A disproportionate chunk of oxygen surrounding Zohran Mamdani's decisive victory in the NYC mayoral Democratic primary has been taken up by the question "is he antisemitic?" The main hinge points for the charge, aside from a generic linkage to his sharp criticisms of Israel, are his support for the BDS movement and his refusal to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada" (some have wrongly suggested that Mamdani himself uses the phrase, but that doesn't appear to be true).
Predictably, things have spiraled out of control -- for what's it worth, I do think Jews are permitted to object both to Mamdani's BDS support and his apologia for "globalize the intifada", but the possibility of reasonable objections has been obliterated thanks to a glut of hysterics urging Jews to flee the city or, perhaps, the country.
In any event, while it does seem like Mamdani did not win NYC's Jewish vote this cycle, it's undeniable that he has a non-trivial amount of Jewish supporters. Some would point to these supporters (cynically or not) as a bulwark against the antisemitism charge. And others, well, others would see Mamdani's entire rise as part of Soros-led plot dating back to Mamdani's teenage years.
The above linked article is by Asra Nomani, and I encourage you to read it because it is a good example of what I've called Potemkin expertise. It rattles off a dizzying array of facts and numbers and connections to create the illusion of being deeply-researched, but it's actually the written equivalent of a corkboard with red string connecting names with wild abandon. It is unsurprising to anyone with a familiarity with this sort of "it's all connected!" raving that George Soros will be at the center of it, and so too here. But the short version is that Soros funded a range of post-9/11 initiatives that pushed back on racial and religious targeting of Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Americans, and these projects should actually be seen as a systematic attempt to create a "red-green-blue spider's web" that will take over American politics in pursuit of a Islamist-socialism.
There are people who have called Islamophobia "the new antisemitism"; a maneuver I generally hate because it wrongly suggests the "old" antisemitism has gone away when it clearly hasn't. That said, it is clear that certain aspects of Islamophobia move to very familiar beats vis-a-vis antisemitism, and that's illustrated almost too neatly here, where utterly mundane Muslim political mobilization against discrimination is recast as a devious plot to destroy America (with the shadowy Jewish financier at the center of course).
On that note, I have to give an honorable mention to Inez Stepman who, as one wag put it, basically "reinvented antisemitism from first principles" in her description of Mamdani.
A man "essentially from nowhere", an "elite class global citizen with no loyalty to a place or its people" -- boy, does that ever sound familiar. New York hasn't had a Jewish mayor since Bloomberg, but if antisemites were missing the chance to pull out the old hits they've found a new mark with Mamdani.
