Stop calling Mamdani ‘communist’

Socialism is a political and economic theory that states the community, rather than individuals, should own and control the means of production. Now, that is a blanket definition — and like most things, it’s just not that simple. There’s revolutionary socialism (closest to Marxism), democratic socialism and social democracy. Most strands of socialism advocate at the very least for a mixed economy. In observing the New York City mayoral election, I’ve noticed that socialism and communism seem to be utilized as political slurs. Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist, yet the ‘c’ word seems to be thrown around to describe him. Mamdani is not advocating a centrally planned economy; thus, he cannot be a communist. As a democratic socialist, he definitely has socialist elements to his political philosophy, but if communism and revolutionary socialism are far-left, a democratic socialist is creeping far closer to the center of the political scale.

Socialist thought is not singular, and it contains a plethora of different ideas and values. If I call someone a conservative, you get a broad sense of what I mean, but it doesn’t give you the full picture. Are they conservative in terms of the economy? Socially? Or are they one of the “I’m fiscally conservative, but socially liberal” bros? Blanket terms need to be stopped. Ideology even varies by country; what counts as conservative in the U.S. is different than in other parts of the world, and vice versa. By labeling people under one broad ideology, ignoring the nuances, you run the risk of assuming every conservative is a Reagan fanatic, when in the U.K., for example, it was the Conservative Party that initiated the legislation for the legalization of gay marriage. Similarly, calling everyone left-leaning a socialist in the U.S. generates images of the USSR and the Cold War, when many modern socialists still want to work within a capitalist system.

The NYC mayoral election has revealed how politicians use the word socialism in an attempt to alienate a candidate from voters. Zohran Mamdani has been consistently targeted and branded as a communist by President Trump, who called him a “100% communist lunatic.” Mamdani’s success in the primary, and now his leading of the polls in New York City, has made him subject to a lot of criticism — as is natural and right for anyone in politics. 

But why are socialist and communist becoming the ‘s’ and ‘c’ words? The U.S. has a complicated history with the threat of communism — think back to McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Due to this, socialism and communism are inherently viewed as threats to the American way of life. They are seen as threats to capitalism, property rights and individualism, all of which are key components of American culture. But when are we going to acknowledge that politics has changed, and so have the ideologies that govern it? Mamdani might be a democratic socialist — but to consistently criticize him for communist-adjacent views is incorrect and fear-mongering. We have now entered an age of American politics where there is no nuance; we can no longer analyze leftist policies without branding them as communism. This is a tool used by those who want America divided. We can’t brand Mamdani’s policies, such as free transportation, free childcare for young children and building more houses, as “communist” without then implying that countries such as Luxembourg, Iceland and Sweden are communist, which is factually incorrect.

However, the point of this article is not to analyze Mamdani’s manifesto. The point is that blanket definitions and a lack of nuance are ruining political discourse. Communism has to stop being used as a political slur to wreck a candidate’s credibility and to fearmonger and intimidate. Politics and policies are not black and white, and neither is ideology. If we follow this line of branding anything remotely leftist as communist, then we run the risk of calling anything right-wing fascist. Bring back nuance, bring back truthfulness and stop referring to candidates with the ‘c’ word, unless they really are.