of other Muslim and Arab Americans who are constantly stereotyped to fit the racist hallucinations of American dipshits, but to the victims of the Kristallnacht, the Holocaust, and World War Two, whose humanity has been thoroughly stripped by this egregious false equivalence. One reason I don’t take these charges of antisemitism seriously is that, if you’re suggesting the democratic nomination of a Muslim mayoral candidate creates even a fraction of the hardship endured by Holocaust victims, you don’t actually care about Holocaust victims; only elevating your personal grievances so you can feel like the Main Character of life. That’s called Holocaust Revisionism, and it’s gross no matter what political objective you do it for.
As deplorable as this media campaign it, the public’s response to it is fills me with hope. The media and political establishment has played these tricks for a long time, to protect both Israel and their egos, which can’t accept that they were wrong and a tool of American imperialism. However, for one reason or another, the public is no longer falling for it. The effort to paint Zohran Mamdani as a Hitler-level antisemite is so pathetic it falls flat on its face. Whether its suggested by NBC, Senator KKKristen Gillibrand, or IDF sycophants in The New York Times, Americans don’t believe Mamdani or the religiously-diverse coalition he represents want to murder Jews. It may be hard for Zionist-aligned figures to understand, but most sane Americans recognize that people protest Israel because it’s conducting a genocide. There’s no secret antisemitic or pro-Iranian plot. Just a desire to stop using our tax dollars to kill children. This is a reasonable demand, so when the media chimes in with, ‘Well, we found a war-mongering Zionist, a Free Press writer, and a reality TV star who say DSA wants to build gas chambers,’ they roll their eyes, ignore the preposterous claims, and deplete their already low trust in mainstream institutions. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the chief architects of absurd antisemitic charges — the mainstream media, establishment political movements, and Zionism itself — are rapidly losing their once-solid grasp on the American public. Frankly, they have no one to blame but themselves, and I can’t think of a better way for these institutions to go out. Let our last memories of them be the lies, deceit, and bigotry they relied on to distort the truth and shield oppressors from rightful justice.
In the words of Mamdani’s bromance partner and Jewish politician Brad Lander, ‘Good. Fucking. Riddance.’
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In Solidarity — Joe
https://www.andrewcuomo.com/press/governor-cuomo-calls-all-mayoral-candidates-denounce-zohran-mamdanis-refusal-condemn
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/democrats-americas-jewish-city-embraced-critic-israel-new-123316532
While others are better suited to explain the history of the Arabic word, ‘globalize the intifada’ is a relatively benign expression. I was chanting it at a protest last Sunday, which was led by a Jewish activist. I’m sure some people have deluded themselves into thinking anti-Zionists want to ‘kill all Jews,’ but that’s not what protestors mean.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/us/politics/zohran-mamdani-jewish-voters.html
https://forward.com/fast-forward/723325/cuomo-nyc-mayor-mamdani-jewish-vote/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
https://prismreports.org/2025/03/06/barnard-expelled-students-palestine/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht
Good fucking riddance, indeed. Excellent article. Comparing Mamdani's win to Kristallnacht is unconscionable. The New York Times is scum.
Thank you for sharing your analysis. It made me go and look at that NYT article, and read some of the 1.1K comments. Some, but only a small percentage, of the limited number of comments I read, were in support of the ideas in the article. The majority, again I do stress I didn't look at them all, were positive about Mandani, and optimistic about the future. Many making positive comments identified themselves as Jewish.
Even among some of those opposed to Mamdani, the issues were his inexperience, and concern for the economics of his proposals. The NYT may still be a reactionary rag, but their readership is no longer a monolith in support of their positions, if indeed they ever were.