Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 campaign for New York City mayor, framed as a progressive crusade for economic justice, bears conspicuous similarities to Hamas’s 2006 electoral campaign in the Palestinian legislative and presidential elections. Both Mamdani and Hamas’s campaigns leverage populist economic grievances to mask radical ideological agendas, blending reformist rhetoric with revolutionary objectives. Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, built on promises of economic reform and anti-corruption, offers a playbook that Mamdani appears to follow, consciously or not, in his bid to remake New York—a radical structure anchored in communist and Islamist worldviews. This convergence is not merely tactical but ideological, reflecting the broader dynamics of the Red-Green Alliance—a coalition of far-left socialism and radical Islamism that threatens pluralistic societies with dystopian outcomes.
Hamas’s Economic Promises: A Template for Populism
Hamas’s 2006 campaign under the “Change and Reform” banner promised economic independence, poverty reduction, and infrastructure development. Their manifesto outlined disengaging from Israel’s economy, issuing a Palestinian currency, and reforming fiscal policies to combat unemployment and stabilize prices. These pledges resonated with Palestinians disillusioned by Fatah’s corruption, securing Hamas’s electoral success.
Similarly, Mamdani’s platform appeals to working-class New Yorkers struggling with the rising costs of essentials like chicken, rice, and milk, proposing radical solutions such as city-owned bodegas and fare-free transit. These policies, while pitched as progressive, echo the inefficient, state-controlled systems of the Soviet Union, representing a regressive step toward centralized economic control rather than genuine reform.
Economic Intifada as Political Warfare
Hamas’s economic promises were a gateway to broader political warfare, using socioeconomic grievances to build legitimacy while advancing a radical Islamist agenda. Mamdani’s campaign mirrors this approach, employing what can be termed an “economic intifada” to destabilize New York’s governance structures. His proposals—rent strikes, budget justice, and public ownership of grocery stores—are not just policy goals but tools to erode centrist coalitions and challenge capitalist frameworks. Like Hamas, Mamdani cloaks his agenda in the language of justice, appealing to the oppressed against the powerful, yet his policies risk undermining the economic foundations of a pluralistic city.
Ideological Radicalism Behind Reformist Rhetoric
Hamas’s 2006 platform combined economic populism with uncompromising rejectionism, delegitimizing Israel while promoting an Islamic state. Mamdani’s campaign similarly blends economic reform with ideological extremism. His full-throated support for the Palestinian cause, often veiled in democratic socialist rhetoric, aligns with Hamas’s narrative. In a 2017 rap track titled “Salaam,” performing as Mr. Cardamom, Mamdani expressed “love to the Holy Land Five,” referring to the leadership of the Holy Land Foundation, convicted in 2008 for funneling over $12 million to Hamas. This drew sharp criticism, with former Governor Andrew Cuomo calling it “disgusting” and raising concerns about Mamdani’s ties to Hamas-linked figures.
Mamdani’s visit to the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge during his 2025 campaign further underscores this alignment. The mosque’s imam, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Barr, has praised Hamas fighters and called for Israel’s annihilation. Mamdani’s social media posts from the visit sparked controversy, highlighting his association with radical Islamist sentiment. These actions suggest an ideological kinship with Hamas’s rejectionist stance, repackaged for a New York audience under the guise of social justice.
Globalizing the Intifada
Mamdani’s campaign reflects Hamas’s strategy of “globalizing the intifada,” a call to extend the Palestinian campaign of violence and subversion worldwide. His long-standing support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, evident since his 2014 advocacy at Bowdoin College and his 2021 push for local candidates to back BDS, situates New York’s local battles within a global anti-American, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist framework. In 2021, he introduced a state bill to bar New York charities from donating to Israeli settlement organizations, a move critics labeled “purely antisemitic.” In a June 2025 interview with The Bulwark, Mamdani defended the slogan “globalize the intifada” as symbolic of Palestinian human rights, stating, “That is not language that I use … any incitement to violence is something that I’m in opposition to.”
To be clear, the phrase “globalize the intifada” is a call to violence and terror, rooted in the bloody history of the First and Second Intifadas, which involved suicide bombings, lynchings, and attacks by PLO and Hamas terrorists, resulting in the killing of more than 1,000 civilians. “Globalize the intifada” has been chanted at pro-Hamas rallies together with slogans like “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” It explicitly advocates spreading violence and terror globally, not peaceful protest. Unlike terms like “muqawama silmiya” for peaceful resistance, “intifada” evokes jihad and the Islamic notion of martyrdom and armed direct actions, carrying the same dangerous and deadly implications as phrases such as “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase outright drew criticism from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Jewish leaders, signaling his alignment with radical narratives.
This mirrors Hamas’s post-October 7, 2023, strategy, which co-opted global far-left discourses, particularly on American campuses like Columbia University, to fuel anti-Israel sentiment and accusations of genocide at the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. Mamdani’s campaign similarly seeks to remake New York as a battleground for these global struggles, aligning with the Red-Green Alliance’s fusion of socialist and Islamist ideologies.
The Red-Green Alliance: A Shared Ideological Axis
The Red-Green Alliance unites far-left socialism and radical Islamism in a shared anti-Western, anti-capitalist, and anti-Zionist agenda. Both ideologies reject liberal democratic values, seeking revolutionary change through populist mobilization. Mamdani’s ties to this alliance are evident not only in his own actions but also through his father, Mahmood Mamdani, a member of the Gaza Tribunal’s advisory council, a UK-based group supportive of BDS and sympathetic to suicide bombers. In his 2004 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, the elder Mamdani wrote, “Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” This intellectual framework, which normalizes extremist tactics, informs Zohran Mamdani’s political posture, blending socialist rhetoric with support for radical causes.
Parallels with Hamas’s 2006 Campaign
The parallels between Mamdani and Hamas are striking:
Economic Populism: Hamas promised subsidies and anti-corruption measures; Mamdani offers city-run bodegas and free transit, both exploiting economic discontent to gain support.
Political Radicalism: Hamas rejected bipartisan politics and security cooperation with Israel; Mamdani delegitimizes centrist governance and security institutions, framing them as tools of oppression.
Ideological Intransigence: Hamas’s anti-Israel stance mirrors Mamdani’s anti-Zionist rhetoric, both cloaked in narratives of resistance and liberation.
Mamdani is merely updating Hamas’s template for New York, replacing religious nationalism with intersectional socialism but maintaining a destabilizing posture that challenges democratic norms.
The Destructive Legacy of Radical Ideologies
The Red-Green Alliance’s blend of socialism and Islamism, though packaged as progressive, is inherently destructive. Hamas’s rule in Gaza since 2006 has turned the region into a dystopian landscape of violence and poverty, with Gazans themselves blaming Hamas for their suffering. Mohammed Attalah of Beit Lahia told CNN on March 26, 2025: “Our demand is that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. This chaos that they have created is enough.”
Mamdani’s vision for New York risks a similar trajectory, prioritizing ideological purity over practical governance. His proposal for city-run grocery stores, for instance, recalls the Soviet Union’s inefficient food distribution systems, a regressive policy dressed as progress. The radical extremism of both socialism and Islamism, when unchecked, leads to societal decay, as evidenced by Gaza’s ongoing crisis.
Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign is not merely a bid for office but a case study in political warfare, drawing lessons from Hamas’s 2006 electoral strategy. By blending economic populism with ideological radicalism, Mamdani seeks to globalize the intifada, targeting New York’s civic, economic, and social foundations. The Red-Green Alliance’s destructive ideas, while well-packaged, threaten pluralistic democracy with dystopian violence and destruction, as seen in Gaza. New Yorkers must recognize this campaign for what it is: a totalitarian takeover dressed in the garb of reform.
Sources:
Hamas Election Manifesto (2006) https://www.hamascase.com/volume-i/06_hamas-manifesto/
Miller, Tim, and Cameron Kasky. “Zohran Mamdani: FYPod Crossover.” The Bulwark Podcast, 17 June 2025, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/zohran-mamdani-fypod-crossover.
NBC News. (2025) Asked to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ Mamdani says mayors shouldn’t ‘police speech.’ Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggV2SeiGrVw (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
New York Post (12 July 2025) Mamdanis dad part of anti‑Israel group sympathetic to suicide bombers. Available at: https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/mamdanis-dad-part-of-anti-israel-group-sympathetic-to-suicide-bombers/ (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
Shorr, T. (2024) Palestinianism and the Red‑Green Alliance: Similarities in the Ideology and Practice of Marxists and Islamists. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Available at: https://jcpa.org/article/palestinianism-and-the-red-green-alliance/ (Accessed: 15 July 2025).
